Is the global market headed for another shake-up? In this episode, we unpack the rising uncertainty in international trade and finance—from shifting geopolitical alliances to unexpected tariffs and policy pivots. What does this mean for businesses, investors, and everyday consumers? Tune in as Billboard’s Senior Finance Correspondent, Liz Dilts Marshall and I break down the trends, the tensions, and what might come next in the global economy. 00:31 Investor Interest in Music Assets 01:49 Earnings Reports and Market Reactions 09:04 Potential Impact of Tariffs 11:39 Touring and Live Music Challenges 17:12 Hipgnosis and Music Royalties 23:59 Comparing Music Value: 1999 vs. Today This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

In this episode, we’re shaking things up with our very first Live Music Draft 2025! Joined by MIDiA Research’s Tati Cirisano, we’re drafting our top music festivals, stadium tours, arena tours, concert residencies, over-performers, and under-performers of the year! 02:30 Music Festivals 09:21 Stadium Tours 14:04 Arena Tours (First Timers) 22:00 Vegas Residencies 25:07 Overperformers 28:53 Underperformers 29:51  Market Moves This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week.

The most influential conversations about your industry might be from an anonymous commenters who is validated by hundreds of upvotes on popular subreddit thread. Join me and Dr. Marcus Collins, the award-winning marketer, author, and friend of the pod, as we discuss the significant cultural influence of Reddit, its evolution as a community of subcultures, and how the business has evolved. 02:08 Reddit as a Market Research Tool 04:54 The Power of Community and Moderation 15:29 Will Monetization Match its Cultural Influence? 19:41 If We Ran Reddit This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week.

Will Page returns to the show for a “state of the industry” episode. In last year’s appearance he correctly called out the slowdown in streaming subscriptions, bubbles in web3, and more. Will believes the value of copyrighted music could hit $45 billion annually when the 2022 numbers are calculated — up $5 billion from 2021, which is already an all-time high for the industry.   Another massive shift is glocalisation”: the trend of local music dominating the domestic charts, as opposed to Western artists. This phenomenon isn’t just being felt in music, but across every industry, from film to education. We covered both these trends, plus many more. Here’s all our talking points:  1:33 Why the music industry is actually worth $40+ billion annually 7:03 Physical music sales on the up and up 10:47 How publisher and labels split up copyright value 16:59 The rise of “glocalisation” will impact every industry 34:39 DSP carnivores vs. herbivores  40:23 Why video vs. music streaming isn’t a perfect comparison  46:31 Music as a premium offering in the marketplace  51:38 How to improve streaming royalties   1:06:05 AI music benefits that goes overlooked  1:10:07 Will’s latest mix pays homage to Carole King Glocalisation report:  https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/Assets/Documents/LEQS-Discussion-Papers/EIQPaper182.pdf Will Page's 2023 Believe in Humanity: https://www.mixcloud.com/willpagesnc/2023-believe-in-humanity/ Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guest: Will Page, @willpageauthor This episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fm Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Will Page: I put so much emotional time and effort into making these mixes happen and going out for free. They get your DJ slots, but more importantly, it goes back to what makes me wanna work in music, which was a lyric from Mike G and the Jungle Brothers from that famous album done by the forties of Nature, where he said, it's about getting the music across. It's about getting the message across. It's about getting it across without crossing over. How can I get art across an audience without delegating its integrity? And it's such an honor to have this mixed drop in this Friday I mean, that's, made my year and we're not even into June yet. [00:00:30] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:56] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about the state of the music industry, and we're joined by the One and Only, Will Page. He is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He's an author of Tarzan Economics and Pivot, and he is the former chief economist at Spotify. Will's second time on the podcast. Now, the first time we talked all about the future of streaming and where things are going in music, and we picked that conversation, backed up. We talked about a bunch of trends including the glocalisation of music, which is from a new report that Will had recently put out. We also talked about why he values the music industry to be close to a 40 billion industry, which is much higher than a lot of the reports about recorded music itself. And we also talk about a bunch of the topics that are happening right now, whether it's ai, how streaming should be priced, the dynamic between record labels and streaming services, and a whole lot more love. This conversation will always brings it with these conversations, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's our chat. [00:02:00] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have the one and only Will Page with us who is recording from a beautiful location. I don't know if you're listening to the pod you can't see, but will tell us where you are right now. [00:02:09] Will Page: So great to be back like a boomerang on Trapital. Dan, and I'm coming to you from the Platoon Studios. Part of the Apple Company Platoon is our label services company, which is owned by Apple. They're doing great stuff with the artists like Amapiano music from South Africa. And the best place I can describe to you here, it's like a Tardus. Have you've ever seen Dr. Who? There's a tiny door in this tall yard music complex in North London just behind Kings Cross. When you enter that tiny door, you enter this maze of the well class spatial audio recording studios of Apple. And it's an honor they've given me this location to come to Trapital today. [00:02:41] Dan Runcie: Well we're gonna make the best of it here and it's always great to have you on, cuz Last year, last year's episode felt like a state of the industry episode, and that's where I wanna start things off this year with this episode. A couple months ago, you put out your post in your Tarzan economics where you said that this industry is not a 2020 5 billion industry, the way others say. Mm-hmm. You say, no, this is almost a 40 billion industry. So let's break it down. How did you arrive there and what's the backstory? [00:03:12] Will Page: I get goosebumps when you say that you think like 10 years ago we were talking about a 14 billion business and now it's a 40, you know, skews a slurred Scottish pronunciation, but let's just be clear from one four to four zero, how did that happen? Well the origins of that work, and you've been a great champion of it, Dan, is for me to go into a cave around about October, November and calculate the global value of copyright and copyright is not just what the record labels publish, that famous IFPIGMR report that everyone refers to, but it's what collecting studies like ask F and BMI collect what publishers generates through direct licensing. You have to add A plus B plus C labels, plus collecting societies plus publishers together. Then the complex part, ripping out the double counting and doing all the add-backs, and you get to this figure of 39.6 billion, which as you say, you round it up, it begins with a four. And I think there's a few things that we can kind of get into on this front. I think firstly we should discuss the figure. I'll you a few insights there. Secondly, I think we should discuss the division. And then thirdly, I want to cover the physical aspect as well. So if you think about the figure, we've got 39.6 billion. We know it's growing. I think what's gonna be interesting when I go back into that cave later this year to redo that number, it's gonna be a lot bigger. Dan, I'll see it here on Trapital First. I think a 40 billion business in 2021 is gonna be closer to a 45 billion business in 2022. And one of the reasons why it's not labels and streaming, it's a combination of publishers are reporting record collections, essentially they're playing catch up with labels, booking deals that perhaps labels booked a year earlier. And collecting studies are gonna get back to normal after all the damage of the pandemic. And when you drive those factors in where you have a much bigger business than we had before. So for the people listening to your podcast who are investing in copyright, this party's got a waiter run. You know, don't jump off the train yet cause this thing is growing [00:05:18] Dan Runcie: And the piece I want to talk about there is the publishing side of this. If you look at the breakdown of the numbers you have, the publishing is nearly, publishing plus is nearly 13 billion itself. The major record labels own most of the largest publishers right now. Why isn't this number just automatically included? Wouldn't it be in everyone's advantage to include the fact that yes, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group are together, part of the entity that make this, whether it's them, it's Warner Chapel, it's others. Why isn't this just the top line number that's shared in all of the other reports? [00:05:56] Will Page: It would be nice if it was, and indeed, I think the publishing industry around about 2001 used to do this. They haven't done it since. But it's like spaghetti. It's the best way I can describe it. I mean, how do you measure publisher income? You know, is it gross receipts by the publisher? Is it the publisher plus the collecting Saudi? That is money that went straight to the songwriter and didn't touch the publisher. So what the publisher holds onto what we call an industry, a net publisher, shares all these weird ways of measuring this industry that we have to be clear on. And it's, not easy. but I think what we do in the report is we try and make it bite size. We try and make it digestible to work out how much of that publisher's business came through, CMOs, the S gaps and BMIs this X over here PS music and how much do they bring in directly? And that allows you to understand a couple of things. Firstly, how do they compare vi to vis labels in terms of their overall income? And secondly, how do they compare when they go out to market directly, let's say putting a sync and a TV commercial or movie versus generating money through collective licensing that is radio or TV via ASCAP or bmr. So you get an interpretation of how these publishers are making those numbers work as well. [00:07:03] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And then when we are able to break it down, we see a few numbers that roll up into it. So from a high level, at least what you shared from 2021, we have that 25.8 billion number from the recorded side. So that does fall in line with what we see from what the IPIs and others share. 10 billion Sure. From the publishing. And then you do have, the next 3.5 and then a little sliver there for royalty free and for the publishers' direct revenue that doesn't come from the songwriters. The next piece though, within the elements of how all of the revenue flows into that. We've talked a lot about streaming and we've talked, we'll get into streaming in a little bit, but I wanna talk about the physical side cause that was the second piece that you mentioned. We've all talked about vinyl, but it's not just vinyl. So could you talk a bit about where the trends are right now with physical sales and why this is such a huge factor for this number? [00:07:56] Will Page: Who would've thought on a Trapital podcast in May, 2023. We'll be talking about physical as a second topic on the agenda, but it's worth it. I mean, it's not a rounding era anymore. It's not chump change. in America, physical revenues largely vinyl outpaced the growth of streaming for the second year straight. It's not as big as streaming, but it's growing faster and it has been growing faster for two years now. That's crazy. Here in the uk the value of physical revenues to the UK music industry has overtaken the value of physical to Germany. Quick bit of history. For years, decades, Germans used to buy CDs. that's fallen off a cliff. They've given up on CDs. Whereas over here in Britain, we've all started buying vinyl again. So the value of vinyl in Britain is worth more than the value of CDs to Germans, that type of stuff you didn't expect to see. And if you go out to Asia, you see the CD market still strong. You've still got people who buy more than one copy of the same cd, of the same band. Don't ask me to explain the rationale for that, but it happens and it moves numbers. But after all this, when the dust settles, I mean a couple of observations, all the data to me is suggesting that 55, 60% of vinyl buyers don't actually own a record player. So I think it was Peter Drucker who said, the seller really knows what they're selling, and I don't think you're selling intellectual property or music cop right here. What we're actually selling is merchandise, you know, Taylor Swift, I got an email from Taylor Swift team saying they've got a marble blue vinyl coming out this week. Now we're talking about vinyl in the same way we used to talk about stone wash jeans, marble blue. This is like the fourth version of the same 11 songs priced at 29 99. Let's just figure that out for a second. I'm willing to give you 10 bucks a month to, access a hundred million songs on streaming services, but I'm also, it's the same person. I'm also willing to give you 30 bucks to buy just 10 of them. This is expensive music and I might not even be listening to it cause I don't even have a record player. [00:09:55] Dan Runcie: This is the fascinating piece about how we're calculating this stuff because the vinyl sales and all of that has been reported widely as a great boom to the industry and it has been. We've seen the numbers and in a lot of ways it brings people back to the era of being able to sell the hard copy of the thing itself, but it's much closer to selling a t-shirt or selling a sweatshirt or selling some type of concert merchant. It actually is the actual physical medium itself. So it'll be fascinating to see how that continues to evolve, how that embraces as well. On your side though, as a personal listener, do you buy any vinyls yourself that you don't listen to, that you just keep on display or? [00:10:34] Will Page: It's like your shoe collection, isn't it? Yes, right. Is the answer to that. But no, I mean, I will say that I got 3000 fi funk records in the house and they're all in alphabetical chronological order. So if they haven't been listened to, at least I know where to find them. [00:10:48] Dan Runcie: That's fair. That makes sense. So let's talk about the third piece of this, and that's the division of this. So you have the B2C side and you have the B2B side. Can we dig into that? [00:10:59] Will Page: Sure. this is, I think the backdrop for a lot more of the sort of thorny conversations happening in the music industry is now, you may have heard that in the UK we've had a three year long government inquiry into our business. We had the regulator turn over the coals, and so there's a lot of interest in how you split up this 40 billion dollar piece of pie. who gets what? And the division I'm gonna talk about here is labels an artist on one side. Songwriters and publishers on the other side as it currently stands, I would keep it simple and say two thirds of that 40 billion dollars goes to the record label and the artist, one third goes to the publisher and the songwriter. Now, when I first did this exercise back in 2014, it was pretty much 50 50, and when you see things which are not 50 50 in life, you're entitled to say, is that fair? Is it fair that when a streaming service pays a record label a dollar, it pays the publisher and the songwriter around 29 cents? If you're a publisher, a songwriter, you might say, that's unfair, cuz I'm getting less than them. I have preferences, issues, and I have any issues with this division. Well, let's flip it around. If you look at how B2B world works, licensing at the wholesale level, let's say you're licensing the bbc, for example, if your song's played on the bbc, you're gonna get 150 pounds for a play. 90 pounds goes to the songwriter and the publisher, 60 pounds goes to the artist and a record label. Now, is that fair? Why does the publisher win in the B2B market? By the record, label wins in the B2C market. And the one, the lesson I want to give your listeners is one from economics, and it's rarely taught university these days, but back in 1938, 1939, in a small Polish town called la. Now part of the Ukraine, ironically, free Polish mathematicians sat in a place called a Scottish Cafe, ironic for me, and invented a concept called Fair Division. And the question they posed was, let's imagine there's a cake and there's two people looking at that cake getting hungry. There's Dan Runcie over in the Bay Area and there's Will page back in Edinburgh. What's the best way to divide that cake up? And the conclusion they came up with is you give Will page, the knife. Aha, I've got the power to cut the cake. But you give Dan Runcie the right to choose which half. Damn, I've gotta make that cut really even otherwise, Dan's gonna pick the bigger half and I'll lose out. And this divider two model gave birth to the subject of fair Division and it simply asked, what makes a fair division fairer? How can I solve a preference? How can I solve for envy? I want that slice, not that slice. I'm unhappy cause Dan got that slice and not that slice. There's a whole bunch of maths in this. We had a third person that gets more complex. But I just wanna sow that seed for your listeners, which is when we ask questions like, why is it the label gets a dollar and the publisher gets 29 cents? There's gotta be some rationale why you know who bets first? Is it the label that bets first or the publisher who commits most? Is it label that commits most marketing spend or the publisher? These types of questions do with risk, often help answer questions of fair division, or to quote the famous Gangstar song, who's gonna take the weight? Somebody's gotta take a risk when you play this game, and perhaps there's a risk reward trade off, which is telling us who gets what Share of the spoils. [00:14:15] Dan Runcie: Let's unpack this a little bit because it's easy to see. May not be fair, but it's easy to see why the record labels get preference on the B2C side because as I mentioned before, the record labels have acquired a lot of the publishers, and especially in the streaming era, they were prioritizing that slice of the pie, their top line, as opposed to what essentially is the subsid subsidiary of their business, the publishing side. Why is it flipped with sync? Well, how did that dynamic end up being that way? [00:14:47] Will Page: That's an anomaly, which is actually blatantly obvious. You just don't think about it. And the way it was taught to me is anyone can record a song, but only one person can own a song. So I think, let's give an example of, I don't know, a Beach Boy song where I could ask for the original recording of that Beach Boy song to be used in the sync. Or I could get a cover band. So let's say I got a hundred thousand dollars to clear the rights of that song, and the initial split should be 50 50. If a band is willing to do a version of it for 10,000, the publisher can claim 90,000 of the budget and get the option. If the record label objects and says, well, I wish you used a master. Well, you got a price under the 10,000 to get the master in. So this kind of weird thing of bargaining power, if you ever hear. Let me scratch that again. Let me start from the top. Let me give you a quick example, Dan, to show how this works. One of my favorite sort of movies to watch when you're Bored and killing Time is The Devil's Swear, Prada great film. And then that film is a song by Seal called Crazy, incredible song, timeless. That guy has, you know, timeless hits to his name, but it's not him recording it. Now, what might have happened in that instance is the film producer's got a hundred thousand to get the song in the movie, and he's looking to negotiate how much you pay for publishing, how much you pay for label. Now the label is getting, you know, argumentative, wanting more and more, and the publisher is happy with a certain fee. Well, the film producer's got an option. Pay the publisher of the a hundred thousand, pay him 90,000, given the lion share of the deal. And then just turn the label and say, screw you. I'm gonna get a covers bant and knock me out. A decent version of it. And this happens all the time in TV films, in commercials, you'll hear covers of famous songs. And quite often what's happening there is you gotta pay the publisher the lion share of your budget and then just cough up some small chains to the covers bant to knock out a version. And then, so just a great reminder, Dan of anyone can record a song, but only one person can own the song that is the author. And that's why negotiating and bargaining power favors publishes in sync over the record labels. [00:16:59] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And as you're saying that, I was thinking through five, six other examples of cover songs I've seen in many popular TV shows and movies. And this is exactly why? [00:17:08] Will Page: It's always car commercials. For some reason, every car commercial's got cover in a famous song. You think, remember that weird Scottish guy down Ronie Trapital? Yeah. That's what's happened. The publishers pool the rug from under the record label's feet at negotiation table. Another super important observation about the glocalisation trend, Dan, is I'm gonna take one of those 10 countries as our spotlight, Poland. Now the top 10 in Polands or Polish, the top 20 in Poland, or Polish. In fact, if you go to the top 40, it's pretty much all Polish bands performing in Polish, and you could say that's localization. But stop the bus. Most of those acts are performing hip hop, which is by itself a US genre. So perhaps we've got glocalisation of genre, but localization of language and artist. And that's a very important distinction for us to dissect. And perhaps it's for the anthropologist, the sociologist, to work out what's going on here. But it's not as straightforward as it's just local music. It's local music, but it's global genres, which is driving us forward. [00:18:08] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on. What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist. You just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there. So when we think about. How different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way. [00:19:04] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle. Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue. [00:19:28] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. Well, let's switch gears a bit. One topic that I wanna talk about, and I actually gave a talk recently, and I referenced you from this term, and its of music, was the glocalisation of music and why this is happening and what it means for Western music specifically in the us. But first, if you could define that term and explain why this is so important in music right now. [00:19:53] Will Page: Well, I'm so excited to be on Trapital talking about this because we are now officially published by London School of Economics, so I'm gonna make my mom and dad proud of me. At last Backstory, paperback of my book, guitars in Economics, retitled to Pivot. Apparently WH Smith's Travel and Hudson Travel said books with economics in their titles Don't sell an airport. So we've rebranded the whole book to Pivot and it's in airports, which is a result. that book, that paperback came out on the 6th of February and that night I was on the BBC one show and they had this great happy, clappy family friendly story. They wanted to bounce off me. They said, Hey, will, Isn't it great that the top 10 songs in Britain last year were all British ex? For the first time in 60 years, Britain got a clean sweep of the top 10 in the music charts. And I said, curb your enthusiasm because we're seeing it elsewhere. The top 10 in Germany, were all German. Top 10 in Italy, all Italian, ditto France, deto Poland. And if you go to Spain, the top 10, there were all Spanish language, but largely Latin American. So it's not just a British thing that we've seen this rise of local music on global streaming platforms. We're seeing it everywhere, cue some gulps and embarrassments live in the TV studio. But I made my point and I came out of that interview thinking. Well that stunned them. It's gonna stu more people. And I said about working on a paper called glocalisation, which with a Scottish accent, it's hard to pronounce. Let's see how you get on with it. Not localization and not glocalisation. Emerging to by definition and by practice glocalisation. I teamed up with this wonderful author, Chris Riva, who'd be a great guest on your show. He did a wonderful blog piece you may have read, called Why is There No Key Changes in Music anymore? It's a really beautiful piece of music writing and there isn't. Nobody uses key changes in the conclusion of songs. And we set out to do this academic study to explain to the world what's been happening in music and why it's relevant to everyone else. And what we saw across 10 European countries was strong evidence of local music dominating the top of the charts in these local markets on global platforms. Now history matters here. We didn't see this with local High street retailers, America, British, Canadian music dominated those charts. We still don't see it in linear broadcast models like radio and television, you know, it's still English language repertoire dominating those charts. But when it comes to global streaming, unregulated free market, global streaming, we see this phenomenal effect where local music is topping the charts. And you know, you look at what does it mean for us English language countries like ourselves? It means things get a little bit tough. It means exporting English language repertoire into Europe becomes harder and harder. Maybe I'll just close off with this quite frightening thought, which is Britain is one of only three net exporters of music in the world. The other two being your country, United States and Sweden. Thanks to a phenomenal list of Swedish songwriters and artists. And I can't think of the last time this country's broken a global superstar act since Dua Lipa in 2017. Dan, we used to knock them out one, two a year. 2017 was a long time ago, and it's been pretty dry since. [00:23:13] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on. What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist, you just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there. So when we think about, how different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way. [00:24:07] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle. Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue. [00:24:32] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. This is something that's been top of mind for me as well because technology in general has a way of making regions and making people in particular regions closer together than it does making the world bigger. It's like in, in a sense, technology can make the world seem bigger, but it actually makes it seem smaller, right? And I think that algorithms and bubbles that come from that are another symptom of this. But this is going to have huge implications for Western music. You mentioned it yourself. All of these markets that are used to being export markets, when they no longer have the strength to be able to have those exports, how does that then change the underlying product? How does that then change the budgets, the expectations of what you're able to make? Because if you're still trying to maintain that same top line revenue, you're still trying to maintain those airwaves you have, it's gonna cost you more money to do that, because you can't rely on the few Western superstars that you have to get, that you have to have equivalent of a superstar or at least a middle tier star in every region that you once had strong market share that you could export in. And it's gonna change cost structures. It's gonna change focus. And a lot of these expansions that we've seen of record labels, especially Western record labels, having strong footprints in different regions across the world, they're not just gonna need to have presence, they're gonna need to have strong results. And in many ways, try to rival the own companies that are in those comp, in those regions, the homegrown record labels, because every country is trying to do their own version of this and it's gonna be tight. This is one of the challenges that I think is only gonna continue to happen. [00:26:14] Will Page: You're opening up a real can of worms. I get it. Pardon to your listeners, we're getting excited here. Day of publication, first time we've been able to discuss it on air, but I know I'm onto something huge here and you've just illustrated why just a few remarks. One, some of the quotes that we have in the paper were just phenomenal. We have Apple included in the paper. We have Amazon, Steve Boom, the head of that media for Amazon in charge of not just music, but Twitch audio books, the whole thing. He's looking at all these media verticals. He makes this point where he says, as the world becomes more globalized, we become more tribal. Stop right there, as he just nailed it. What's happening here? It's The Economist can only explain so much. This is what's so deep about this topic. I wanna toss it to the anthropologist of sociologists to make sense of what I've uncovered, but it's massive. Now let's take a look at what's happening down on the street level with the record labels and the consumers. You know, the record labels are making more money and they're devolving more power to the local off seats. You know the headcount in the major labels, local off season, Germany, France, and Vietnam or wherever is doubled in the past five years. It hasn't doubled in the global headquarters. That's telling you something. If you look at how labels do their global priority list, maybe every month, here's 10 songs we want you to prioritize globally. So I had a look at how this is done, and across the year I saw maybe 8, 10, 12 artists in total, and there's 120 songs. There's not that many artists. You think about how many local artists are coming out the gate every week hitting their local labels or local streaming staff, up with ideas, with showcases and so on. Not a lot of global priority. Then you flip it and you think about the consumer, you know, they've had linear broadcast models for 70 years where you get what you're given. I'm gonna play this song at this time and you're gonna have to listen to it. FM radio, TV shows now they're empowered with choice and they don't want that anymore. They want what's familiar. What comforts them. They want their own stars performing in their own mother tongue topping those charts. So this has got way to go. Now, a couple of flips on this. Firstly, what does this mean for artists? And then I'm gonna take it out of media, but let's deal with artists. Let's imagine a huge festival in Germany. 80,000 people now festival can now sell out with just German X, no problem at all. So when the big American X or British X commanded like a million dollars a headlining fee, you wanna go play that festival. That promoter can turn around and say, sorry man, I can't generate any more money by having you on my bill. How much are you gonna pay me to get on stage? Price maker, price taker? You see what happens. And then the last thing, and there's so much more in this paper for your listeners to get to, and let's please link to it and you'll take, I'll take questions live on your blog about it as well, but. There's a great guy called Chris Deering, the father of the Sony PlayStation. Did you play the Sony PlayStation back in the day? Were you're a fan of the PlayStation. [00:29:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. PS one and PS two. Yeah. Okay. [00:29:11] Will Page: You, oh, so you, you're an OG PlayStation fella. So he's the father of the PlayStation and launching the PlayStation in the nineties and into the nineties. He offered us observation, which is when they launched a SingStar, which was karaoke challenge. In the PlayStation, he says, we always discussed why the Swedish version of SingStar was more popular in Sweden than the English version Science. Intuitive enough. Let me break it down. Gaming back then was interactive music was not, you interacted with your PlayStation, that's why you killed so much time with it. Music was just a CD and a plastic case that broke your fingernails when you tried to open it. That's how the world worked back then and gaming offered you choice. I could try and do karaoke with those huge global English language hits where I could go further down the chart and buy the Swedish version and sing along to less well known Swedish hits. And the consumer always picked the Swedish version. So as a bellwether, as a microcosm, what I think Chris Ding was teaching us was we saw this happening in gaming long before you started seeing it happen with music. 20 years ago when there was interactive content, which gaming was, music wasn't, and consumers had a choice, which gaming offered a music didn't. They went local. Today, Dan, we're dealing with music lists, A interactive, and B offers choice. And what we're seeing is local cream is rising to the top of the charts. [00:30:33] Dan Runcie: And we're seeing this across multimedia as well. We're seeing it in the film industry too. Even as recent as five, 10 years ago, you release any of the blockbuster movies that were successful in the us, almost all of them had some overseas footprint. Some of them definitely vary based on the genre, but they were always there. But now China specifically had been such a huge market for the Hollywood and Box office specifically, but now they're starting to release more of their own high ed movies and those are attracting much more audiences than our export content can one. Two, the Chinese government in general is just being very selective about what they allow and what they don't allow. And then three, with that, that's really only leaving certain fast and furious movies and Avatar. That's it. The Marvel movies are hit and missed depending on what they allow, what they don't allow, and how, and it's just crazy to see the implications that has had for Marvel Studios for everyone else in Hollywood as well. When you think about it, and we're seeing this across multimedia, I think there's a few trends here that makes me think about, one is. Population growth in general and just where those trends are and how different corporations can approach the opportunity. Because I look at Nigeria, you look at Ethiopia, these are some of the fastest growing countries in the world. And you look at the music that is rising more popular than ever, whether it's Amapiano or it's Afrobeats, that's only going to continue to grow. And that's only from a few regions in the huge continent of Africa. So when we're thinking about where success is gonna come from, where that lines up with infrastructure, people have been seeing it for years. But the reason that we're seeing the growth in Africa, the growth in Latin America, the growth in a lot of these markets is this trend of glocalisation and it's only going to increase. So if we're thinking about where we wanna invest dollars, where we wanna build infrastructure in the future, we not just being folks that live in the western world, but also elsewhere in the world, this is where things are heading. [00:32:37] Will Page: Let me come in down the middle and then throw it out to the side. So, Ralph Simon, a longtime mentor of mine, is quoted in the paper and where he's actually gonna moderate the address here at the Mad Festival here in London, which is for the marketing and advertising community here, where he says, what you've uncovered here that headwind of glocalisation is gonna affect the world of marketing and advertising this time next year. That's what will be the buzzword in their head. So if you think about, I don't know, a drinks company like Diagio, maybe they've got a globalized strategy and a globalized marketing budget. When they start seeing that you gotta go fishing where the fish are and the fish are localized, they're gonna devolve that budget and devolve that autonomy down to local offices. So the wheels of localization, this rise of local, over global, they've only just got started, if I've called it right. We're onto something way bigger than a 20 minute read LSE discussion paper. This goes deep, deep and far beyond economics. But then you mentioned as well China, I mean just one offshoot observation there, which is to look at education. If you look at the UK university system, about a third, if not more, of it is subsidized by the Chinese government and Chinese students here. Great for business, slightly dubious in its business, besties, charging one student more than another student for the same product. But that's what we do over here. And I recently, we made a fellow of Edmar University's Futures Institute, which is an honor to me, you know, gets me back home more often. Fine. And I was learning from them that. The quality of students coming from China to study here in Britain and across Europe is getting worse and worse. Why? Cuz the best students have got the best universities in China. They no longer need to travel. So there's a classic export import dilemma of, for the past 10, 15 years, universities have built a complete treasury coffer base of cash around selling higher education to the Chinese. And now the tables are turning. I don't need to send my students to you universities anymore. I'll educate them here. Thank you very much. So, like I say, this stuff is a microcosm. It's got a can of worms that can open in many different directions [00:34:39] Dan Runcie: And it's gonna touch every industry that we know of to some extent, especially as every industry watches to be global to some extent. This is going to be a big topic moving forward. Let's shift gears a bit. One of the terms that was really big for us. That came from our podcast we did last year. We talked about herbivores and we talked about carnivores, and we talked about them in relation to streaming. We haven't touched on streaming yet, and this will be our opportunity to dig down into it, but mm-hmm. For the listeners, can we revisit where that came from, what that means, and also where this is heading? What does this mean for music streaming right now as it relates to the services and competition? [00:35:24] Will Page: Well, when I first came on Trapital, that was in a small Spanish village of Cayo De Suria and I didn't think I'd come up with an expression that would go viral from a small village in Spain to be, you know, quoted from in Canada, in America. And Dan, this is quite hilarious. we have a new secretary of state of culture here in the UK. The right Honorable MP, Lucy Fraser KG, Smart as a whip. Brilliant. And when I first met her, you know what the first thing she said was, I listened to you on Trapital. I wanted to ask you about this thing you've got going called herbivores and carnivores. So right the way through to the corridors of power, this expression seems to have traveled. What are we talking about? Well, the way I framed it was for 20 years we've had these streaming services, which essentially grow without damaging anyone else. Amazon is up. Bigger subscriber numbers. Apple's got bigger subscriber numbers. YouTube and Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. And then Spotify. Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. Everyone's growing each other's gardens. That's fine. That's herbivores. What happens when you reach that saturation point where there's no more room to grow? The only way I can grow my business is stealing some of yours. That's carnivores. And the greatest example is simply telcos. We're all familiar with telcos. We all pay our broadband bills. How do telcos compete? Everybody in your town's got a broadband account, so the only way you can compete is by stealing someone else's business. The only way here in Britain Virgin Media can compete is by stealing some of skies. The only way that at and t competes is by stealing some of com. So that's carnival competition. Now, the key point for Trapital listeners is we don't know what this chapter is gonna read like cuz we've never had carus pronounce that word correctly. Carus behavior before. We've never seen a headline that said, Spotify's down 2 million subs and apple's up 2 million, or Amazon's up 3 million and you know, YouTube is down 3 million. We don't know what that looks like. So I think it's important for Trapital to start thinking about logical, plausible scenarios. You kick a one obvious one, which is again, a lesson from the telcos. When we do become carnivores, do we compete on price or do we compete on features? Let me wheel this back a second, you know, we'll get into pricing in more depth later. But downward competition on price tends to be how carnivores compete, and that'll be a fascinating development given that we've not seen much change in price in 22 years in counting or as we saw with Apple, they roll out spatial audio, they charge more for it, they've got a new feature, and they charge more for that feature. So do we see downward competition blood on the carpet price competition, or do we see. Upward competition based on features. I don't know which one it's gonna be. It's not for me to call it. I don't work for any of these companies. I've worked with these companies, but I don't work for any of them directly. But we have to start discussing these scenarios. How's this chapter gonna read when we start learning of net churn amongst the four horseman streaming services that's out there. It's gonna be a fascinating twist, and I'm beginning, Dan, I'm beginning to see signs of con behavior happening right now, to be honest with you. I can see switchers happening across the four, so I think we're getting there in the US and the UK. What are those signs you see? I'm just seeing that in terms of subscriber growth, it's a lot bumpier than before. Before it is just a clear trajectory. The intelligence I was getting was, everyone's up, no one needs to bother. Now I flag, you know, I signed the siren. I'm beginning to see, you know, turbulence in that subscriber growth. Someone could be down one month, up the next month. Maybe that's just a little bit of churn. The ending of a trial period, you don't know. But now for me, the smoke signals are some of those services are seeing their gross stutter. Others are growing, which means we could start having some switching. I can add to that as well. Cross usage is key here. I really hammered this home during my 10 years at Spotify, which is to start plotting grids saying, who's using your service? This person, that person, and next person now ask what other services are they using? And some data from America suggests that one in four people using Apple music are also using Spotify. And one in four people using Spotify are also using Apple Music. Cross usage confirmed. So if that was true, what do you make of that? With a public spending squeeze? With inflation, with people becoming more cost conscious in the economy with less disposable income, maybe they wanna wheel back from that and use just one, not two. And that's where we could start seeing some net churn effects taking place as well. So, you know, imagine a cross usage grid in whatever business you're working on. If your Trapital listeners and ask that question, I know who's using my stuff, what else are they using? Um, that's a really, really important question to ask to work out how this carnivore scenario is gonna play out. How are we gonna write this chapter? [00:40:23] Dan Runcie: This is interesting because it reminds me of the comparisons that people often make to video streaming and some of the dynamics there where prices have increased over the years. I know we've talked about it before to tend to a 12 years ago Netflix was cheaper than Spotify was from a monthly, US price group subscription. And now tough, tough. It's right. And now it's nearly twice the price of the current price point. That it is. The difference though, when we're talking about when you are in that carnival, when you're in that carnival market, what do you compete on? Features or price? Video streaming, you can compete on features essentially because the content is differentiated. If you want to watch Wednesday, that Netflix series is only one platform that you can watch it on. Yeah, you need to have that Netflix subscription, but in music it's different because if you wanna listen to SZA's SOS album, that's been dominating the charts. You can listen to it on any of these services. So because there are fewer and fewer limitations, at least, if your goal, main goal from a consumption perspective is to listen to the music, how do you then differentiate, which I do think can put more pressure on price, which is very interesting because there is this broader pricing debate that's happening right now about why prices should be higher. And we've seen in the past six plus months that Apple has at least raised its prices. Amazon has done the same, at least for new subscribers. Spotify has announced that it will but hasn't yet and this is part of that dynamic because on one hand you have these broader economic trends as you're calling them out, but on the other hand you do have the rights holders and others pushing on prices to increase. And then you have the dynamic between the rights holders and then the streaming services about who would then get the increased revenue that comes. So there's all of these fascinating dynamics that are intersecting with this her before shift to carnivores [00:42:23] Will Page: For sure. Let me just go around the block of those observations you offered us. All relevant, all valid and just, you know, pick off a few of them. If we go back to Netflix, I think Netflix has a, not a herbivore. I'm gonna talk about alcohol here cause it's late in the day in the UK. A gin and tonic relationship with its competitors. That is, if Dan Runcie doesn't pay for any video streaming service, and let's say Netflix gets you in and I'm the head of Disney plus, I say, well, thank you Netflix. That makes it easier for me to get Dan to pay for Disney Plus too. They compliment each other. They are genuine complimentary goods. They might compete for attention. You know who's got the best exclusive content, who's gonna renew the friends deal, whatever, you know, who's gonna get Fresh Prince of Bel Air on? That could be a switch or piece of content too, but when you step back from it, it's gin and tonic. It's not different brands of gin, that's really important technology, which is they've grown this market of video streaming. They've increased their prices and the same person's paying for 2, 3, 4 different packages. If I added up, I'm giving video streaming about 60 quid a month, and I'm giving music streaming 10 and the sixties going up and the music's staying flat. So it's bizarre what's happened in video streaming because the content is exclusive. Back to, how do music carnivores play out again? Could we see it play out in features? I listen to airport cause they've got classical and I listen to Spotify because it got discovered weekly. Is that plausible? Personally, I don't buy it, but you can sow that seed and see if it takes root, as well. I think just quick pause and Apple as well. I think two things there. They've launched Apple Classical. That's a very, very good example of differentiating a product because it's a standalone app like podcast as a standalone app. The way I look at that is you can go to the supermarket and buy all your shopping. You can get your Tropicana orange juice, you can get your bread, get your eggs, get your meat, get your fish or you could go to a specialist butcher and buy your meat there instead. Apple Classical for me is the specialist butcher as opposed to the supermarket, and they're offering both in the same ecosystem. It'd be incredible if they preload out the next iOS update and give 850 million people an Apple classical app. Imagine if they did that for Jazz, my friend. Imagine if they did that for jazz. Just if Apple's listening, repeat, do that for jazz. So there's one example. The other example from Apple is to go back to bundling. You know we talk about 9.99 a month. I chewed your ear off about this topic last time I was on your show. Just to remind your listeners, where did it come from? This price point in pound Sterling, in Euro in dollar that we still pay for on the 20th of May, 2023. It came from a Blockbuster video rental card that is when reps, he got its license on the 3rd of December, 2001. Not long after nine 11, a record label exec said if it cost nine 90 nines, rent movies from Blockbuster. That's what it should cost to rent music. And 22 years plus on, we're still there, ran over. But what does this mean for bumbling strategies? How much does Apple really charge? If I give $30 a month for Apple One, which is tv, music, gaming news, storage and fitness, all wrapped up into one price. Now, there's a famous Silicon Valley investi called James Barksdale. Dunno if you've heard of him from the Bay Area where you're based. And he had this famous quote where he said, gentlemen, there's only two ways to make money in business. Bundling and unbundling. What we've had for the past 10 years is herbivores. Unbundling. Pay for Netflix, don't pay for Comcast. Pay for Spotify. Don't pay for your CDs, fine. What we might have in the next 10 years is carnivores bundling, which is a pendulum, swings back towards convenience of the bundle and away from the individual items. So Apple, take 30 bucks a month off my bank balance. Please take 40. All I want is one direct debit. I don't care about the money, I just want the bundle. And I don't want to see 15 direct debits every month. I just wanna see one. I think that's a very plausible scenario for how the next 10 years it's gonna play out as we shift from herbivores to carnivores [00:46:31] Dan Runcie: And the bundle benefits, the companies that have the ability to do that, right? You can do that through Amazon Prime and get your video, your music, your free shipping or whatever is under that umbrella. You could do that through Apple. You mentioned all the elements under Apple one. Spotify has some element of this as well, whether it's exclusive podcasting and things like that. So you're starting to see these things happen, one thing that you mentioned though earlier, you're talking about going through the supermarket and all of the items that you could get there versus going to the specialty butcher. One of the unique aspects of the supermarket thing though, is that. You go into the supermarket, yes, you can get your high-end Tropicana, or you can get the generic store brand, but you're gonna pay more for that high-end Tropicana because you're paying for the brand, you're paying for everything else that isn't gonna necessarily be the same as the generic one. That may not necessarily be the same quality or the same taste. We're seeing this a bit in the streaming landscape now and some of the debates that were happening. You've heard the major record label executives talk about how they don't necessarily want their premium music. They see their content as HBO level and it's being in a playlist next to rain music, or it's next to your uncle that is playing some random song on the banjo and they're getting essentially the same price going to the rights holders for that song. And in the supermarket that's obviously very different, each item has its own differentiator there, or econ has its own price point there and its own cost, but that isn't necessarily the same thing in music. Of course, the cost of each of those tracks may be different, but the revenue isn't. So that's gonna be, or that already is a whole debate that's going on right now. Do you have thoughts on that? [00:48:21] Will Page: Well, you tossed top Tropicana, let me go grab that carton for a second. It's one of the best economic lessons I ever learned was visiting a supermarket in America cuz it's true to say that when you go into one of your American supermarkets, an entire aisle of that precious shelf space, it's dedicated to selling inferior brands of orange juice next to Tropicana. Just very quickly what's happening there, the undercover economist, if you want, is a bargaining power game. Tropicana knows The reason Dan Runcie pulled the car over, got the trolley, went into that supermarket is to get a staple item of Tropicana and other stuff. By the time it gets to the till, Tropicana could be $5. By the time he gets to till he spent $50. So here, subscriber acquisition cost contribution is really high. They're getting you into the mall. What you do once you're in the mall is anyone's business, but they got you in. Otherwise you would've gone to the deli across the street. So they could say to the supermarket, I'm gonna charge you $7 to sell that Tropicana for $5 in my supermarket. Supermarket knows this, they know that Tropicana's got the bargaining paris. They counter by saying, here's an entire shell space of awful brands of orange juice to curb your bargaining power to see if the consumer wants something different. Now is this Will Page taking a stupid pill and digressing down Tropicana Alley. No. Let's think about this for a second today, Dan, there's a hundred thousand songs being onboarded onto streaming services. Is there anybody what? Marching up and down Capitol Hill saying We want a hundred thousand songs. No, the floodgates have opened them. It's all this content. Two new podcasts being launched every minute. All this content, all of these alternative brands to Tropicana. But you just wanted one. And I think the record labels argument here is that one Cardinal Tropicana is worth more than everything else you're offering by its side. So we wanna rebalance the scales. Now this gets really tricky and very contentious, but what is interesting, if you wanna take a cool head on this topic, it's to learn from the collecting studies, which is not the sexiest thing to say on a Trapital podcast, but it's to look at your Scaps and your BMIs and understand how they distribute the value of money for music. Since their foundation in the 1930s, scap has never, ever treated music to have the same value. They have rules, qualifications, distribution, allocation practices, which change the value of music. And they don't have data scientists then. And to be honest, I don't think they have data scientists now, but they always have treated the value of music differently. When they were founded, they had a classical music distribution pot and a distribution pot for music that wasn't classical music. Ironically, their board was full of classical composers, and I think that's called embezzlement, but we'll leave that to the side. What we have here is a story of recognizing music as different value in the world of collecting Saudi. I call that Jurassic Park, but in the world of music streaming with all those software developers and engineers and data scientists, 22 years of 9.99 money coming in and the Prorata model, which means every song is worth the same for money going out, and that's your tension. That's your tension. How do you get off that? Tension is anyone's business. We got some ideas we can discuss. User-centric is one, autocentric is another. I've got a few ideas for my own, but I want your audience to appreciate. In straight no chaser language we call it. That's the undercurrent of what's going on here. How do you introduce Trapitalism to communism? [00:51:38] Dan Runcie: You mentioned there's artist centric, user-centric, but you mentioned some ideas you had of your own. What are those ideas? [00:51:44] Will Page: Can I bounce it off? Use my intellectual punch bag for a quick second. Yes, and I've worked 'em all. I've worked on the artist centric model. I've worked on artist growth models. That's up on YouTube. I've worked on user centric, but I'm just, I'm worried that these models, these propositions could collapse the royalty systems that these streaming services work under. The introduction of user centric or artist centric could become so complex, so burdensome, the royalty systems could break down. That's a genuine concern I have. It's not one you discuss when you talk about your aspirations and the land of milk and honey of our new streaming model that you envisage. Back in the engine room when you see how royalties are allocated and calculated and distributed out to right holders, I mean they're under stress anyway. Any more stress could snap it. So I come at this model, my proposition from the one that's least likely to break the system. I'm not saying it's the best model, but it's the least like least likely to have adverse impact on the system. And it came from my DCMS Select Committee performance in the UK Parliament, which your listeners can watch, we can give the link out, which is I said to the committee in terms of how you could change the model. What about thinking about duration? This wheel back since 1980s when B BBC radio plays, let's say Bohemian Rhapsody, it will pay for that song twice what it would pay for. You're my best friend, members of Queen wrote both songs, both released within three, four years of each other, but one lasts twice as long as another. So duration is not new. We factor in duration a lot in our music industry. We just never thought about it. If you look at Mexico, the Mexican collecting Saudi, which is so corrupt as an inside an army barracks, if you look there, they have sliding scales, duration. They factor in time, but they say the second minute is what? Less than the first. But I'm giving you more for more time just adding, decreasing scale. Germany, they have ranges in your country. America, mechanical licensing collective, the MLC in Nashville, they have overtime songs that last more than six minutes get a 1.2 multiplier. So I've been thinking about how could you introduce duration to this business? And the idea I've come up with is not to measure time. That'd be too complex, too burdensome. Every single song, measuring every second of consumption. How do you audit there? If you're an artist manager, but I wanna measure completion, then I think this is the answer. I want songs that are completed in full to receive a bonus and songs that are skipped before they end to receive a penalty. Not a huge bonus, not a huge penalty, but a tweak. A nudge that says, I value your attention. I value great songs, and you listen to these great songs and it captures my entire attention. You deserve something more. But if I skipped out after the first chorus, you deserve something less. I think that small nudge is a nudge in the right direction for this industry, and it wouldn't break the systems. So there it is. Tell me now, have I taken a stupid pill? [00:54:42] Dan Runcie: What I like about it, and I've heard other people in the industry mention this too, you're able to get something closer to what we do see in video streaming. I forget which app is specifically, but their threshold is 75%. So they acknowledge that yes, if you don't wanna watch the credits, you don't wanna listen to the closeout, that's fine. But if we at least get you for 75%, then we are gonna count that, and then that then can get used internally. That can then get used in different areas. But I think it provides everyone better data and analysis, much better data to be able to break down than. Whether or not you listen to the first 30 seconds, that's such a low threshold, but that's essentially where we are today. I think the biggest thing, regardless of what path is chosen, because as you and I both know, there's trade-offs to everyone. So instead of going through all the negative parts about it, I think it's probably more helpful to talk about it collectively, you accept the fact that there are trade-offs. You accept the fact that people are gonna try to game the system regardless of how you go about it. Because we have seen duration work elsewhere and it does get at that particular thing that we're trying to get at there is help there. And you mentioned other things such as, yes, if you're listening to the Bohemian Rhapsody, you, which I think is at least seven minutes and 15 seconds, most likely longer versus two minute song that is clearly idealized for the streaming era. There still should be maybe some slight difference there because listening to a minute and 30 seconds is very different than listening to five minute and 45 seconds to be able to hit that 75% threshold. So between that and then I've heard other topics such as which artists you start your session with should have some type of multiplier on there, and as opposed to someone that gets algorithmically recommended to you to be able to put some more onus on the on-demand nature of music streaming. The tough thing is that these things do get tough in general. Anytime there's any type of multiplier or factor in, there still is a zero sum pot that we're taking the money out of. So accepting the trade-offs, I like the direction, I think that there's a few ways to go about it that could make it more interesting, but in general, I do think that any of the proposed options I've seen at least, allow a bit more of a true economic reflection of where the reality is as opposed to where things are today. And I understand where things are today. It's easy. It's easy to report, it's easy to collect on and pay people out, relatively speaking. But like anything, there's trade offs. [00:57:14] Will Page: Yeah, it's really easy today. Even drummers can work out their royalties and no offense to drummers, but that's telling you something. But two points on my duration proposal. Firstly, you mentioned the word threshold there. That's crucial because we already have thresholds. Music, every streaming service has to measure 30 seconds, one interrupted play in order for our royalty to be crystallized. So I'm just adding a second threshold. I'm not reinventing the wheel. It's low marginal cost. Here I'm just saying, gimme the threshold of completion. I don't care how long the song is and how much of that song was consumed. Just tell me did it get to the finishing line, yay or nay. And remember that threshold has anomalies, as I tell in the book Pivot, and previously is a hardback tar in economics. That 32nd threshold is like the tail wagging the dog. You're seeing songs are getting shorter and the choruses are moved to the front. Why? Cause I got a hook you for 30 seconds. I don't care what happens after 31 seconds, just get me 30 seconds. And why should I write a longer song when I'm not incentivized to do so? So the grass isn't greener back on the other side of the fence. There's problems with our current model, and I think a way of like, Steering it back towards an attention economy is gonna help music win. Kevin, Netflix says that sleep is their biggest form of competition, but also valuing the art of songwriting. Let's get back to the song. Let's put the artist back in the haystack and focus on the art, the creative process a bit more too, and reward that when it's consumed, it's an entirety. Second thing and final thing to wrap up on, Dan, can I quickly tell you about a wedding I was at recently? Yeah. Well I love weddings cause you get to wear your kil. That's always a nice talking point. But I also love them because you get to speak to bands. I always forget to speak to the bride and groom. I just drift over to the band after the reception's over and chat to the band instead. And I was at a wedding recently and the band was there and they played celebration by Cool and the gang for the bride and the groom. They played a second song for their parents to come and join on the dance floor. Then the band went into a two hour, 50 minute medley, nonstop right away through the evening didn't stop. It's like, wow, the band were tight. Went over to them at the end of it, said Drums, bass, you are in syncopation. I could see like, you really are a tight band, but what earth were you doing? Doing a two hour, 15 minute medley. And they said, it's TikTok. Nobody wants to hear complete songs anymore. And my Pint Glass dropped the floor and they said that. I was like, Scott's people don't drop their drinks. But I dropped on this occasion because, what did you say? It's TikTok. Nobody wants to hear a full song. They just want snippets. So we just do mes instead. Now forget the economics and the legal arguments. That makes me worried about which path music is currently on. Right there we are in an attention economy and I think it's got a little bit wared. We've got a straight up on the tracks. So I think this proposal's got legs. [00:59:56] Dan Runcie: That's that story. That wedding from that, that story from that wedding you went to, that's like the Steve Lacy example, right? He went to his concert. His concert has been doing very well because of his song, bad habit. But then the people that are. At his show, the fans that are there, they could only recite that one instance of the song that's on TikTok. I don't like, not even the whole song, just that one instance of the song that are on TikTok. Granted, Steve Lace has been making music for a while. It wasn't all the fans that were there, but with this influx of him not being able to perform in bigger venues, people wanna hear this song. It's one thing for years we've become accustomed to musicians performing for audiences that only know their hit. Singles are the one that got the music video, but now a lot of them are experiencing hearing their fans only repeat back. That one moment that went viral on TikTok. [01:00:48] Will Page: What's this? It's called verse two. If you stick around long enough, you'll hear a third one as well. You know what? It made me also just play that one off with me here, which is that famous Fleetwood Mac clip that blew up on TikTok. Guy hanging off the back of the truck drinking a bottle of soda Singing Dreams. A 1981 song by Fleetwood Mac. It's 34 seconds, couple of things, firstly, that had about 90 million views, but had 843,000 impersonations on TikTok of people hanging off the back of a truck pretending to sing a Fleetwood Mac song. But secondly, could you have a Gen Z millennial go and pay like 120 pounds to see them at Wembley Stadium, the cost of a streaming service for a year who's only ever consumed 34 seconds of their repertoire? I mean, that's not implausible, right? What type of world are we living in , albums anyone? Sometimes, [01:01:35] Dan Runcie: And sometimes that's all it takes, sometimes that's all it takes, right? In some ways, the fact that we saw that much user-generated content from it, hundreds of thousands as you've just shared in that example, is huge. But it's crazy and this is actually a good transition to talk about AI because so much of the AI music that is relevant and has been top of discussion has been based off of popular artists. We know we're talking about the AI that's based on a viral song from the Drake and the weekend. Granted, that song got a lot of buzz, especially when it first came out. I don't know how many repeat listens it's gotten since, but that's not necessarily the point. None point more so none. Exactly, exactly, right? [01:02:19] Will Page: 20 million streams from 20 million listeners. Nobody streamed it twice, trust me. [01:02:25] Dan Runcie: You gave in at least one stream though, right? You gotta give it a blessing, right? What was your thought? [01:02:33] Will Page: Well, I'm gonna hand the torch over to Jessica Powell, the founder of Audio Shake, who I think is the most exciting company in music tech right now. And point your listeners towards her CK blog posting, which is this whole Drake Week weekend thing. Isn't it just a fuss over a remix? Paraphrasing the title, and it's a beautiful, that woman is inspirational, but she can write. She can write, which is like grabbing you by the luquette lapels and shaking seven shades of shit out of you. She really uses the power of the pen to express her words, to go back to remix culture. So I think inspired from her work. I would say two things here. I think the thorny legal issue that's going on here is consent. We've had remix culture for years. We've had computers involved in music creation for years. We need to see that in a continuation. But if you think about language of deep fakes, if I could manipulate the voice of Dan Ronsey and put that over a record without his consent, that's a red light, you know, I'm not being paranoid here, but there's a line that cannot be crossed. Dan once did not say those words, a computer generated those words. You could be liable for those words. How do we solve that? That's not just music, there's a whole, that's a whole spectrum of issues out there in society today that are gonna be affected by that. Music is a bell weather. That's a microcosm. It's the one that always gets hit first, but the rest are reaction stacked and ready to tumble. But on the positive side, you flip it from risk to opportunity. We think about catalog uplift for a second. That is how can release of new content drive demand in all content? As I've been saying, to record labels since 2018. That's a secret source. That's what you're trying to correct. The purpose of a new album is not just make that new album a splash. Get it to the top of the charts. Make sure you're in today's top hits. It's can you get the new fans to go back and listen to the old content? For some artists, it works. For others it doesn't. Do you fix what's broken or work with what's fixed? The greatest example is an artist that would love to hear on Trapital , Eminem, needs no introduction. When I look at his streaming data, All he needs to roll outta bed fart and burp on Spotify, and his catalog goes through the roof. His new content has got nothing to do with new content. It just inspires people to go back to the late nineties and early nineties and all those releases, which were so big back then. The new content's great. No disrespect, but it's like a reminder that there's this amazing catalog that you want to hear again and again, and it's a valuable catalog because that stuff is already recouped. A catalog dollar is worth way more to the bank account than a frontline dollar. There are other artists who can't make it work, and it's just for me. What happens if AI music solves that secret source of catalog uplift? So, here in the UK, we here at Platoon Studios are next door to Noel Gallica from Oasis, and there was recently an AI generated oasis, which is getting Noel Gallica Liam Gallica back together again. Artificial intelligence achieved this. Human beings can't achieve this. The two brothers don't get along, but AI sold it. That's cool. And Liam gave it a thumbs up. He's like, I love this walking. Good stuff. I'm not offended by ai. I embrace this. What did we see? No, a small spike in the AI version. A big spike in Oasis catalog. So for all the fear and paranoia on this topic, once we realize it can regenerate interest in catalog, I think you'll see the tables turn the sentiment change in our New York millisecond. Literally, they'll be like, I can make bucks out of this. This is a force of good, not a force of bad. [01:06:05] Dan Runcie: I would hope that that's what people take away from this whole narrative is that if you are the owners of the back catalog of Drake in the weekend, you probably saw some type of noticeable bump. Because even if people don't want to hear that song, they're still gonna go back and stream worse behavior, which in my opinion, is one of Drake's best songs because they want to hear that time and time again. Mm-hmm. And I think too, I'm glad you brought up Jessica and Audio Shake. I'm a small investor in the company and one of the things that I think she did well in that piece and others she's done is just laying the table stakes for where we are because. Even if the song itself isn't that good, A, I don't think we're at the point yet. We may get there eventually with AI, but I don't think we're at the point yet where people will listen to this music as a replacement. But if it could remind you of what's already there, that's what's valuable. If you let fans experiment and get them to play around with the tools that are available and upload their music as long as it can fit within certain parameters and isn't violating anything or trying to impersonate the artist itself, you can let them freely create in a way that even 10, 12 years ago, there are all these questions about people putting their songs on putting artist song on YouTube as user-generated content in a video. And over time you two was able to figure out how to get tagging properly so that artists could still be compensated for problem. Exactly. So that is possible, and I do think that eventually we can hopefully get to that point and I'm glad you mentioned Eminem. Two stats that always blow my mind, I'm sure you probably saw this one, but his 2005 Greatest Hits album was the sixth bestselling album, or the sixth bestselling hip hop album. I forget the exact stat, but it was one of the bestselling albums in the UK last year. And Lose Yourself is the most streamed song on Spotify from the two thousands. So when we talk about longevity and we talk about him, I mean, people already knew him as the bestselling artist of the two thousands, but when we see those numbers and you see these catalog sales and all of that, if he ever made a decision, I don't know what his ownership structure, what share he has looks like, but if he ever had a decision, the amount of people that go back to his music to work out and everything else, it's one of the most valuable catalogs of music. [01:08:24] Will Page: And he owns it all right? The rights are reverted back to him. So he's got a hundred percent ownership on that. [01:08:29] Dan Runcie: Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Wow. [01:08:31] Will Page: So, but the bigger point, and I know that the Trapital has a huge audience. It's an honor to address them here and now. And it's a broad church. I mean, the Secretary of State for media and culture in the UK Parliament, it's a big listener, obviously. So I wanna land that point, which is don't hand this off to the lawyers to solve because they're gonna be too risk averse and they can't see the wood from the trees. There's a huge opportunity here. And those same balanced voices like Jessica Powell from Audio Shake, I want them to be rise up so we can counter the risk aversion from the lawyers. Lawyers will do what they do best, but I describe in any workplace, there's two types of people. There's a yo squads and there's a no squads. And lawyers more often than not are no squads. They think of reasons why you can't do something. So I just wanna make sure we balance it with some people from the Yo squad so that we don't choke this off before the party can really start. There's so much opportunity and let me remind your listeners as well, Jimmy Hendrix, the greatest export from America to Britain of all time. He came here in 1966, I believe, maybe 65, 66. And the label that first did a deal with him, the label owner, who I won't name, but I've seen the picture, had a plaque above his office. So this is 1966. Okay? And the plaque said, the day that we can get computers to replace drummers is when we can have a proper music industry. And just keep in mind historical context. Music's a ride and we're on this trip forever. We're not getting off anytime soon. This is just part of that ride, and that's what I loved about Jessica's essay. It's just a reminder that we're just on a ride here and AI is just the next stop on the train line. There's more stops to come. [01:10:12] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Music is always gonna be there. It's like water, right? We have to understand where the technology's heading, but that's where it is. Well Will, before we close [01:10:22] Will Page: Along with the typewriter. [01:10:24] Dan Runcie: Exactly. Exactly. Well Will, before we close things out, it's great. This podcast, the base of it is the business of music, but you yourself are a dj and you have this incredible mix that you put out every year. It was an honor to provide one of the drops forward, but tell us a little bit about the mix and what to expect this year. [01:10:43] Will Page: I'm so excited to, uh, launch this mix that's going out on Friday. Friday is an important day on the calendar. It's gonna be 50 years since Carole King performed in Central Park to a hundred thousand people for free 50 years since release of our album fantasy. And this year's mix is called 2023. Believe in Humanity and That word, you know, believe that expression, believe in Humanity, is the name of one of the songs on that Carole King album. Now, just wheel back for a second, you say, Carole King, most people think of tapestry, a Willie jumper and a cat, and you need a friend with James Taylor. Get it? I mean, that song got me through my third year at university. But if you listen to fantasy, she does funk, and she doesn't just do funk. She does funk better than anyone. You think you're in the song Cho Rathon, and she's doing deep, dirty, aggressive funk. You know me and you, our music tastes are similar. We don't drink tea without sugar. This is tea with lots of sugar. This is incredible funk music, and she just knocks it out the park like, touch me if you can. Best funk record I've heard is Fantasy by Carole King. So I've named the song The Mix 2023 Believe in Humanity. After that song, the mix opens with that, but more importantly, Dan, it opens with a speech from Carole King exclusively to me. And that's for a kid from Edin Pro. He's been doing mixed tapes out of his bedroom since he was going through puberty. I've now got Carole King opening my mix. Do I need to say more? I gotta say more. There's so much more. Nile Rogers is in the mix. Anderson Peck is in the mix. Dan Runcie's got a shout out in the mix, and we've got Kyle O'Leary, who I think is the most promising hip hop artist out there today. We have her and we've messed around with her track players. We've given it the edge of, you know, Dave MacAllum's music. We've given it the edge. There's a hint to your listeners, we've got it all. So, I mean, I put so much emotional time and effort into making these mixes happen and going out for free. They get your DJ slots, but more importantly, it goes back to what makes me wanna work in music, which was a lyric from Mike G and the Jungle Brothers from that famous album done by the forties of Nature, where he said, it's about getting the music across. It's about getting the message across. It's about getting it across without crossing over How can I get art across an audience without delegating its integrity? And it's such an honor to have this mixed drop in this Friday to do just that and to have Carole King open it. I mean, that's, made my year and we're not even into June yet. [01:13:07] Dan Runcie: That's special. That's special. Well, we're excited to drop that and share it as well, especially around the time this episode comes out. So please share that link once it's ready. And Will, as always, it's been a pleasure. We covered so much in this episode. And before we let you go, where can people follow along to stay tuned with you for the next post that you put out for the next thing that you publish? Where can they, stay to follow along? [01:13:31] Will Page: Sure, I mean a couple of of tags. Firstly, the website, tarzaneconomics.com. I mean, I built that to be a resource for industry professionals, for students alike so they can navigate the spaghetti of this music industry. [01:13:43] Dan Runcie: Well soon be pivot.com though. Check me there. You gotta have a website that does well at airports. [01:13:47] Will Page: I got the dopple ganger pivotal economics.com gets you to the same place, so I Oh, nice to resurrect it for the paperback. Lucky I got that too, just in the nick of time. very active on LinkedIn. will page on LinkedIn, you'll find me there. and then also on Twitter it's Will page as well. But yeah, when this mix drops, it'll be great to get feedback from chapter listeners. So please comment and please, please, please share, get the music across without crossing over. [01:14:13] Dan Runcie: Thank you Will, it's been a pleasure. [01:14:15] Will Page: Thank you so much, Dan. [01:14:16] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

UnitedMasters and Translation CEO Steve Stoute returns to the show, fresh off a new deal with R&B star Brent Faiyaz for a reported $50 million. Brent had his pick at multiple major labels, but chose to stay independent with UnitedMasters. We talk about how independent companies can compete with majors on upfront money, competitive advantages in the music industry, and more. Steve and I also chat about the industry at-large: AI, entrepreneurship, subscription prices and more. Here’s what we hit on: 2:19 The ups and downs of entrepreneurship  06:11 Building two companies at once 10:56 Positioning UnitedMasters in the music distribution space  13:16 Does anyone in music have a moat? 15:56 Why Brent Faiyaz chose to sign with UnitedMasters 27:33 Should the DSPs raise prices? 30:07 Artists and creators becoming mini-media channels  36:58 How NIL (name, image, likeness) is like the independent music business 37:19 Is Steve going to strike more NIL deals? 45:52 Why every artists needs a Chief Technology Officer 54:30 Separating real from hype: blockchain, to web3, to AI Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guest: Steve Stoute, @SteveStoute This episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fm Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Steve Stoute: They used to have a moat, but no longer do they have a moat. And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. [00:00:27] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:55] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode covered a wide range of topics, but the key thing that's central to it is artist independence, and we're able to sit down with none other than Steve Stoute, who is the founder and CEO of United Masters founder and c e o of translation, and has been working in music and entertainment. For decades now. This is actually his third time on the podcast, and we covered it all. We started the conversation talking about motivations and how you were able to stay consistent as an entrepreneur, given the ups and downs of that lifestyle. Then we talked about translation, United Masters, Artist Independence, a bunch of trends happening right now and how. A company stays through all of the waves of technology waves, whether it's blockchain from a couple years ago to web three to where things are with AI now. Really fun conversation. Steve always brings it in these talks too, so it's a really great listen, hope you enjoy it. Here's our conversation. [00:01:53] Dan Runcie: All right. We're back with the Trapital podcast. Yeah. We got the one and only Steve Stoute here. I think this is your third time on the pod. [00:02:00] Steve Stoute: Really? I thought. I guess I thought it was twice. Thought This was my second time. [00:02:04] Dan Runcie: We did one time. We was at Empire Studio there. Yeah. We did it virtual during the pandemic, and then we got this one. [00:02:11] Steve Stoute: Oh, well, I'm fan of it. very early. You were? Yeah, I was on it very, very early. I think you're a good job. [00:02:18] Dan Runcie: Appreciate that. [00:02:18] Steve Stoute: Thanks for having me back. [00:02:19] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Yeah. These conversations are always good. And I wanna start this one and a place we haven't started others. I feel like we normally dive into the business, but take it a step back. You've been building businesses as an entrepreneur for decades now. How do you stay even keeled? How do you stay consistent with it, just knowing the ups and downs that naturally happen with building businesses? [00:02:42] Steve Stoute: Well, the fact that I appear to be even keeled is a compliment because, I certainly am emotionally attached to the businesses I build. I know there's, you know, the saying, don't be emotional about business, but when I'm building something from an original idea that I have, it's, you birthed the idea. I'm emotionally attached to the success of it, and the organization around it and the perception of it. So, you've been through those tumultuous cycles, so you tend to not chase the highs or chase the lows. and that sounds good. but it is definitely harder to do that when you're emotionally attached than, you know, understanding the theory that you should do that. And I think experience helps a bit, takes the edge off. But yeah, I would say to you, you just, like, for me, I've been able to sustain the energy and sustain through the ups and downs, through, sort of expecting them and not, chasing the highs like that's where the big mistake is when something great happens or a series of great things happen, you know, respecting it, but not chasing it because I believe that that's still not, gonna prevent the tumultuous time from coming. Because [00:03:56] Dan Runcie: I think the tough part with that, and this is something I know I struggle with too, it's tying your own satisfaction, your own esteem at particular points with those highs when things are going well. Yeah. And it's great to say those things, but I know even myself, it's tough to be able to stay even keeled when things are going well. The phone starts ringing more, you start getting more opportunities, more looks for things. Yeah, yeah, [00:04:20] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And it becomes more hectic. And then you have to hire more people. And then that creates another set of problems and responsibilities. And look, building a business isn't easy. I said it, the shop, know that the biggest mistake that I see is the glorification of entrepreneurs like, almond entrepreneurs. So therefore, like, you know, the sacrifice that it requires, to be able to know that failure is imminent or success is imminent that you may have an idea and you can go years without realizing the opportunity and it may go to somebody else. people ask me, how do I do it? And, you know, I'm here in San Francisco, I was, You know, in LA the day before that I was in Miami, the day before that, the day before that I was in LA again, it's like, it just keeps going. And like, you know, not seeing your family an d sacrificing some of the comforts of home or the comforts that you have of a routine, it's also part of the sacrifice. So it's not easy, and you have to really be committed to it. It almost has to be your A plan, your B plan. Your C plan is that plan, like you won't find joy or fulfillment. in doing anything else. At least that's how I feel. [00:05:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think a lot of it's accepting those trade-offs and knowing that you can't do it all. I think I've heard you talk about this on the shop as well, whether it's so-and-so as the birthday party, so-and-so as the this, and yeah, it's great if you can line up and do those things, but you've chosen this life to be able to be in LA, be in Miami, be in New York, and back to back days and Yeah, doing that requires this type of commitment to it and you can't do everything. [00:06:04] Steve Stoute: Yeah. and hiring great people, is part of it. but putting your own personal comfort is certainly not a priority. [00:06:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Interesting you brought up the hiring piece because I think you've definitely built up a reputation as someone that's always operating on 10. So you naturally wanna surround yourself with people that are at that level. What are some of the things that you look for to see, okay, does this person have the edge? Cuz you know you're gonna be running all the time. Can they run with you? [00:06:36] Steve Stoute: it's very hard to, you know, resumes or LinkedIn pages, whatever you use can tell you a lot, but they don't measure resourcefulness or effort, right? So those things do not appear in any aspect of looking at, a person's profile. So I've learned through failure, you know, I may have not, I may have, I have high, I have hired and fired. you know, 3000 plus people, you know, so you learn what are the qualities or what are the questions to ask, to try to help, mitigate that the kind of person you need for your company. It doesn't mean that person's bad. You could have made a bad hire, not because the person's not good, they just don't fit your team. I mean, you see it in the NBA all the time. Players on somebody that was on the Lakers or somewhere else goes to another team and then all of a sudden they do well cuz it's the system, it's the culture, it's the coach. And that's the same thing with employment. Like, you just may be good just not for this company. So understanding what you specifically need versus, oh, this person worked at, so tech high, or they worked at Google, they worked at Airbnb, we want that right? Pulling them into a startup or pulling them into that culture or pulling them into that product not made completely, is completely different, specifically in our case, than what they were doing over there. And not every single job transfers one to one, whether it's the music business, the tech industry, the marketing business. We hire people at translation all the time. They came from Ogilvy. It's like, well, that has nothing to do with us, right? Or they come from Goodbee and you're like, well, that ain't gonna work here, right? Why? Just because the way we are, set up, what they may be used to, the programming that they run versus what we run, they, you know, may not be a great culture fit. And so, knowing that helps mitigate that risk. So knowing who you are, knowing what kind of people respond well to your culture is an important aspect. Not only just the mission statement stuff. Yeah, great, But like really innately knowing it and feeling what works. What are the common attributes of the people that are successful at your company that are more nuanced based and knowing how to identify that in others and what other companies share those values so that people that come from those companies tend to do well at your company. [00:09:05] Dan Runcie: You mentioned how this is a tension point in music in this industry. I think we've seen it from time and time, whether it's the record label side and folks on the creative versus streaming and tech coming in and some of the pushback there. I think you've been able to have a good vantage point with both of these because you have a ad agency and you also have a music distribution service. The talents, the skills needed for one, may not make sense for the other, but they also have a bit of a unique identity there. How is it with that perspective? [00:09:38] Steve Stoute: Difficult, hard. at the onset of starting United Masses, I put translation in united masses under. United Masters, Inc. And understanding that in order to do that, to build a marketplace that has creative or brands on one side and creative and culture and cultural impact and creators on the other side, and building that marketplace takes hiring unique people because we sit at the convergence of culture, technology, and, storytelling. Mm-hmm. So you need people who are prolific at least two of those three things, every single person. And that's the only way you have a shot of getting that convergence to work as one and hiring for that and building organization structures around that probably is the most important thing. That I do every day is understanding where could we be more efficient in that model? What kind of people do we need in order to accelerate that model? How do we scale that model as a result of the talent we have and the talent we need? That is very difficult, and it is probably, it's definitely a top five priority, from the CEO. [00:10:56] Dan Runcie: And I assume as well, part of this is required with the nature of how you've positioned United Masters, right? If you don't have these differentiating factors, if you don't have this tie in to culture or trying to present sync opportunities or things like that, then it could easily be seen as another music distribution service. And that's not what Well, [00:11:17] Steve Stoute: Dan, you've been following the company very closely before you could be, just another distribution company before that became popular, I had this idea with that differentiating factor seven years ago, right? So I knew from the onset that distribution was table stakes. and the building of United Masters with translation and power powering the brand sync opportunities, the influence and type of opportunities, was something that I had the early vision on. So yeah, it's important, but it's not important in response to, oh, all of these, you know, distributors in the market now, so you need to X, Y, Z. I was doing the X, Y, Z before they even had the idea to be in music distribution, to be honest with you. And a lot of these music distribution companies that you see are coming out, are looking at United masses and honestly copying it. Some of it they can't copy. That's fine. some of it they can't copy. It's 20 years of experience in, you know, running record companies and building an advertising business to be able to do this. So you think you can replicate the outcome without replicating the process, which I've never seen actually happen, the theory is right? But to replicate it, to hire the people, to have the credibility in the marketplace to speak to brands and hire the type of people needed to pull us off. Good luck, I do believe, and I am supportive just to add to all of that, great distribution companies that support independent music, that have something to contribute to the independent music movement are welcome and everybody, you know, rises as a result of it. So I'm not necessarily, I don't look at. at these other, distributors as competitors, I look at us as contributing to an industry that's, changing the music business dramatically and if you have something to bring to the table, it's beneficial to all. [00:13:17] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I think for United Masters as well, you've been able to have your moat essentially as you've described it. You have the years of experience, you have the ability to connect dots in ways that others don't, and that's led you to land some of the artists you have. You have a recent deal that's been announced with Brent Faz and a long-term partnership there. Can you talk a bit about that deal and how things came together? [00:13:43] Steve Stoute: Well, a moat is a bit of a stretch. I don't know if we have a moat. We have a great business model that certain artists, labels can find use of. [00:13:56] Dan Runcie: Do you think anyone has a moat in this space? [00:13:59] Steve Stoute: No. No. The record companies, the traditional record companies had a moat, when physical distribution was a barrier of entry, right? It's very hard to press up 500,000 CDs or vinyls or whatever it is. and distribute it to 7,000 points of distribution. That's not easy to do for a small, a single individual or a very small business. So that was their mode. They also had a monopoly on radio and, MTV, you know, MTV doesn't matter at all and, for music per se. And, radio matters much less than it used to. for discovery, right? So they used to have a moat but no longer do they have a moat And I don't think anybody independent music has a moat. I think Distro kid has a lane and TuneCore has a lane, and United masses have a lane. And, you know, others have, certain strengths about them. but, I think the only moat you have is the moat that is a true result of the success that you have. If people choose you and you build a strong business, and you're growing, that's the quote unquote moat. but other than that, I don't think anyone has, a clear defining advantage that no one else can replicate, right? A nd just because we have the brand stuff doesn't mean that that's the, you know, I wanna believe that's very important to the artists. But somebody else may have another thing that is if marketed well and that's what they think their advantages. I don't have the ultimate advantage cuz you know, brands and brand partnerships in sync may not necessarily be what you find most valuable. It could be a distribution company that creates and manufacturer's merch and you're like, oh shit, that's the one I want. Mm-hmm. Right. So I don't, wanna say that specifically. We have that. [00:15:56] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I do think that that mentality is part of the differentiating that I think is lost in music overall to some extent, because I think that you have few record labels that truly have unique brands. I think you have few music streaming services that have unique brands, and when you have something, it's clearer to be able to say, who is this for? Who is this not for, right? And clearly, I assume you were able to do some of that with Brent Faz and that partnership. He saw something with how you all do business and said, okay, this is for me. [00:16:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah, Well, Brent is a very, very unique talent. I obviously he wants to be with something that. A company, distributor, or partner that represents values that are there to him. So creativity is extremely important to him. The fact that we do have translation really matters in that instance cuz brand partnerships is something that he holds near and dear to him. He also was very respectful of, my, you know, reputation and what I've accomplished and chose that over others who, you know, was offering more money but didn't have the, same values that he had or shared values he didn't share their values. He was very particular about that everyone who knows him knows that, he's high taste. So he wanted to be with, you know, a brand, a distributor, a partner that was, had a sense of premiumness to it. That was important to him. So I think the combination of those three things and, you know, just our chemistry, his manager Ty, is also a fantastic, really intelligent, guy who I've developed a great relationship and a lot of respect for, also played a very significant role in this partnership. And we're gonna do great things together. I knew this day would come, I knew where so much respect for guys, like maybe maybe for Toby, right? Toby Nii, who, I keep screwing up his name and he keeps making fun of me screwing up. His name is actually part of his name now. When I say it. But, I have so much respect for him and fat because we've done so well together and, they've committed to us and we've committed to them. And it was a proof point that an independent artist can be successful, can be, you know, a global brand. And I directly tie the work that we've done with Toby and, and others. And others. He just comes to mind. I spent a lot of time with him for why Brett chose us. Brett chose us. and now you got Brett who sold out his tour in three days around the world and shit. That kind of star deciding to stay independent, not go with a major label. And they offered him everything, all the money in the world. And I knew that trend is gonna happen. That's gonna happen, man. You're gonna start seeing this happen all the time, like, you know, the one moat, again, back to the legacy labels that they have, is that because they own your masters, when your contract is up, what they do, their, their thing is start to give you back the shit they took from you, right? So now you leave, you finish your 8, 5, 7 album commitment, whatever it is, right? And it's no longer can they give you any more money to stay. So they go, we'll give you back album one. And you're like, I'll stay on Sony because now Album one reverts I'll stay on Universal cause album one reverts. So they stay stuck in the system because all they do is now give you back what you shouldn't have never given actually, or they never should have taken. So they hold you cuz you're tethered to that, right? And no matter what, an independent distributor can't give you your first album that you wrote, because you never had in the first place. You never, you know, so you never had it in the first place, however. So that's the moat that they have with legacy acts that will stay. So it'll be hard for legacy acts to leave when they can give you back that kind of stuff. But the new artists who are building their careers are considering independent distributors such as myself or others, at the same consideration set as they're considering a label. If you can give 'em money and you can provide them services, look man, you know, people talk about like, oh, these labels have a service. We picked up our systems. We distributed a song, from a great, great young artist, good man, superstar Pride outta Mississippi has a song called painting Pictures. The song was released in October. The The song moves like this, my building, just, I don't know, 3000 streams a day or something like that. and then all of a sudden, on February 6th, it goes from 3000 to 9,000 or something like that. Our systems catch it, right? We're looking for the second derivative. We're measuring acceleration. Boom. We find it, Two or three days later, other labels. It goes from 9,000 to 27,000, and then five days later it's compounded to fucking 400,000 streams, something in a day. It's crazy. But we already have identified it. all the labels are offering the money, three and a half million, 4 million, this, that, and the third. He chose to stay with United Masters. Everybody said, well, they can't get you this. They can't do that. Songs gonna be number one at radio. It's not like they have an advantage anymore, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's not even like a problem. It's Mm-hmm. nothmm. if it was like a heavy lift, the artist made a great song. We gotta work it at radio. There's a formula to that money is part of that formula, right? And we can do it. it. Somebody can't do it better than us. Universal can't do it better than us. They don't like for artists to think that, right? They would like the perception of that to be true, but it's not the real marketing is coming out of, you know, the artists themselves and your relationships with Apple and Spotify and other distributors and YouTube, and we have the same relationships they have. So the new artists know that. They don't see, the only thing the record company can really give them that they believe they can get, that they can't get an independent is money. And I hope the Brett Fires deal just shows that we have money too. It's like, [00:22:18] Dan Runcie: How big is that money difference? Because I think that's the one thing that people do. [00:22:21] Steve Stoute: It's getting smaller and smaller as the record companies are losing. They're letting people go. their margins are getting smaller and smaller. They're firing a lot of people. don't know if no one talks about this. this, but they're not running around writing those big ass checks like they used to anymore. They Hell no. no. No, no, no, no, no, no. [00:22:41] Dan Runcie: Because I think people will look at a deal like the one that Drake did last year. Yeah. For instance. And they're, say the Ruter mal is somewhere 300, 400 [00:22:50] Steve Stoute: It was more than that. Much more than that. But that's different. They have Drake's, remember what I told you, they got Drake's masters, right? That's different than an artist starting from Drake releasing the first. song with Trey songs. All right, whatever. When he started his career, like if Drake released a song today that Drake considers an independent music company, at the same rate that he, looks at a major label cuz the major label can't say anything to him today that will make him believe outside of money that they have an advantage. [00:23:25] Dan Runcie: This topic too, reminds me of something similar because we're talking about the record labels and the streaming service as well, who's bringing in money, and there's all this debate right now around pricing for these services. The record labels want those prices higher. The streaming for songs? Oh no, for the monthly subscription that customers pay. [00:23:45] Steve Stoute: Oh, oh, okay. [00:23:46] Dan Runcie: Yeah, yeah. So they want the hire, the streaming services, well, a few of them still want to keep them as low as possible, but we're seeing things trending in that direction. You owning a music distribution service, relying on that streaming revenue as well, where do you take, what's your take right now on pricing on the consumer side and Yeah, [00:24:08] Steve Stoute: A few things there. Number one, the record companies had the opportunity when they held all of the leverage. To control pricing, to control pricing for the customer, as well as the price per stream. All these things were set up at a time when the record companies, you know, got big advances from Apple, you know, got ownership in Spotify, so they were cool with whatever was going on. As they're starting to lose market share now they need to go find growth, and the only way to find growth is go to the streaming services and say, charge more money so we can make more money. But the problem is that if the artist got the lion share the money, rather than the label getting the lion share the money, the current pricing model will work really well. The artists, if they were independent and they were receiving 80% of the money that came from streaming, and it went to each individual artist, they'd be fine with it. They'd be making a lot more money than they're making right now. The independent artists are making a fortune of money. Go ask russ. Go ask Toby. Go ask Brent what he's done for so many years. Why he stays independent, because they've really received the lion share the money. The record companies have bloated overhead, whether it be office space, employees and salaries of their CEOs and shit like that, and whether they're public or or not. In the case of universal, it's public. They need to show growth, and they're losing margin on how much money they're making per album or release, And the only way to find growth, real growth is the diversify of their business, which they haven't been so good at. There's not that many entrepreneurs insider, a record companies. Jimmy Iovine was one. Dr., Jay-Z was another, but there's not that many. You don't see that many. I'm not making this up. So you're talking about CEOs who were fat and happy, now all of a sudden have to innovate and they don't have a person that can make beats by Drake. They don't have a person who's gonna create the next thing. So now they gotta go to apple and Spotify and squeeze more. The problem is their leverage with Apple and Spotify have sort of, gone in the other direction. They don't have as much leverage as they had seven years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago. ago. So that's the landscape. I the artists should get paid more money. That's we built our model to do, make sure the artists get paid more money and have great partnerships with, the platforms. And that's how I see it right now. yeah. So to answer your question on pricing, whether or not Spotify or Apple should charge more, I mean yeah. If they're gonna continue to grow so that you don't wanna price it so that people start canceling subscriptions, right? You gotta price it right so that it keeps growing. Cuz the more they grow, the more the pot of money grows. But before I get to even worrying about what they're charging, I need to worry about the artists are getting the lion share of revenue, and that's what we, stand for United Masses, and that's what we've been able to accomplish today. Okay. [00:27:33] Dan Runcie: And at least for the artists that are part of United Masters, they don't have the rights holder relationships that the signed artists do on the record label. So that side doesn't necessarily affect them as much. I think you definitely addressed that piece of it. I think the other side of it is looking at streaming prices on all the video services and how Netflix and all these other services have definitely expanded beyond their 9 99 price point. And then for you all as a business, knowing that a company like Spotify, which does have lower churn than a lot of those other companies as well, if prices were to increase 10%, that's 10% more revenue, at least for the streaming revenue side of the business. For a company like United Masters given the cut you have [00:28:16] Steve Stoute: Again, yes. and at some point you can raise the price to the point where somebody says, you know what? I'd rather not do that. I'd rather have an not that service. I'd rather listen to it free on YouTube, or I'd rather deal with ads. It costs too much. I don't know what that price is, but there's absolutely a point of diminishing return and setting any price. You gotta just know what that price is. So rather than me sit here and go, yeah, they should raise prices, which I could easily say, cuz it's beneficial to me. I want them to raise prices and continue to grow. Cuz as that pot grows, there's more money to be distributed. If they price it wrong, it hurts us. That's my only point. [00:28:59] Dan Runcie: That's fair. I get that. This topic as well, reminds me of another thing that I wanted to chat with you about. [00:29:07] Steve Stoute: We're talking about, reminds you of something else. That's great. That's how you write, you write like that, you find all these, comparisons, to different business models. in fact, you know, that's why I'm a fan of what you guys do of what you do. but it's funny when you say it, actually, reminds me of [00:29:22] Dan Runcie: That's funny. That's funny. I was actually gonna say, this isn't a random reminding, this is actually something you had said in that episode of the shop. I think it was the last one you did. You were, I think Drusky was on there. A fewer folks were on there. Yeah. You were talking about dollars that were moving from traditional tv Yeah. And going towards creators. Yeah. And how much of an opportunity that is. And I know you, with the business you have with translation, a lot of your work has been focused on doing these traditional TV partnerships, whether it's with a State Farm or some of the other clients you have. I'm curious to hear how this type of transition impacts your work and what opportunities you see and how you may have be thinking about the future on that side. [00:30:07] Steve Stoute: So the media buying companies, people who buy media for brands are seeing and advising that television ratings outside of sports are going in the wronging direction and advising to put that money more into digital channels that are primarily driven by creators. The creators have deep connections with their fans. The creators can create a network effect. So you can hire, you know, 50 creators who who have deep impact in different regions, communities, and you can buy against it. and sort of create marketplace momentum around a movement, a brand, a product, whatever it may be. My question toski is, this thing is shifting in your direction or what are you doing to prepare for it? I said something so long ago on, on my man Swae. I said that that artists are going to become mini media channels. I said this six years ago, mini media channels. If you look at the artists and you look at them like what cable channels were, you watch ESPN, they have an audience, you watch Turner, they have an audience, you watch Discovery, they have an audience. The artists, the influencers are gonna be exactly like those with obviously much smaller audiences, but the relationship between the artists and the audience or the influence in the audience is where the media money is going. ESP N, Turner and Discovery are prepared for that. that. Their organizations are set up for it. They stay on brand so that when the money comes their way, the brand knows, whoever's spending money against it knows exactly what they're getting and the kind of audience that they have. What What are the creators doing to be prepared for that movement of revenue coming to them? How are they set up for that? Because in the beginning it starts to look like, oh shit, this is all found money. But I'm saying, this is not just found money. This is the new industry. [00:32:23] Dan Runcie: Is there anyone that you see that's doing a good job of this right now? Or any creators that are ready for this moment [00:32:29] Steve Stoute: there's so There's so many of them. A lot of YouTube creators are doing it. You know, mr. Beast disguise, I mean, you know, the names. They all, you know, have created, you know, products that create lines around the block. I mean, you know, you don't look at it this way anymore because, she's transcended what you first seen her as. But Kim Kardashian is that she's the ultimate influencer. She's the influencer's influencer, right? Right. And she's built billions of dollars of business as a result of using her culture, her influence. that started with Instagram and social media. So like yeah, we've seen a lot of people do it, right? The musicians are now starting to do it right, because they're starting to realize Rihanna and Fenty. And others are copying or copying or seeing that, look, the streaming business is great and touring is great, but my impact, my movement, because of my digital footprint can allow me the opportunity to sell other higher margin items, like beauty products like lingerie, like footwear. So understanding your influence, whether you're a musician or personality and who your audience is creating opportunities for a lot of money to be made. [00:33:50] Dan Runcie: And how does that shape the type of work that translation will continue to do in the future working with creators? [00:33:58] Steve Stoute: Well, our number one responsibility at translation is to be lockstep with culture and lockstep in real lockstep. So as we help provide solutions for brands, creative, strategic solutions, We understand that what I just said about where this business is going and the influences and their impact that they have, we're very fluent at that. So it doesn't impact us in a way that says, oh, now we have to change our business as a result of this. We just create in these new landscapes, right? Like, it doesn't impact us at all. In fact, it hinders. The more bigger traditional agencies who have not even wrapped their brain around diversity culture, they're still running an old playbook. This new thing, they hope goes away, but we've seen this over and over again, right? It's the dilemma that happens, the innovation dilemma that takes place and whether you do it yourself or you get disrupted by somebody else. if you hold on to what you've done, you'll be disrupted. When we built translation, we built it under the manifesto of translating culture for Fortune 500 companies. And translating always needs to happen. It's why I came up with the name, everything needs to be translated, right? So the fact that tr culture needs to be translated and because it's translated and it changes, you have to be clear and understanding of it. I talk about that all of a sudden, the speed of culture, the speed in which, you know, someone can become an overnight success. Like there's a tape, a footage. You should run it, in this spot and I'll send it to you. Where Lil Nas X, goes on, he eats a piece of pizza January, 2019. He's eating a piece of pizza on Instagram. And He's like, yo, this is Nas X I got 1000 plus followers on spotify. I got 3000 on Instagram, you know, a couple, you know, thousand views on YouTube, but I think Old town Road is gonna be a hit. and I'll see you guys a year from now, literally a year to the day he has on a white fucking mink eating pizza. And he is like, you know, it's little Nas x 30 million on spotify, da da, da. And that's no different than skims disrupting spanks in a year. Like that's no different than other. Everybody is ready for the, that's the speed of culture and it's fast. It'll never be this slow again. Like that's a fact. So being a brand of an agency, a creative company, a influencer or whatever you are, if you are not aware, prepared, built for that speed, you will get left. [00:36:59] Dan Runcie: The other area that's move in just as fast, probably even faster is NIL and everything happening there with [00:37:06] Steve Stoute: This you of NIL? You were gonna say that, that reminds me of NIL deals. Oh shit. How the fuck did he do that? That reminds me of a great piece of pizza. I just had Steve again, NIL deals. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:19] Dan Runcie: And I think we've seen a lot of fast movement there. Yes, we have. You've definitely probably see plenty of opportunities cuz I think the space is very unregulated. There's random things happening. [00:37:32] Steve Stoute: Yeah. And yeah, you should go look at, just so that you properly, as you definitely, know my work and have been, very much appreciative of my contribution. I did a documentary at LeBron James called student athlete that came out five years ago. You should look at that. You should play clips of it. We followed four athletes over a year that were high school, that were college athletes. One of 'em got injured and fucking, like, had to sleep in his car because you know, you are a D one athlete, you get injured, you don't make it to the pros. You don't get any fucking health insurance anymore. They fucking cut you. That's the end of it. Right. So you're playing for this lottery ticket and you don't get shit. And the fact that these student athletes don't get a chance to actually get a great education because they have fucking practice every day or games on Friday or traveling to get to a game all over the place. But the school benefits from all of the advertising dollars. And all of the conference dollars was something that we put a highlight on and it was really, making it and seeing these stories. You felt like this is of modern day slavery. Mm-hmm. So NIL deals the Wild, wild west, the transfer portal as well. So you had NIL deals and the transfer portal happening at the same time. What is this doing? This reminds me of the independent music business, because now these student athletes really now are independent business people. They can change schools with less friction than they could have five years ago, 10 years ago. Forget it. you change schools, you had to sit outta here. You couldn't do this, you couldn't do that. By the time you could play, you know, you lost a step or you weren't the same, or you were too far removed from the game, whatever it may be. So the hindrance of that made you stay at the school and not go through that problem. That was the way they kept you. Well, it's certainly not fair that the football in which you have to stay three years, right? And basketball pay for 90% of all of the other scholarships That the fucking sports program had. And yet these guys don't get any money. It is not right, you know, think about players getting thrown out of bowl games because they got tattoos, free. It's crazy. So I'm all for NIL deals and I'm happy, it's the wild, wild west. And I like the fact that there's a guy or girl on campus make making $2 million a year balling in a fucking Porsche Bentley or investing his or her money, whatever they're doing, helping their family. I'm happy for the fact that they are getting a chance to monetize their impact beyond a scholarship, that is fantastic, but definitely a education that is not the same because they're practicing the amount of time they're practicing and traveling. The way they're traveling, this is the least that they can do is get paid for their services. And the NCAA got away with a lot for a very very long time. You should look at that. Look, when the student athlete, it's a bylaw, right? that actually became a thing and why it was set up that way and what it means and the implications of it. It was a way to hog, tie or build a moat so that these kids would never leave. As college sports grew and the money grew, all of a sudden it became, these assets, right? Became really lucrative. These conferences became very lucrative, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in TV deals. I'm happy for it. In fact, we represent the Big 12 and, shout out to my man, Brett, who now runs the Big 12. He came from running the Brooklyn Nets. He, I worked with him when he moved the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn. Then he went over to run a aspect of Roc Nation and now he runs the Big 12. He's the future of collegiate sports cuz he understands the music industry and the brand building industry. He understands the business of running sports team, the nets, the arena, the Barclays, bringing in talent to fill that arena pricing, dynamic pricing, media deals. He did it all. And now he's taken that combination of skills to Big 12 and he's once NIL deals. In fact, that's his competitive advantage because none of those guys who run all those other conferences, they're all like, shit, we gotta give these NIL deals. The students are gonna do X, Y, Z in this transfer portal. What are we gonna do? Brett's? Like, this is what I've been doing my whole career. I can't wait to set up NIL programs, bring brands in, you know, treat these students athletes like the same way we treated artists in my previous career. it's dope and, it's way, way, overdue. This reminds you of, [00:42:46] Dan Runcie: Didn't remind me of something, but I was gonna ask you, is this an area that you would work more directly in through translation, through the agency, working with the [00:42:54] Steve Stoute: Yeah. I mean, yes. Look, it's not like, again, we represent the Big 12, so our contribution to that, is adjacent to a lot of that kind of stuff, you know, there is an opportunity to set up a. a division that works specifically on NIL deals. I think it's much more, urgent that the CAAs do and the UTAs and the WMEs have that because their brokers of that kind of stuff. Where they have talent and they brands and they put 'em together, we do that for our clients. We don't do that as a industry trade. We don't just like connect random brands with, you know, artists unless we are, or athletes, unless we are doing much more immersive experiences and creative for those brands. But, you know, I'm happy we represent Beats. We did the, Beats deal with Bronny, then we did the commercial with Bronny and his dad with LeBron and like I love that. I love it. Not only for that story, but the fact that again, this 17 year old kid signed a deal with Beats. And we can actually market that and advertise that as, without him losing eligibility or whatever the fuck these guys were coming up with is dope. [00:44:07] Dan Runcie: Right. Especially given that everyone was gonna make money off of his name. So I'm glad he can do it himself. [00:44:12] Steve Stoute: Of course, like, you speak to Jalen Rose about this like when they're at Michigan man, the Fab 5 and these guys, [00:44:18] Dan Runcie: Oh, that was bad. [00:44:19] Steve Stoute: That's terrible man. Selling jerseys with their name on it and these guys. like, everybody's looking at investigating the, what they did and what did Webber do and what he did to try to feed his family. You can't even afford to get your family to come see you play. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. Well of course corruption's gonna be in it. You mean, I can't eat? I have a scholarship though. And my parents can't even come see me play cuz we can't afford it. You don't think that's gonna lead to corruption? What are you crazy? [00:44:47] Dan Runcie: It's this weird juxtaposition where I think either, Webber or Rose talked about this in that documentary [00:44:52] Steve Stoute: It's the coach by the way.Yeah. Gets paid $10 million, in most, towns or cities in America, the highest paid employee of that city, or town is the coach of the football team. Yep. Or the basketball team. They're the highest earning person in the entire city. [00:45:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. They save at the state level too for the Colleges [00:45:12] Steve Stoute: Then they get deals with Nike and the coach makes the player wear Nikes or Reebok or whatever it is, the coach makes that decision. Everyone's making money except the student themselves, but they're getting a scholarship. [00:45:27] Dan Runcie: Right, it's crazy [00:45:28] Steve Stoute: And definitely an education with an asterisk next to it. Isn't that fair? Are you fucking outta your mind? [00:45:35] Dan Runcie: It's crazy. It's crazy. I'm glad this is happening and I'm glad we're seeing this shift. [00:45:41] Steve Stoute: Yo, pull up student athlete. When you do this, I'm you the edit right now. I'm gonna send you the Lil NAS thing and the student athlete thing. Oh yeah. We'll throw it in there. Put it in. That's why we're doing video. video. [00:45:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no. That's why we, no, this will be good. And then we have the clips and everything. Yeah. Shifting gears, last time you were on, you talked about chief technology officers and why artists need to have tech side folks on their platform. Yeah, [00:46:06] Steve Stoute: Yeah, brother. [00:46:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah, How have you seen this develop the past couple years since? [00:46:10] Steve Stoute: I haven't, the artists that obviously have the foundational truth is as technology is becoming much more important in content and video services, every artist needs a chief technology officer. That's the foundational truth. The practical reality is that that's not gonna be the case, which is the opportunity for platforms like ours to be extremely useful in providing tools, intelligence, information that is allows the artist, the influencer to take action in a very user-friendly way to help grow their career. So essentially, we wanna be the Chief Technology Officer as a platform for all of these artists. I believe that to be true. In fact, in building our platform, the remit to my engineers is that, that we have to anticipate what the artist's needs are. And build that for them. We're it for a community of artists. We're not building it to best interface with Apple or Spotify or YouTube. That's one part of it. 80% of it is what do you, I say all the time, man, I'm about to put my name in the system. I'm about to upload my first song. That experience. If I nail this, I'm gonna change the life for me and my mama. I'm gonna become my dreams. I'm gonna be able to quit this bullshit job and really live out what my talents are when I hit this button and upload this song. That's how they feel. to build a technology that's empathetic to that, and then as they continue to grow, make sure that they have the tools and they need information in order to do their thing. That's what I tell each and every engineer that comes into my company. [00:48:17] Dan Runcie: That trajectory makes sense because if you're starting out, you're a dependent, you're not gonna have the resources to hire someone to pay them 1 50, 200 a year, whatever it is to be a CTO on staff. Yeah. How could you leverage the partnerships you have? Maybe if you get to a certain point, you could have someone internally. [00:48:35] Steve Stoute: Of course. Of course, you know drake and, you know Beyonce and Pharrell and they have a version of a chief technology officer, somebody who, their interaction with technology is seamless and smooth and they understand it and they have relationships and, you know, they could speak with the tech leaders and be able to find the value and where the integration and partnerships can best take form. Up until you get to that point, we should be the platform to provide that for you at scale [00:49:08] Dan Runcie: Artists as well. This is also valuable because there's so many new things that are always coming. Obviously I talk about them often in capital. You're evaluating themself for your own business, whether it's a couple years ago, whether or not we should be building something on the blockchain. A couple years after that, should we be involved with Web 3? Should we have NFTs and 2023? AI is the big thing. [00:49:33] Steve Stoute: Can I talk to you about that? [00:49:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, [00:49:35] Steve Stoute: But go ahead, ask the question. I'll get into it. [00:49:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, so I was gonna ask twofold how you look at it for yourself with the businesses and then also the value add and advice you give to artists that are considering this. [00:49:46] Steve Stoute: Yeah, So let's, I take a step back for a second. Whether 20 years ago as technology, you know, sort of more consumer facing technology 30 years ago has been, is taking shape into, is taking shape. The popularity of code or the popularity of, you know, technology outside of just the internet itself. It wasn't immediate frenzy around it. It didn't, like, it was just happening. It wasn't like front and set of the media. And I think part of it is like there weren't that many day traders like Uber drivers are traders and school teachers trade everybody's trading stocks. So now that you've built applications that allow people to day trade and everybody could be a stock analyst themselves, the technology has gotten a lot of media attention and a lot of that media attention I do believe has escalated the fact that it becomes top of mind. But yet the application of that technology may be premature. Agreed. So every with the metaverse, oh my God, everybody are you doing in the Metaverse? We're in the Metaverse. We're in the Metaverse. You in the Metaverse. What is the Metaverse? Is Fortnite the Metaverse? That's not the Metaverse, the Oculus is the Metaverse. No, that's not the Metaverse is gaming in general. The Metaverse. Well, whatever. But before we could even get to that, NFTs come, well fuck the Metaverse. It's the NFTs. Well, the NFT, you got a NFT. You got a What's your character? What's your character? Who you got a character? What's your character? What's your vetas? don't have a character. Let me see your crypto wallet. What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto wallet? What's in your crypto? Okay, now we just went to the Oh shit. Fucking AI. you use chatGPT. How we gonna, it's like, yo, bro, could we just chill out? Stop. and the media writes it and then everybody just runs around. Thinking that they need to be prolific and like force themselves to find the application. cuz they don't wanna be left out like, let these things find, use cases that stick and therefore the products and the applications that come out of it will then take hold. But like for you to just run to crypto wallets and metaverses and ai and the, it's like, it is so overblown. And what I was telling my team about is what happens is like take crypto, like the media is incentivized to write it all the way up, right? write it all way. You gotta get this, you gotta get this, you gotta get this. They write it all the way up and then as soon as the shit melts, they fucking write it all the way down. So they still win because they fucking made everybody feel like it was important. And then, They start shitting on it and everybody has to read that because they wanna know why they're shitting on it. And then while they're shitting on it, they fix the next thing. Metaverse da da da it's like, it's funny to me cuz I could it's obvious actually. It's funny because it's obvious, but yet people sort of work themselves up, like, you know, I deal with CMOs all the time. They're like, you know, what are we gonna do in the metaverse 18 months ago? They don't even fucking bring it up anymore. Right? Why were you bringing it up 18 months ago? Cause you read it in the New York Times because it was on some news channel and you don't even bring it up anymore. [00:53:08] Dan Runcie: The dialogue around this heightened into the fomo. Everyone has the fear of missing out on all this. [00:53:14] Steve Stoute: Not me. I think I don't have any FOMO on shit that's not real. And I'm not saying it's not real, I'm saying until it has practical applications that affect my life or my business really. [00:53:29] Dan Runcie: How do you determine what that is? [00:53:32] Steve Stoute: I don't know, Talent? testing, I don't know, like that kind of thing. [00:53:39] Dan Runcie: It's interesting, right? Because I feel like we could go back to two years ago, and I remember, I think that was around the time that NFTs were having their craze and artists could've been like, oh, well, what if we could release a N F T on United Masters or something like that? Yeah. Or what if we could do this? And it's one of those things, in hindsight, of course the right answer is, yeah, that I don't think we need to do that. [00:54:01] Steve Stoute: Let's stay the you ask anybody who worked with me, I never, ever bought that that bullshit. I'm like, look, until that young kid, that 17 year old kid, 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, los Angeles, is me that they're willing or want to buy an album as an NFT. I am not gonna allow Discord chatter to say that's where my business is doing. [00:54:30] Dan Runcie: I think that's a good example here, because so much of the chatter around this stuff is hyped up by people that are in it. People that were buying NFTs or music related NFTs or things like that were people that were talking about this on the regular, on Discord and Twitter, but it's not the 14 year old [00:54:48] Steve Stoute: guy, you know? and he's my man. But, he owns, Royal. [00:54:51] Dan Runcie: Oh, BLA? [00:54:52] Steve Stoute: BLA, you know, right? You know he put out an album, right. right. You know? Mm-hmm. Oh [00:54:55] Dan Runcie: yeah, I remember that [00:54:56] Steve Stoute: Remember 11 Million in that, right? DJ [00:54:59] Dan Runcie: and then Naz had done something on Royal a couple months later. [00:55:02] Steve Stoute: Right. But you so very smart, very, very smart. Made $11 million on an album. Everybody was like, that's the example. NFTs the whole thing. When you ask people, like regular fans who are fans of DJs that listen to EDM music and you say, you know that album blah da da da, they don't even know what you're talking about. That album that did that was purchased primarily by people that was in that business, the Discord community. It wasn't the general music community that bought it or even was aware of it. It was the people in that community. That's fine, that's fine. That's good for him. It's good for that community. Perfect. But to try to say that that applies to every, the industry at large now, and now the 16 year old kid in Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, whatever, is gonna now want that. That's not the right idea. And you know, it didn't require testing and learning for that. You could just do the work on it, do the math on it. Now there's aspects of the NFT, the blockchain technology, I think is very important, for payments. Yeah. So, I see that application, everything has an application. It's like AI is gonna, is fantastic. NFTs and crypto, and all of its fan the metaverse Fantastic. I just think this accelerated frenzy and FOMO sometimes get you to lose focus on what about it is really important to your business. And what I learned in the frenzy of the NFT marketplace or Web 3 was. The value of blockchain to payments. Payments in the music industry are very difficult because you have many people contributing to a song and, the rights holders need to have something that bound them right on these digital forever. Right. Until they decide to change it. And the blockchain does really good with those agreements in being able to put, you know, 17 people writing one song, whether it be a sample or just original writers, whatever it may be, and allow them to have these digital contracts that make sure everybody gets paid fairly precisely automatically. That part of it I like, I mean, for my, business, I like all of it. Mm-hmm. But specifically, for our business, [00:57:23] Dan Runcie: Does anything about AI spark interest or application in the same way? [00:57:28] Steve Stoute: Well, with AI, I'm trying to figure out, I'd really like it for education. So, you know, if I'm giving you tools, look at Uber, right? And They tell a driver, you know, peak times 4:00 PM this area, the town, the driver know where to go. The driver could be of any education level, but the tools that are provided to that driver, apply to, you know, whether you speak perfect English, you know, your learning English, your education level varies. The simplicity of what they provide you to be a small business is absolutely brilliant. You should look at the backend of Uber. You should see what an Uber driver sees. it'll amaze you. For our artists, I look at them like that. So, where I think AI can be really good is an understanding like when you post during this time, this is when the best time you get results. This is the type of content that works best for you. the, you know, release of songs when you should release them. The timing of it. I think utilizing AI to provide education around building your business can be very helpful for us, because of the fact that it can pull all that information and then provide a very easy way of understanding the best way to move forward based off the intelligence that it gleams. [00:58:47] Dan Runcie: There's so many applications of it, I think both internally for companies like you mentioned, but also how you deal with your stakeholders, how they then deal with their fan bases. It'll also be interesting to see just the bigger picture, what that next big thing is, how people are gonna react to it. A lot of it is accelerated by, How people live in bubbles themselves in a lot of ways. If you're only spending your time on Twitter, on Discord, you're just seeing the frenzy. You think everyone is there with you. Yeah. I remember a year ago I was at a dinner and this was right at the height of web 3. It was a lot of industry professional folks in there, and I remember being the person saying, you're all saying that we're gonna be on web 6 a year from now. There's people, the average person really isn't tapped into this. I don't think we're moving that fast. And a lot of 'em looked at me like I was crazy then. Yeah. And I'm like, it's my job to follow this stuff. I'm not a Luddite here telling you this. This is just the reality. So, [00:59:42] Steve Stoute: Well people, a lot of times people fight, try to solve problems that don't exist. Yeah. Right. Like it's like, you are saying web 6 and all that, we haven't even gotten to, you know, look, we still don't even know what the fuck 5G does yet, right? It's like, let's be really analog about this topic, yeah, we're fixing that, with AT & T but just in general, the regular con general consumer, you ask 'em about 5g, they see it on their thing. They're like, my text didn't go through any faster and my videos are still, you know, it's, Yeah. It's still like cycling. So I thought I had 5g. So sometimes things create more media momentum than the practical consumer experiences and a lot of times, spend a lot of time trying to solve problems that actually don't exist. [01:00:35] Dan Runcie: Agreed on that. Agreed on that. Well, Steve, before we close things out, the first interview we did, we talked about where United Masters was, where the future was, and I believe you told me, [01:00:45] Steve Stoute: but I did pretty good when I look, I haven't seen the interview, since, but I don't know if I did pretty good in my prediction. Do you remember? [01:00:52] Dan Runcie: You said we are in the first inning of this cause I think I asked you, what does the future look like with exits and future? You said we're in the first inning, we're early in this perspective. What inning do you feel like we're at now and what do you see for the future of the business. [01:01:07] Steve Stoute: I believe that we're still in the the first third of the innings. I think we're in inning to bottom of the second, you know, top of the third kind of thing. and the reason why is because now money is back into music. When I first sat with you, There was no vC money in music businesses anymore. They'd fucking ran. They lost all that money with all those other, you know, versions of this idea for reasons that make perfect sense, that the money had up, the money was going to social media and, you know, FinTech and a bunch of the other things like why me? Why music. And in the last five years, whether it be catalog sales or, independent music now being discovered by financial systems, Goldman Sachs and the others investors more, mainstream investors have realized that there's growth there and there's globalization of music and all of the things that bring energy back to the industry and that the record labels don't have this. Choke hold on it like they used to have. And it's not as difficult and to understand, which was another thing that people didn't understand about the music was They made it so difficult. People thought it was like a business that was so hard to figure out and all that other kind of stuff. Cuz over the rights. But because it's now become clear where I used to have to explain it to every single person. They're like, so you're competing with Spotify, like, no, you'd have to explain. it. They understand it now, which is cool. So now money's in, which means more entrepreneurs are gonna come in and build services like ours and other alternative services tools. The fastest growing segment of the music business is independent music. The fastest growing aspect of the music business is global music. Global music, the record companies never dominated because English speaking music was the only thing that really mattered. I mean, you just about it, Bad Bunny headline Coachella, right? How many people don't even know what the fuck he's saying? I mean, if there's 80,000 people there with maybe 65,000, don't know what the fuck he's saying. Yet they're dancing, all this great music coming outta Africa. Mm-hmm. That people are just going crazy over. That never happened. At the rate this has happened. Now, all of that independence rising globalization and music rising and money coming in. Is now you're about to see the acceleration of what can happen as a result of the momentum. It was always headwinds. And now I would say in the last year, it's been tailwinds. It's an exciting time. It's a very exciting time. it's an extremely exciting time. it's no longer in the dark. It's no longer something that, you know, big business. it wasn't paying attention to. Everybody sees it now. and when everybody sees opportunity and money and. Value creation and the fact that you can disrupt this, you know, a hundred billion dollar business of the music business, it can be disrupted because the barriers of entry has completely been removed like every other industry where the barriers of entry has removed, money goes into it, entrepreneurs come into it and new value is created. and I think that's being recognized as we speak here today. So we're in the bottom of the second, top of the third. [01:04:47] Dan Runcie: Nice. Alright, bro, appreciate that. [01:04:49] Steve Stoute: Always, as always, This is good man. All right. Trapital. Let's rock and roll. [01:04:53] Dan Runcie: Yes sir. man. Cool. [01:04:55] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

It’s never been easier for brands to push their message out. But building true connections is  in today’s fragmented landscape. Dr. Marcus Collins has advice for cutting through the noise. His new book, “For The Culture”, is full of insights. Marcus has worked with Beyonce, Apple, Nike and more. He’s the Head of Strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, and a marketing professor at the Michigan Ross School of Business (Go Blue!). Marcus believes people use brands to express who they are. To win now and in the future, the most successful brands will have to double down on identity, not on value proposition. Here’s everything we covered: [3:20] How media fragmentation is affecting community-building  [5:35] Brands have to activate people, not algorithms   [8:45] Ideology creates cultural consumption [10:44] Brand ideology transcends industries [19:18] How non-visible companies can use tangibility to brand build [20:04] Effective market research goes beyond just data [23:57] Great marketing taps into the moment [30:04] Why Marcus wrote this book [31:30] How to reach Marcus Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Marcus Collins, @marctothec This episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fm This episode is also brought to you in collaboration with Primary Wave. James Brown would have turned 90 this month. Let’s revisit his cultural legacy and check out his greatest hits. Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Marcus Collins: The hope for me personally, is to scale my impact like I believe that reasonable, my ideology, my belief, my conviction is that we're put in this world to serve God, and serve each other. That's what I believe, and the way I serve is by helping people realize the best version themselves operate the highest fidelity. So the book is a way to scale my impact. [00:00:21] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:45] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about culture, culture's ability to drive the decisions we make in business, in society and more. And our guest is the one and only Dr. Marcus Collins. He is an award-winning marketer. He's a professor at the Ross School of Businesses, university of Michigan, go blue. And he has done a number of impressive things in his career, working on campaigns like Apple Music, Budweiser, made in America's Festival, Bud Light Platinum, Beyonce and her digital work, especially in the Sasha Fierce era. He's also worked with Matthew Knowles, Steve Stout, and many others in the industry today, and he is the author of a new book that just came out called For the Culture. So in this episode we talked a lot about brands reaching that ideology level, which Marcus describes as that top tier that a brand could reach in terms of how it connects and identifies with people and in communities. So we talk about what that looks like. We also talk about Marcus' goals for this book, how that shapes his viewpoints and some of the challenges that brands can face. With regards to branding and reaching that ideology level, whether certain industries are more or less disposed to being able to get there and more. I give Marcus a ton of credit, him and I had met over a decade ago, back when I was in business school at Michigan as well, and seeing his career path and a lot of the decisions that he was able to make a transition into doing something he truly loves and is one of the best people in the world at what he does, gave me inspiration to not only see that there were plenty of other non-traditional career paths after going to business school, but I think a lot of that also informed the type of work that I now do at Trapital today and how I try to continue myself on the path that makes most sense for me. So really great conversation, always great to have him on a second time on the podcast. So here's my conversation with Marcus. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:41] Dan Runcie: All right. We are joined today by the one and only Dr. Marcus Collins, author of For the Culture, an award-winning marketer and a Ross alum. Go Blue. Welcome back, man. [00:02:51] Marcus Collins: That's right. Thanks man. Thanks for having me, doc. Always a pleasure to be with [00:02:55] Dan Runcie: Likewise and your book. Great job on it. Great job on the release too. You got a bunch of heavy hitters giving support for this. And one of the things that I wanna start with, you've talked about this before, the ideology hierarchy that brands go through and that journey. So for the listeners, can you first explain what that is and then an example of a brand that you think has gotten there and done A good example of that. [00:03:20] Marcus Collins: Yeah, so we think about ideology, it's about the way the brand sees the world, like the point of view that the brand has it's conviction. Some call it as purpose. It's really the driving belief that dictates where the brand goes, what it says, what it does, and with whom. it shows up in the world. And we all think about strong brands as brands that people know. Oh, I know that brand. we're strong. Where a lot of brands that we know that we don't consume from, right? Like Sears, we know that brand Blockbuster, we know that brand, but clearly people weren't showing up. So awareness isn't enough. One step up, we go, well there's, I know that brand and it has good quality, right? Oh, that's awesome. I know the brand has has good quality. It's a stronger brand. But to go one step higher is to know the brand. Strong, good quality, but it's also considered a leader in the space, right? So you've got like a Hulu and a Netflix and a Tubly. Which one is more trusted? Well, definitely ain't Tubly, right? Because they're not considered anywhere close to being a leader in the space. A step up from that is trust and confidence. I trust the brand. Not only do I know it, it has, good products. it's a leader in the category, but I also trust it. I have confidence in it. We think about, the headphones that we know to be the most trusted headphones in the market. We'll say, oh, that's Bose, right? Bose is demonstratively, a leader in the category and the most trusted headphones. Think about audio quality, sonic quality. However, Bose is bested in the market by Beats by Dre. Why is that? Because Beats by Dre operates at a higher level still. It's association and relevance that the brand, it's relevant for someone like me and the association, the imagery I have that's associated to the brand makes it seem cooler, right? Which is why Beats by Dre owned like 48% of the market when they were before AirPods came out, right when it came to the headphone market. But then it's one step higher than that. And the most strongest brands operate at this zenith, this pinnacle of brand strength. And that's ideology. They transcend the value propositions of the product. My razor sharper, my battery last longer, my car goes faster, and they operate at a place of conviction. And this is so strong for brands because people consume those brands, not just cuz of what they are and what they do, but because who these people are. And the brand becomes an extension of my identity. of Who I am, a Patagonia fleece is just as warm as a Columbia fleece, however, where in Patagonia says something about who I am, my identity, that I believe in mitigating our impact on the environment, and that's massively powerful. [00:06:01] Dan Runcie: This is relevant for musicians and artists as well, because I think they have some of those ideological brands too. I've been looking at the trends, especially with vinyl sales. More than half of the people that are buying vinyl don't have players. They're buying them to put them on display to showcase them. It is an extension of them. I want you to think that I am the type of person that listens to Drake, that listens to Tyler the creator. That's that zenith that we're talking about. it [00:06:29] Marcus Collins: It was so cool, and I fully agree with you. A few years ago, Fruit of the Loom, they do partnerships with musical acts like, Metallica, Kiss, Aerosmith, Seal's t-shirts. People got metallic on their, shirts. That's a licensing deal between fruit, the loos, and those musical acts. And a few years back, fruit looms. Were looking at their book of business to see which. brand, likeness which artists l likeness was doing better than the others. So they can re-up those licenses and they found that the Ramones was outperforming Kiss, Metallica, Aerosmith. They're like, what's going on The Ramones little small little band. Then they had like two albums out in the seventies, like, what's happening here? So they asked those fans, they said, you know, you must be a really big fan of the Ramones that you bought this t-shirt. They were like, Nah, I don't even know they're music. But the Ramones mean punk rock, and they want to be seen as punk rock, the meaning associated with the brand, that vessel of meaning that is brand. People use it as an identity mark, not because of what it is, but because of who they are. I mean, the biggest brands that we know, the biggest artists that we know, they all transcend what they do and operate at a level of why they do it. In the words of Simon Sinek, [00:07:43] Dan Runcie: This reminds me of those Iron Maiden t-shirts. You remember that era? Maybe it was like five, seven years ago when everybody was wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts. I don't know if they were really listened to the music, but I think it's that thing as well where they just wanna be seen like the type of person that would identify with that [00:07:58] Marcus Collins: Of course not. Of course not. I mean, people are wearing, Red Bull t-shirts. That was a thing, is a way of signaling something about yourself. NASA t-shirts. Exactly. Like just signaling something about yourself. And really, that's all we're trying to do to try to peacock our way through the world signal who we are in hopes that we can find people who are like ourselves and we find connection because that's what we are, we're social animals by nature. [00:08:21] Dan Runcie: And a lot of this, at least what we talked about so far, are consumer brands. This applies at the enterprise level as well. I think a company like McKinsey aligns perfectly. There is a status that you're able to send both internally within the organization and externally by hiring that firm, spending the seven figures for them to come and work on your project because of what you want to be able to say. [00:08:45] Marcus Collins: To say, McKenzie is our agency, that's who does our strategy work, McKenzie, and we know this from being in business school, that people want McKenzie on their resume. Because of what McKenzie means, what it signifies, you know, there's a sociologist named Pierre Perdue, who talks about this idea of cultural capital that our consumption, the more conspicuous it is, the more we align, value from it. There is embodied cultural capital. That is our skills, our knowledge, what we know, like, you know, if you go to the opera and, you know, the literature, you know, the Odyssey, you know the Homer, you know all that stuff. Then you have a amount of, value, of capital, of cultural capital. And the idea is that if you were an equestrian growing up, that signals that you've come from wealth and your friends who were equestrians growing up signals that they come from wealth and who fr what friends, do you have friends like those and those friends open up doors for you for jobs? VC funding and the alike, right? So that cultural capital that embodied cultural capital turns into financial capital. The same thing goes with objectified cultural capital, the things that we buy, the clothes that we wear, the cars that we drive. This a way of signaling who we are in the world in an effort to meet other people like ourselves, that open up door for financial capital. The same thing goes for institutional cultural capital where I go to school, where I work, what fraternity I joined, whether I was in Jack and Jill, like these things signal who we are in the world that open up more financial economic opportunities for ourselves. So you're right. So it's not just, B2C as we typically think about it. These are all the many ways that we signal who we are in the world, the companies we work for, the schools we went to, the institutions that we frequent. These are all consumption behavior to signal our identity. So that we might find people like ourselves that create more social and financial opportunities for ourselves. [00:10:44] Dan Runcie: Are there certain industries or sectors that hitting that ideological level is extremely difficult or it's almost impossible? I think back to my own career experience. I've had internships at cable companies and airlines, and I think that there's challenges, especially just given the nature of their businesses, how consumers interact with them. But even I think about companies in waste management and areas like that. Companies that could have strong brands and business businesses, but is there a ceiling of how high certain companies and certain industries can go because of the industry dynamics? [00:11:19] Marcus Collins: I think that if a company defines itself by what it does, then yes, there is a ceiling. But if a company defines itself by what it believes, I think the possibilities are endless. Cuz even as you name off those companies, we look at them through the lens of their industry, their category. And they are defined by their category. Oh, you have waste management services. So you are in waste management. You have an airline. So you are in the airline industry. you make microprocessors, so you're the micro processing industry. When you only define yourself by the product services or product goods you bring to the world, then that's the only opportunity you have. But when you elevate beyond that, you say, we believe this. We just so happened to provide waste management services. Imagine if we said this is arbitrarily speaking. Imagine we said that we believe that a clean environment makes for. a better life. Let's just say that. I'm just make that up, right. A clean environment makes for a better life, and that's why we have sanitation services, waste management services. Then we go, well, what else could be better if it were clean? Well, what if we cleaned up the oceans? We're no longer in the waste management business. We are in the cleaning oceans business. Or, well, what if we cleaned up the internet? Mm. What if we went through the internet and found all the smut, all the whatever, the things that aren't as savory. Maybe for kids and we're going to clean the internet up. We're gonna create products to do that. We just so happen to do waste management. We still happen to clean up oceans. We still happen to create software that cleans up the internet. But what we do that because we believe that a clean environment creates for better solutions. Again, I just riff that but the idea is that if you operate at that level, you are not defined by your category and what you do. You're defined by your conviction and why you do it, and that is just Superman powerful. And then you bring in people who see the road the way you do. [00:13:12] Dan Runcie: I think we just gave an entire industry. A market class and a playbook that they can use moving forward. [00:13:19] Marcus Collins: That's right. We should of held onto that one. [00:13:21] Dan Runcie: But you're right, because it also makes me think of insurance, and I know you worked with translation and one of their big accounts has been State Farm, and if you look at the product itself, the features of that product don't necessarily align on the surface of what you would think could be something that is something you would advertise in that way, but we look at the benefits. That's how you can think more broadly. We can get to Chris Paul versus Cliff Paul, and so many of the other memorable campaigns we've seen from State Farm. [00:13:50] Marcus Collins: What's actually quite interesting about that and you're spot on, is that I don't think there's very many industries as commoditized as the insurance industry. They all use the same actuaries. All of them use the exact same actuaries, just some of them are more conservative than others, and they're willing to charge you a premium for their product. And I suppose the way they, you know, get it, the job done at the end of the day is better than others. But according to the research, from when I was working in insurance, people only report their collisions, their calamities 25 to 35% of the time. So 65% of the time, at best, people aren't even reporting the accidents. So the brand, the company never comes in to actually make good on their promise, right? We're just really hanging on there based on what this brand is all about. And State Farm exists because they believe that people should live life more confidently every day to help people live life more confidently every day. This will happen to have 18,000 agents across the country to help people make better decisions. This will happen to have to cover your stuff and help provide financial services, but why they do it? To help people live life more confidently every day. And now you say, okay, so how might we do that? Well, What does that mean for basketball? The NBA, one of their sponsorships? Where is actual statistic for helping people in the n NBA called the assist? Let's go after that. Now you have a creative platform to be a part of this institution that we call the NBA, but also another way of demonstrating why you exist, not what you do. [00:15:26] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think that's applicable for a number of industries here, and we're getting into insights and just how you perceive people. And one of the things that we're talking about is who are the best market researchers. You have this piece in the book, and you've talked about this before, about why comedians are actually some of the best market researchers out there. Could you talk a little bit more about that? [00:15:49] Marcus Collins: Yeah. Comedians are phenomenal because they just observe people. They observe us humans as the social actors that we are, as we navigate the phenomenal world that we live in, and they look at people and go, that's odd. You see what she did? Oh, and he did it too. And they did it. And they did it. Okay. This is a thing, and as they observe people act, they apply theory to describe what they saw, right? They use theory to describe the socially phenomenal world that we live in, and then they say, okay, this is why it's happening. This is the underlying physics of why these people act the way they do, and then they tell it with a slant. They find an interesting way to communicate it such a way that when they get on stage and go, every time we go to the mall, you notice that you do this, we all go, oh my goodness, that's so me. I totally do that. Of course you do, because they have used what we know is to be the best description of human behavior. Theory and applied it to something empirical that happens. The phenomenon that we take on, the chances of us understanding people are far higher when those two things are together and the chances of us saying something that's meaningful to them is far greater when we tell it with a slant. And that's what good marketers do, mark, especially advertisers do. But market research, no one does it better than comedians. Full stop. [00:17:12] Dan Runcie: And this gets at something else. I know you've talked about comedians are able to get at that intimacy level. They're actually interacting with people. They're seeing things, and they're not mistaking that for information. And I think that's one of the challenges. I know you've talked about how we have so much data. There's so many companies that can easily just turn on Facebook ads, turn on Google ads, so you could see the profiles, but that doesn't necessarily give you that deep engagement to be able to understand beyond, and I feel like that's becoming a bit more and more of a challenge. [00:17:44] Marcus Collins: Exactly, that's the paradox. More information, very little intimacy and comedians are, have always been intimate and marketers used to be intimate, but as we get more. Information, more data. We go, oh, I don't need to go spend time with people. I don't need to go talk to people because I have their search history. I have their click history, I have their downloads. I have what they watch and what they listen to that describes who they are. It describes what they do. To get to who they are, we have to get closer. We need greater proximity to understand the underlying physics that govern, why they listen to trap music and why they watch, Succession, and why they consume what they consume, why they're going back into the nineties for fashion inspiration. Why is that happening? We can observe it and say, oh, cool, that's a thing. That's a trend spotting, but you don't know what's going on until you get close to people. And this is what we have to do as marketers. And I would even argue that maybe this is what we need to be doing as a society. Just get a little closer to people and it's easy to look at someone and go, oh, they're crazy. Because they operate by a different meaning system than we do, than different cultural characteristics than we do. But if we understand that the way we see the world is subjective, not objective, we go, oh, well my truth isn't, their truth doesn't mean that they're wrong. It just means it's just a little different. And the closer I get to understanding how these people make, meaning, how they navigate the world. The more connected I probably feel to them, but as a marketer, the more likely I am to interact with them, to engage them, to get them to adopt behavior, which is the core function of our gig. [00:19:18] Dan Runcie: This reminds me of Tyler Perry and what he's done with Tyler Perry Studios too. Of course, we all know the backstory. He was doing his plays. His plays were able to gain great traction. He ended up moving that into movies and his TV shows and everything he's done since. But even through all that success, he still was doing the plays. That was his opportunity to be in front of the actual audiences, see how they reacted. He would make jokes different in the north versus the south versus the Midwest, and that's his way of, although he may not be a traditional comedian, he's still wearing all the hats and he's still providing humor through his content. So I think that's one of the things that doesn't get talked about as much, about why he's been able to build this billion dollar empire. [00:20:05] Marcus Collins: That's right and the best set up comedians, they still go to the Laugh factory. They still go to the hole in the wall to try new bits to sign, try new material. Oh, they laughed at that one, not this one. Okay. That one got in. Okay, cool. They build their set by workshopping it iteratively, right? But marketers, that we hold onto it. We concoct it in the walls of our offices and then we release it to the world, prayerfully, hopefully in Shallah that it's gonna connect with someone. And it's like, well, yeah, there's some randomness that we can't control. Sure, we can't predict everything, but we can certainly increase the likelihood of connecting by just getting closer. And the challenge is that there are perverse incentives that make getting closer a challenge. In that it takes time. It takes effort to build relationships, to talk to people, to see the world through their lenses. Where I've had, I got one quarter to turn my business around, man, whatever's the most efficient. And that's what we rely on. And we wonder why we don't have strong relationships with our consumers because we look at consumers as machines, eat messages and crap cash, as opposed to real life human beings who navigate the world through their cultural lenses. [00:21:18] Dan Runcie: Do you think this got worse since the pandemic? [00:21:21] Marcus Collins: I would say in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. I think that there was a level of elasticity that when the pandemic hit, people were emailing everyone in their database saying, We care about. You we're thinking about you and then someone made that film where it took all the ads from all the marketers and they were saying all the same things. And you go, this is nonsense. And marketers went, oh, they're right. So let's like be a little bit more human. And people got human like, like the murder of George Floyd. People were like, oh, there's a world that exists beyond my own. there are lenses that are translating the world that aren't my own. Let me go see the world through other people's eyes. And for a moment, therefore, a brief moment we were getting in like some humanity in the world. But then once we got back to some normality, some normalcy, we snapped back into place. All right, cool. Let's use the data. Tells us, let's use it, this news to that. I thought that the pandemic was an interesting time because people just became a bit more empathetic, right? We saw companies treat their employees a little bit differently. They're like, hey, gives people some grace. People need time. People need space. like people's needs. And then once we went back to quote unquote normal, assuming we're back to some kinda normality, get back to work, get back in the office, gonna razor sharper. My battery lasts longer, my car goes faster. You aren't human, kind of a sad situation. and you would think that kind of inogen shock to the system will wake us up a little bit more. But unfortunately I think that there's some return to status quo a bit. [00:22:53] Dan Runcie: Part of the challenge seemed like there was so much growth that so many software and tech companies had during the pandemic, given the nature of the services they offered, and because the pandemic and lockdowns limited, then from the in-person interactions, it could be very easy to think, okay, well we don't need to spend the money on those focus groups. We don't need to spend the money on having our leadership team be out in the field to interact with people. Look at what we're able to do in the current ecosystem and we saw that there was just so much growth, especially from March, 2020 up until November, 2021. Things were booming, but then. World started to open back up and I feel like we're starting to see it more. We're seeing more flexibility with what certain companies are doing in terms of their policies, whether they are letting people work from home. But I'm also seeing people wanting more in-person events, more engagement. There is an appetite for this, which I think should hopefully translate to an appetite to getting in-person time and more inpe intimacy with the people you're actually trying to serve. [00:23:57] Marcus Collins: Well, what I think is awesome. Is that the technologies help facilitate ways to get closer, even if you can't in person, right? So, you know, we typically use ethnographic research for, when we're trying to study culture, right? Go into people's cultural contexts, observe them, interact with them, don't be, you know, sort of a tourist, be a part of the community. But then there's netnographic research, which is the same thing in ethnography, just in online spaces. In fact, all of my academic work. All my academic research is typically done on Reddit like I'm observing these communities in their cultural contexts, practice their cultural subscription, and the beautiful part about Reddit, truly. Now, I'm about to just nerd out for a moment here cause we could do that. Dan, is that Reddit has moderators that actually clinging the data for you. The moderators, they remove content that's not within the cultural conventions of the community, and then they'll get rid of people who post things that are outside of the norms of the community. They are cleaning the data for us to observe this community operate and abide by its cultural characteristics for a researcher goodnight. It doesn't get any better than that. And we get to observe these people make meaning through their discourse in an unobtrusive way. And not only that, we get over the hurdle that people have about qualitative research, that the sample size is so small that we can see this in massive, massive, massive, occasions in my dissertation work, I had over 12 million lines of text. I'm watching people engage. And like I'm going through it and looking at how they make meaning, the language they use, the memes that they use, all these different texts that they use in an effort to communicate, to help make meaning, negotiate, construct meaning. That's superman powerful. And if nothing else, this creates great opportunity for us, right? You could do interviews via Zoom. We did some ethnographic work, with folks in China when mainland China wasn't letting anyone in or out, so we couldn't even go be in the field. So we used Zoom. That was helpful, right? The technology is meant to extend our human behaviors, right? It means to extend where we have human limitations. And if we don't take advantage of that, what are we doing really? [00:26:15] Dan Runcie: I love that you mentioned Reddit there because it is a great lens into all of these subreddit. Each of them is a community that provides a reflection on what that broader community may be thinking, what they if, how they evaluate things and how they interact with each other. How do you, from an audience segmentation perspective, how do you look at the conversations that may happen within those communities and. Get an idea of how that may extend to a broader community, knowing that Reddit itself does attract, maybe a more analytical or a deeper type of thought that may be slightly different in terms of the broader subreddit community represents. [00:26:53] Marcus Collins: Sure. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So when we're going out in the field to Stu to study, see, I wanna study cost players. I'm gonna go to Comic-Con where the hardcore cost players are, because these are the people that are abiding by the cultural characteristics of what it means to be a cost player, right? I'm gonna implant myself where they are and engage with them because oftentimes these are people that are like a part that are leading the construction of an a negotiation of meaning among the community. So Reddit, to your point, these are people who are hardcore into it. And maybe there's some bias in the fact that they're more inclined to be there than others, but they're representative of the community. And what we do in all research truly, is that we look at a sample of the market and then we try to generalize the learnings, right? So we, we look at, social phenomenon and try to find generalizability of it. So my research, particularly my dissertation, I looked at how brands of branded products spread within a cultural context. And I chose hip hop because hip hop's tentacles are. I mean, I'm talking to the guy who wrote the book on this, and you know this very well, how widespread hip hop's impact is in like, almost every industry. You could think of jewelry, high fashion, high tech, auto, sneakers, beauty, pharmaceuticals, everything, hip hiphop touches almost every single thing. So I studied, how brands and branded products spread in hiphop culture. Specifically, this community looked at the mechanisms by which they make meaning and they evaluate and legitimate products as they spread, throughout, throughout the community. And then generalized that broadly on how communities make meaning. Now, there'll be nuances that'll be different for rock climbers versus pickle ballers versus runners. But at its core, these are the processes by which things spread. So we try to get at some generalizability, especially when we have a wide swath of data to analyze. [00:28:56] Dan Runcie: Makes sense, and I know we've talked about that dissertation before. it's powerful. I mean, and that's so much of what attracted me to this work as well. We see how hip hop is so pervasive in every corner that it touches. And that's only going to continue even if they may not call it hip hop in the future. We still know where the origins come from, I say that because of just some trends I'm seeing in terms of how certain songs have been categorized and they've been talking about hip hop's decline. But we know what's there when we hear general music themes. This is the origination place. This is where it is, and this culture is now about to celebrate its 50th year in a few months, so it's just great. [00:29:34] Marcus Collins: I mean, which is why Trapital is so important, man. Like it's, you need, cultural producers to preach the gospel and to quantify its impact on commerce in the economy, which is you're doing the good work. [00:29:46] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Appreciate that. So before we close things out, let's talk a bit more about for the culture itself. You've been doing so much work in this space, you already had a great platform. What was the value add for you with this book, putting it out there, what does it do for you moving forward and how is that process? [00:30:04] Marcus Collins: The hope for me personally, is to scale my impact like I believe that reasonable, my ideology, my belief, my conviction is that we're put in this world to serve God, and serve each other. That's what I believe, and the way I serve is by helping people realize the best version themselves operate the highest fidelity. So the book is a way to scale my impact. As opposed to if you can't be in a Michigan classroom and you can't be a client at Widen Kennedy, or you can't be on my team at Widen Kennedy, here's a way to get some of, some of the thought leadership, right? But the other part, it's to helpfully raise, the industry that if we are using different language, A better Rosetta Stone talk about culture that will be better practitioners of culture and bear some responsibility to what we do. So we're not conquesting people's culture to sell more widgets, but we're actually contributing to it, realizing, that when we're using other people's cultural markers, we run the risk of what we know is appropriation. If we do that without understanding the meaning that it's associated to those things. And once we understand that, we go, oh, okay. We're not just gonna pimp their thing out, we're gonna contribute to the community that actually has made this thing a thing. And the hope is that, the residuals from that, the reverberation from that, will make a little dent in the world and would've I would've done my part. if that happens. [00:31:30] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. Love it. Well, for people that are listening along and wanna get a copy of further culture themselves, where can they get it and where can they follow you? [00:31:38] Marcus Collins: the book for the cultures available where all books are sold, particularly Amazon. you could find me at @marctothec, m a r c t o t h e c at all the social places, and marctothec.com/. [00:31:50] Dan Runcie: Love it. Dr. Marcus Collins. Thank you. [00:31:53] Dan Runcie Episode Outro: Thanks for watching Trapital on YouTube. If you want more where that came from, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can get all the latest updates. Or if you wanna hear the latest episodes, go ahead. Subscribe to the Trapital podcast. That's Trapital wherever you get podcasts. And if you wanna stay up to date with the latest insights, go ahead and subscribe to the Trapital newsletter. That's Tapital.co And sign up there. Thanks so much. [00:32:19] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend. Post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how travel continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. While you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

This week, I’m running back an interview with another one of the most popular episodes we ever did with KevOnStage from early 2022.  KevOnStage (Kevin Fredericks) is a comedian, producer, director, and entrepreneur behind KevOnStage studios.   Today's episode talks about how he built an independent brand that really paid off his hard work. He established a solid fan base, had millions of followers on social media, and monetized these platforms by producing his hilarious viral content, a total blast in the mainstream. Listen as we talk about what's going on in his business and his independent success, turning rejection into a massive opportunity to be where he is now. Episode Highlights [01:56] What KevOnStage is currently working on [04:49] His take on more black content going in the mainstream [06:53] KevOnStage’s motto, his marketing strategy, and business goals [11:57] What it’s like to have autonomy in his brand [19:08] His thoughts on artists knowing their audience and dealing with critics [21:30] What's the process from the stuff put out on socials versus onstage [25:24] How does he approach his game using different social platforms [32:38] What’s something beyond just the monetary gain that makes him want to continue to feel inspired to create content [35:13] His opinion on creators who are a one-platform-dominant [38:21] Where does his most lucrative income come from  [41:57] How he diversify his content to own the media and make his brand stand out [45:51] What would he like to be doing more of [51:28] KevOnStage’s new content to watch out for Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guest: KevOnStage Studios This episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fm Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPT Kev: So, sometimes partnering is great, sometimes licensing is great, sometimes selling is great sometimes. A good business person takes the best deal for what they need to get done. (intro) Dan: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I’m your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  Today’s guest is KevOnStage, the comedian, producer, director, and entrepreneur behind KevOnStage Studios. I’ve been following KevOnStage for years now. I think he’s one of the funniest people on the internet so it was so good to have this conversation.  We talked about how he’s built his business and everything that he has done from how he creates content, how he thinks about what platforms he prioritizes, how that then provides insights for what he creates for his longer form content, what gets created from KevOnStage Studios, and, ultimately, the type of opportunities that he can offer for other creators and other entertainers that want to do, in many ways, largely the type of thing that he’s done.  And we talked about where his streaming service sits in this ecosystem of the Netflixes and the Hulus and, in a lot of ways, even though those streaming services may have their black voices tabs, that’s not quite the type of content that is what Kev is making so he’s really finding his niche, doubling down there, and how he uses the insights from that to infer what gets made, that is how many creators have been very successful so so much of that is very relatable.  This is also probably one of the interviews I’ve laughed in the most. He’s hilarious, like I said. This is a great conversation. I really hope you enjoy it. Here’s my chat with KevOnStage. (interview) Dan: All right, we got my guy KevOnStage here. Kev, you are one of the busiest people that I’d seen from 2021. Now we’re next year, man. How you feeling? Fresh year, how is it? Kev: I’m excited, man. We’ve got a lot of new things we’re working on. I’m really excited, man. It’s always fun to be at the beginning of a project, not knowing where it’s going or how far it may go and that’s kind of where I am now. All the things I’m like, “Oh, soon as I get back, soon as I get back, I’m gonna start working on that.” That time is here now so I’m really excited. Dan: That what’s up. Because I feel like for you, you got a few things that are already in motion that have been working well. Your content’s good. You got that machine going. But the Studio, I feel like that’s the really exciting thing that’s been growing. Kev: Listen, man, I’m working on my own flywheel, okay? Westbrook, they got their flywheel, fast IP, that was the best graphic I’ve ever seen that you made.  Dan: Oh, thank you.  Kev: I was like, “This is what I wanna do. I wanna do everything from Instagram videos to selling shows.” So, you know, and they all have their own value so that’s what’s exciting. I have the same amount of joy from making a funny reel like I posted of Angel falling in the challenge show, it was just — I spent 20 minutes on that, really just getting the fall right.  And then I came here, you know, I went on location scout right before I came here to this new show we’re working on and then this podcast, like they’re all exciting for different reasons so I’m trying to enjoy it all.  Dan: Yeah. I think the cool thing with that, you get to wear multiple hats and I know, with this, there’s a number of things that interest you about this, right? Like you enjoy comedy, you have that piece, but I also know that you like to put people on. You wanna use your platform to do that.  So I feel like you being able to wear each of those hats and do those things gives you that opportunity to provide all of that. Kev: Absolutely, man. I think there’s the old saying of the church, “We’re blessed to be a blessing,” and that’s kind of what I wanna do. People have given me opportunities, partnerships with, you know, people have helped lift me, and I just wanna pass along the same thing.  For me, my platform isn’t about me shining alone, you know what I mean? I tell my friends all the time, I want us all in the gated community. One things I used to do at all deaths that I found a lot of joy in was give people their first great reel or first time directing or whatever and I found that I had as much joy doing that as making somebody laugh.  And KevOnStage Studios is really just a more expensive version of that. So, we wanna give people their first time PA-ing or help you get into the wardrobe union or makeup union. It’s hard for black people to get into those places but we need black people in those spaces so that’s kind of what we’re working towards doing.  And then even simple things like our editor, one of our editors likes improv so it’s like, “Hey, you wanna be in an episode?” Things like that are great too because I want people to be able to scratch their own creative itch and that’s kind of what my passion is.  Dan: What I like about KevOnStage Studios is that, sure, I think there’s a lot of attention right now with, “Oh, there’s so much black content out there on your Netflix,” your this and this, but what you’re doing is like you’re saying, that’s true to an extent but it really isn’t true for a lot of the people that I think could have the opportunities to be put on in this era. Kev: Yeah. I was just watching Abbott Elementary this morning where I was shaving and I was just like, man, this show is amazing, and to see somebody like Quinta Brunson who — my first time seeing her was on Instagram. Her “Girl who’s never been on a nice date, a large, he must got — he got money. He could —” like from that to a network sitcom.  And even shows like South Side, which I don’t know their story as much, but the show is amazing, that’s great. But then there’s a lot of creators who have those similar ideas and absolutely no path to HBO, Comedy Central, ABC, Netflix.  Even me, like I’ve pitched to a lot of people and I had a lot of, “Uh-huh, we’ll circle back.” And, you know, that was 2018, ’19, you know, pandemic killed off anything I had going in Hollywood so I want to be that same network for people who can’t get all the way to Hollywood, you know, like here’s your chance to get to, you know, Hollywood adjacent — North Hollywood, if you will.  You’re right over the hill, you just — you know, it’s cheaper in North Hollywood. You know, there’s more taco trucks, you know? And your number 15 minutes of real Hollywood, you know, that’s what KevOnStage Studios, it’s the North Hollywood of Hollywood. We’re right there. We’re right there. But it’s a one-bedroom washer and dryer stacked, you know? Dan: Exactly.  Kev: That’s a leg up from having to go to a laundry mat.  Dan: Yes, that’s true. It’s true. Kev: Stackable’s good, man. I’ll take a stackable. Dan: Right, right. It’s one of those things, right? It’s like location and all that, you can’t pick everything with these things. You can pick two, and, Kev, you’re gonna give them two. Kev: Laundry is a huge plus. Location and a stackable, I’m like, “Bet, let’s do it.”  Dan: Well, I think the good thing with it is that — because I know in past interviews, you’ve talked about, hey, with this model, this is something you wanna provide the opportunity. But from a business perspective, I know that it’s not something that you necessarily need like a ton of subscribers to reach some point or you’re not trying to reach like Netflix scale necessarily, it’s something that can sit beside that.  But with that, I’m sure you also have goals from the business side as well as the impact side with the service. So, what does that look like from a streaming service perspective? Kev: Yeah, that’s a great, great question. It’s like — I heard this example somewhere. They’re like, you know, somebody’s saying you’re not gonna beat Walmart at selling everything at a low price, right? They’re gonna beat you if you’re starting out. What you can beat them at is selling a lot of one thing, right?  Because they sell so many things for a low price, they can’t sell a lot of any one thing so they’re gonna have, you know, maybe one or two black shaving kits, maybe Bevel and maybe one other thing. If you have a black beauty supply store, people are gonna be like, “Well, Walmart doesn’t have what I’m looking, here I can go get some weave, you know, a do rag, I can get Bevel, I can get seven other, I get essential oils, I can get Dixons,” you know? So that’s our motto, like we’re not — Netflix has an $8 billion content budget. They made Squid Game to Red Notice with the Rock — we can’t compete with that, right? But they don’t have black people learning how to play spades. They don’t have that video. They don’t have, you know, the Real Comedians Challenge Show, they don’t have things like that, right?  So we wanna over serve a population that is being served by Hollywood but it’s not the primary focus, you know what I mean? Right now, we’re in an area of, we’re sorry, black people Hollywood, like, man, we really discriminate against you guys for a long time and you guys caught us out on it.  So we’re reaping the benefits of all that, you know, time where we weren’t, you know, getting our just due. But even then, there’s still so many other shows that can’t be made to this audience and that’s kind of what we wanna fill. We wanna make stuff for black people who don’t see themselves on Netflix, you know?  This church show that we’re working on, you know, is for black people who grew up in the church from a point of view of somebody who also grew up in the church and worked in the church, like if you grew up in the church like me, you know, there’s never really been a true church show from people who grew up in there.  There’s people who attended but not people who like worked in ministry, and Netflix might not see the value in making a show like that and that’s where we come in, and we wanna serve that audience. All that content where they can’t get it on Netflix.  And also I’m not even saying you don’t have to have Netflix, like I ain’t gonna lie to you, Dan, I watch my Netflix, I watch Hulu, HBO Max, like as a consumer, there’s stuff that I wanna watch too, like Game of Thrones one through four.  Dan: Yeah, one through four. One through four. Kev: One through four. Insecure, like all those shows. Of course we’re not even here to say “Don’t watch Netflix” and “Boycott Netflix” like I won’t even ask you to do that because I’m not gonna do that. But, you know, sometimes you want a nice steak dinner at a five-star restaurant, sometimes you just want a taco truck, you know, and you can’t get that experience.  When you really want a street taco or the corn man selling elotes, you know, a big steak dinner is not gonna do it. So that’s all we wanna be, man. We just a little taco truck on the street, man, just pull up real quick, get you three little tacos, you know what I’m saying? Some Jarritos and a little elote and go on about your way. You’re not gonna bring your wife here to propose to her. But if you’re in between work, you know, this Kevin taco, that’s KevOnStage Studio, just a little street taco place on the side. Dan: Right. And then with Netflix too, that’s the place that has all the good ratings of the people that know what’s up. Kev: And that’s the thing. You know, somebody gotta tell you about this place. “Hey, man, you gotta go over there. Trust me.” And when you — and that’s kind of how we’re growing, right? We don’t have the marketing budget like Netflix, right? When Netflix came out, yet get three months free, a year free. They had billboards and buses in Times Square. We don’t have that. Our thing is like, “Yo, there’s this funny show on this network called KevOnStage Studios, you gotta check it out.” Or you see a funny clip on TikTok and you wanna see the rest of the video, that’s our marketing right now. Word of mouth, your boy telling you, your girl telling you, or you seeing a clip and you wanna see more. Dan: Right. I think I heard you made the analogy once of the Sally’s Beauty Supply as opposed to, you know, what you may see at the traditional place like a Walmart, right? And I think even with that, it’s like, you know, from a haircare perspective, you know what, yeah, Walmart may have that can of Sportin’ Waves but I may want something a little more serious if you wanna make sure the wave’s spinning, right? You gotta get something a little — Kev: Absolutely. They might just have Sportin’ Waves but they’re not gonna have Murray’s, they’re not gonna have Sulfur8, Just For Me, they might just have one thing. And that’s kind of, yeah, that’s exactly what we wanna do here, man, and we’re having a good time doing it. Dan: That’s great, man. That’s great. I think that, in a lot of ways, like we were saying before, that’s how you identify the elements of your flywheel and where everything sits and how you’re able to foster not just your platform but the other opportunities and what I think it does at the end of the day, it narrows in, okay, what is the KevOnStage brand? What does it stand for? And what type of opportunities you can create from that?  Because I feel like with you specifically, you’ve now kind of hit this mode where I know you mentioned that, you know, you were knocking on the door of many folks in Hollywood or anywhere else and they weren’t necessarily letting you in, but now I feel like you’re kind of at this stage where you are doing well for yourself given everything you’ve built up independently. You’re now able to leverage things. As you mentioned yourself, you got that Maserati, like you’re — like you’re showing from that perspective, right? But you got those things.  I’m curious, though, because I know that — and as you know, definitely you have broken down a lot of the levels of what creators are and the creator economy and all those things, at this stage, you really do have the autonomy if you wanted to, okay, at this stage, would I wanna ever do some type of partnership or deal with one of these bigger distributors that are always trying to offer comedians or creators like yourselves the serious bag,  but I’m curious from your stage right now, like is that something that would still entertain you? Like is that something that you would ever do? Kev: I thought about it and it depends and I’ll tell you why. One of the best parts about being at KevOnStage Studios and not having to answer to a network is not having to answer to a network. If I wanna make a show, if I wanna cast whoever, no name or whatever, I don’t have to have anybody else say yes, you know, or no, right? One thing is, you know, I learned when I shot my first pilot that a network paid for, when they pay for it, what they say goes, right? So in this instance, they were like, “Take this joke out and this joke out and this joke out,” during the notes process and then when we shot it,  they’re like, “This isn’t funny. This is not landing. We don’t think black people are gonna get this” so we took all that stuff out, even though we were fighting for it, at the end of the day, they won because we were small and we didn’t have as much power in the room,  and at the end of the day, they passed on it because they said it wasn’t funny enough. We were like, “Well, you took everything funny out. How could it be funny?” So, you know, when you’re first starting out, the network has all the power because I’m not Denzel or Shonda Rhimes. If I got an opportunity, they’re gonna tell me what it is, and fight as I may, it’s gonna be what they say.  But here, we can make what we want to make and I think that autonomy is very freeing and it allows me to make what I know is good and funny. Like one of the things that I pride myself on is knowing my audience and what they will like and all that stuff.  And, you know, even when I do like brand deals, you know, especially early on, I would have less power and I would have to basically say whatever the brand said and it would come out corny, and I’d be like my audience would hate it and they could smell the fakeness from a mile away.  As I’ve grown. I’ve been like, “Hey, I’m gonna tell you right now that’s not gonna work. Trust me, let me do it this way and it always goes over better.” So, in that instance, I love the autonomy.  However, if we were able to partner with someone, it allows us to make things at a greater scale and provide more opportunities for other people and do things a lot easier. You know, everything we do now, we gotta figure it out, you know, when your mom came home, the kitchen bare, the cupboard’s bare, she’s like, okay, we got two chicken thighs, some corn, you know, some breadcrumbs, make something work. That’s where we’re at, you know what I’m saying?  At the end of the day, you’re like, “Hey, low key, that was kind of fire for what we had,” but you’d also love to just go to the grocery store and get everything you want. So, right now, I’m loving the freedom, but as we grow, I wouldn’t say no to an opportunity to do more and maybe employ more people for certain projects.  I don’t think there’s ever a world where everything I do, I answer to somebody. I always want to be able to create something that I want to create without having to answer to anybody. But, you know, if Warner Brothers said, “Kev, we’re gonna offer 140 million to develop some stuff,” well, yes. Yes, I would — I’ll take a little 140 mil, yeah. Dan: Right, right. And that’s the thing, right? It’s like you have the clear strategy and from an overall perspective, it sounds like, hey, I know that overall deals are the wave, that’s not necessarily what I’m looking for. However, if that number is right, I’m not gonna not have the conversation. We’re going to talk about it Kev: Absolutely — like look what Tyler Perry did, right? And I’ve watched his career and tried to mimic it to the best of my ability, which I haven’t done that well yet. But, you know, still working. But, you know, he leveraged the early Lionsgate deals into his own pocket, like, you know, he partnered with them and they were able to finance those movies and he did X, Y, Z, boom, boom. And then the capital that he got from that, he was able to finance his own shows.  So sometimes, partnering is great sometimes, licensing is great sometimes, selling is great sometimes. A good business person takes the best deal for what they need to get done, right? So I wouldn’t say that, you know, part of our business model is if I can make a show, you know, at our margins and I can license it to you in the first window, I can make a great margin there and now I’ve done two things,  I’ve made the show and I made the show I want and I might, you know, right now, there’s a lot of, you know, places that have more distribution than we do  so if you wanna take it off our hands, we made our money back and you wanna, you know, stream it, then you’ve just introduced a lot more people to KevOnStage Studios and they can come back to the app and watch the other stuff we’ve made.  So that’s definitely part of our plan and that would help us make more shows. So even if we sold that one and they own the rights to it, I wouldn’t cry because we can make eight more shows with what we sold that one for.  So it’s about making the right business, you know, choice at the right time and not being like, “I wanna own it all,” like, I mean, obviously, I wanna own it all but that also comes with its own risks, which means you have to finance it all. And if it sucks, you’ve lost everything, you know? Everything you spent.  So that’s a risk that you don’t want to have to take every time, you know? Sometimes, you wanna take it when it’s near and dear to your heart, but not — every time? You wanna reach into your own pocket every time? You know? Not every time. So, yeah, we’re always keeping our options open to the right partnership whenever that may come. Dan: Yeah, I think that’s the healthy and best way to look at it, because as both of us, people that spent a lot of time on Twitter, we know how big — everyone wants to own everything, right? But until you’re actually in it, you don’t realize how much nuance there is with all of that and I really look at these things as a spectrum, as you do, and I think the best people have a mix of both of these things.  And like you said, I know that, you know, you mentioned Tyler Perry as a model, the same way that you know how to create this content and do it at a way it’s affordable, that’s essentially what he did with like Meet the Browns, right? Boom, let me go sell this to TBS and now we got cable distribution for however many years, you know, he’s been doing that. Kev: Absolutely, and hardly anybody in Hollywood could shoot at the rate he shoots at. So his margins are much lower than a traditional network or even cable. So I mean, you know, Tyler, you see articles, they shot 20 episodes in six days — Dan: Wild. Kev: — nobody would even attempt that, you know? And BET was like, yeah, we’ll take more. We’ll take whatever you got. So, for him, he knows his audience, he knows his business model, he knows it works. Critics don’t stop what he’s doing. And the numbers reflect that he’s doing the right thing. People criticize, come what may, but when them numbers come out, people are watching.  So that’s one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is like, especially if you’re on Twitter a lot, everything sucks, everybody hates everything, there’s nothing good, everybody’s wrong. But at the end of the day, somebody is watching that.  So, you know, we’d be on Twitter trashing everything but somebody likes that show and they’re watching it weekly. So, Tyler’s learned to focus on those people who are enjoying it and tuning out people who don’t enjoy because they’re not — they don’t help his plan and that’s kind of what we’re doing here.  Like we’re not trying to make everything for everybody. We’re trying to make a lot of stuff for the people who want to watch it. And then you grow, the same thing Tyler did, you have your base, you cater to that base, and you grow that base. Dan: Yep.  Kev: And if you do that, I mean, that’s tried and true. Like we were talking about earlier, you don’t need a lot of followers, you don’t need a whole bunch of people. You need people who are really excited and who want to come to your live show and buy a t-shirt, to support your Patreon, and get your app, you know?  There’s so many creators with millions of followers but not a lot of active fans so when they try to go on tour or sell a t-shirt, people are like, “No, man, we don’t — we’re not — you know, post the thing on Instagram I like.”  Dan: Right. Kev: But I wanna do this. No, no, no. So I learned a long time ago, it’s better to have 500 really active fans than 5 million people who kinda like your stuff. Dan: Definitely. And I feel like, with you, you’ve been able to see that in real life, like you are going on tour, you’re seeing these people in person, you’re getting all those reactions too.  And you mentioned earlier about just insights and you being able to see what works and what doesn’t and I wonder, how much of that is based on just the feeling of, “Okay, this piece or this post really took off and then I’m gonna try to incorporate that into something,” or how much of it is also, you know, data driven as well where you’re looking at things, you know, precisely and you’re like, “Okay, like if I’m spending this much time here,” what’s that process like, you know, from the stuff you put out on socials versus what you may do on stage? Kev: That’s a great question. For socials, the one thing I’ve learned about the internet is I don’t know anything about the internet. What goes viral? What works? Man? My best TikTok is me holding my son’s dog and talking about how black people — Dan: Oh, does your dog know if you’re black?  Kev: Does your dog know you’re black? If you’re Mexican, does your dog know you’re Mexican? If you’re white, does your dog know you’re white? That didn’t take a lot of thought. I literally was at home and he was about to get into something, I was like, and then I was like, I wonder if he knows that means stop in black, you know what I mean? And then I wondered if a Mexican family has their own version of that. I just threw that up and it had — it’s got like 2.6 million views on TikTok. That is not the funniest video, it’s not the most relatable, it didn’t even do that well on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. I just throw it up against the wall. I let the internet decide what’s funny or not and I know some things tend to do well more than others.  Any culture messing with black food in a way that’s not traditional, you mess with macaroni and cheese, it’s gonna get a lot of views, right? But, you know, I was making a lot of those food videos and then people were just — like I was getting every food video so I was like, okay, as a creator, even if it does get a lot of views, I don’t wanna be the food guy and I don’t wanna keep making the same video.  So, part of my strategy is I make something that is funny, make something that’s relatable, or make something that I just think is funny. Or if I got nothing of that, then I’ll share another creator who’s funny. There’s been some days where I’m like, “Man, I don’t feel funny today,” and I’ll see somebody else’s video, I’ll be like, well, let me just share their stuff because there’s nothing I can do that’s as funny as this.  So, you know, and I share and tag them and then I’m like, even if I didn’t make something funny, I fulfilled my promise to introduce you to new creators. So that’s kind of my strategy. And I just also am very consistent. Even if I don’t think the video’s great, I still post it because what’s great to me and what’s great to somebody else is very different.  I’ve had a lot of videos that I think they’re hilarious that did absolutely nothing. And a lot of them, like my dog video that I didn’t think nothing of and just threw up, that went viral. Like I made this waffle house video probably four or five years ago, I mean, I was on my way to work, I was like, you know, I saw this article, it said Waffle House is dirty. And I’m just like nobody who eats at Waffle House cares about that.  Dan: Right. Kev: We know. That video went stupid viral. I mean crazy. And I didn’t even — it took less than 5 minutes total. Shoot, edit, post. And I did it — I wouldn’t advise this but I shot the whole thing on the freeway. I was driving to work, I always had my phone in my rearview mirror thing, hit record, said what I had to say, turned it off. When I got out of my car, I edited it, put the article next while I was walking to work. That thing went crazy.  Didn’t think nothing of it. Just threw it up and so many people, that’s how they got introduced to me. So, you know, what do I know? I’ve been doing this 10 years now pretty consistently. So many things went viral that I would have never done. And, you know, that’s the nature of the internet. Dan: Right, it’s like you know that there’s generally a type of content you put out that’s going to work, you put it out there and you just know that something’s gonna hit. It may not always be what you think is gonna hit, but you put it out there, for sure. Kev: Absolutely, man. Let the people decide what’s fun. I mean, I did one video where I was yelling at my son, I use the term loosely, ’cause he had gotten good grades. It did like 7 million views on Twitter, 6, 7 million views, and I was just like, kids, puppies, they’re gonna work every time.  So, you know, I try to exploit my dog while he’s still small. I don’t exploit my children as much. But the dog, he don’t even know how many videos. He does well. He’s earning his keep in the Fredericks household.  Dan: One of the things I also, you know, like about how you approach your game is that you look at each social platform differently and you also know how to move to things, right? Like you know that Twitter is quick. You’re gonna — that’s gonna be the one that’s most current about things.  But I know you’ve also put a lot more time into TikTok and just given, I think we saw the recent stats that TikTok, people spending more time on that now than Google, you know, you gotta be early on a lot of these platforms to rise.  But there’s also things like Clubhouse, for instance, where, you know, I think things rose and then, you know, it dipped and I’m curious, how do you approach that? Like do you know that there’s certain ones where you’re like, “Okay, there’s something here, let me double down here,” like what’s your method for that type of thing? Kev: You have a lot of good questions, man. This is why you — you should do a podcast, maybe a newsletter as well about hip hop and entertainment. What I try to do, one of my, you know, things that I’ve noticed works well is using a platform how that platform was designed to be used.  So Twitter, the best thing is tweeting, like writing, like writing out funny tweets, whether you’re trending, relatable, whatever. I post my videos — the only reason I post my videos on Twitter is because people would rip my videos and post — because videos didn’t do well on Twitter for me for a long time and the only reason I posted on there now is because people would rip my videos and post them and they’d do better on Twitter than I ever would have thought, so I was like, well, nobody’s gonna be getting them if I’m not gonna get them. But as far as TikTok, I always try what’s new incoming. I’ve tried, I mean, Vine. You want to talk about the worst creator ever on Vine? Kevin — I mean, I couldn’t get Vine to work for nothing.  I made a Vine one time, Dan, and I’m lucky you can’t find it. And I was like making toast and I put a piece of bread in the oven and then the Vine cut and I had like half a second left and I was like, “Burnt,” and it was just a piece of burnt bread. And I was like, I don’t — I’m gonna stop doing this. This is literally the worst Vine ever.  I tried Socialcam, Periscope, Clubhouse, spaces, Fleets, Stories, Snapchat. I’ve tried everything. Part of it for me is like, let’s talk about TikTok, for example. TikTok was a new — there were so many fun ways to edit on there, editing was more seamless, they had all those backgrounds. So, as a creator, it was just fresh.  But anytime children are using something, the user base is gonna grow. And I think TikTok used to be Musical.ly and I remember my niece was on Musical.ly a long time ago so my strategy is always dip my toes in the water, see what works, find out how that platform works specifically.  I realized what I learned about TikTok is you gotta be even quicker than other places on TikTok. I’m talking about people are scrolling like almost like this. You got like maybe 6, 7 seconds on Instagram, you got like 2.3 on TikTok and you can buy 3 seconds if you put the caption.  It took me a long time to realize you had to write the caption on the video because people are not looking down to, I believe it’s the left to see what you’re saying so you gotta figure out, stop their system for one second and say when this be like or baby like or whatever. That’s step one and now you might have their attention.  Using whatever trend is popping or whatever music is popping, now that’s step two. Now, you got them for 7, 8 seconds, now you may have a chance. But almost all of these platforms are, “Is it funny? Is it entertaining? Is it educational? Or is it relatable?” If you’re doing one of those of the four, you’ll be better off, but like I was a long winded person so I was on Periscope early and I stayed for a long time and I have so many of the people who are now on the Stage Crew is what we call our group of fans are —  I used to go on Periscope every day while I drove to work. I was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half, I’d be on Periscope for an hour. And I just chopped it up. I’ve seen video ideas. And so many people loved it and they stuck with me for a long time. And another thing I do, I know I’m just rambling, I test out concepts on platforms, right?  So I’ll tweet something and if that tweet does numbers, then I’ll be like, “Bet, I’ll make a video of that.” Like, for example, Uberfacts tweeted, “What’s —” This is a trend maybe last week. Uberfacts tweeted, “What’s a company’s secret you can spill now that you don’t work there anymore?” and I was like, oh, I worked at the bank.  I quote tweeted, “The bank does actually overdraw you on purpose,” like a lot of people used to accuse us of that and we would have to lie but they actually do it on purpose. It had like 26,000 retweets so I’m like, okay, that’s great, that means people are interested. Now let me screenshot that, go to TikTok, and make the talking version of that.  And then I put that video on TikTok, did well. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, did well. And then a couple of days later, I put the video version of a tweet that went viral right back on Twitter with my own tweet and it also went well.  And I’ll do that all the time. If I’m not sure video work, I’ll post it on my stories and I’ll check the engagement. If I get over 50 shares or 100 shares, I’m like, “Oh, I’ll take that off and put it on the main grid.” Sometimes I’ll make a full video. So I’m kinda like seeding out content and seeing what people respond to and then deciding if I wanna make a full video after that.  I have to do that now because I’m doing other projects. I used to just scour the internet for videos all day but because we’re making stuff for the app and stuff, I don’t have as much time so I’m kinda like throwing stuff against the wall, seeing what works, and then making full versions of that.  And that’s kinda how I continue making content consistently while I’m really spending more time creating long-form content, where I’m on set 10, 12 hours a day. I just don’t have the time to be on the internet like I usually was so I’ve gotta like be more strategic about doing it. Dan: That’s your fastlane IP model right there. You just broke it down. Kev: Yeah. Absolutely, man. I’m just always moving in there. And my hope, one day, I wanna be like — do you remember, DC Young Fly early? He used roasting to rise him to fame and then he leveraged that into other stuff. Now he can use social media just to remind you of what he’s doing.  One day, I’ll be able to be like, “Oh, my social media is just to remind you of what’s coming and going.” Or like Kevin Hart, like he’ll still come on every once in a while and remind you he’s hilarious on social media but he doesn’t need it as a vehicle as much as he used to.  That’s my goal, when I can go a week or a month without making something funny, and people still are checking in. But I’m probably a little ways away from that. Dan: What do you think that would look like to get there? Like is there a particular number or do you feel like it’s like a feeling of where you are in your career? Kev: I think — what it really will probably be is when I’m shooting so many things that take up my full day, when I’m shooting 10, 12 hours on set, it’s really hard to make a great internet video that day, because I’m not on the internet because I’m shooting. When I’m on break, I might be scanning but, you know, the lunch on set is 30 minutes, if that, feels like.  By the time you sit down and eat and then you’re back on set for 6 hours. If I was doing that for three months, it’d be tough to make the same amount of content that I’m making. So if I was basically doing those kinds of projects back to back, then I know my social media will suffer in the sense of creating at the pace I usually did.  My only hope is that the monetary benefit from my other projects will, you know, keep me afloat. I mean, obviously, I don’t make crazy money, well, relative, from the actual platform, it’s all about leveraging them to make money off the platform. But, you know, we still get paid from Tik—  I mean, not TikTok, I mean, technically TikTok but I make no money off that. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube so my hope is that I’ve got so many projects that I’m making, either from my own distribution service or for somebody else or a partner or something we’ve sold, that I’m like, “Man, I’m making too many things, I don’t have time to like see what the TikTok trend is.” But, honestly, Dan, I like making videos so much. If I was on my lunch break, scanning through TikTok, I will make a video, because it doesn’t take me that long. My best skill isn’t funny, isn’t being hard working, it’s efficiency. When I’m inspired, I can download, shoot, and post in no time.  And TikTok, God bless them, so happy you can just click download for most videos. Don’t make me go through screen recording and down— that’s too much. You want people to share these anyway, make it easy. So, I can do a whole thing in less than 5 minutes so as long as I got 5 minutes, I’ll probably make something. Dan: Yeah. I feel like that’s what drives it at the end of the day, right? Like there has to be something beyond just the monetary gain to make you wanna continue to feel inspired to create and that’s great that you have that still with the videos.  I mean, I definitely sense that from the joy and passion that you share out of it, but I think for a lot of people that do create content on the internet and then that is the awareness they build to sell elsewhere, they ideally would just love to sell the other thing but the internet feels like this thing that they have to do.  So the fact that you don’t feel that, I mean, I’m sure it’s still exhausting, for sure. But the fact that you don’t feel that naturally, I think, is what helps that longevity. Kev: Absolutely. I think, you know, we all deal with like burnout or not feeling funny or feeling like I’m never gonna come up with any other idea. But I see the value in using these platforms but also leveraging them to your own stuff, like being an early YouTube creator when adpocalypse happened and Logan Paul did that suicide forest thing and everybody’s monetization was punished, that’s the first time I was like, “Oh, snap. I didn’t even have nothing to do with this. I never been to Japan. I would never. Why am I getting punished?” That’s the first time I was like, “I can’t rely on these platforms,” and then when Vine came and went, even though I sucked at Vine, there was a lot of people where they depended on Vine and, luckily, most of the creators who were big leveraged that to Snapchat or Instagram or YouTube but some of them never even got close to the heights that they had on Vine.  And the same thing happened on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. You know, a lot of people are one platform dominant, killing it on TikTok but nowhere else big. I would rather be five platforms doing okay than one platform dominant because now I can go from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, into my own platform, Patreon, which is fantastic. It’s very important to what we do here. If I only had Patreon, I’d be okay.  So, you know, I’ve kind of like made my exit strategy because the Internet changes too quick, you know? One day it’s popping — Clubhouse, man, people were — it was the thing for like 5 months and then everybody — it felt like everybody was just like, “Nah,” like one day, and it’s still there, it still have great stuff going on there, but during the pandemic, man, it launched — or not launched but it popped at a perfect time when everybody was at home.  Dan: Right.  Kev: But then people just got sick of people talking and Facebook came up with their own one and Twitter came up with their own one and then Clubhouse didn’t have, you know, that exclusive thing anymore. I mean, that’s — you talk about a quick pivot.  Dan: Yeah. Kev: You know, Clubhouse, how quickly Twitter jumped on that, that was fast. It took Instagram a long time to copy Snapchat.  Dan: Yeah, and — Kev: It took Twitter, it felt like 2 months before they had — Dan: Yeah, Spaces was quick. Kev: I was like, Jesus, and the thing that Facebook did really well is kind of what Twitter did too. They said, “We’re not gonna beat Snapchat’s market share, and we don’t have to. All we need to do is slow their growth and get somebody who was never gonna go to Snapchat to do what they would have done on Instagram.” My wife is that person. She never went on Snapchat ever. But they took that idea and that, you know, Stories, put it in Instagram, and she was like, “Oh, I’ll do this.” And I was like, “Girl, I’ve been telling you about Snapchat.” She was like, “I’m not downloading no more apps.” And that’s the same thing. So you — that’s why I never wanna be one platform dominant because the winds, they blow and change too quickly and you could be caught in the cold, you know? Like YouTube, man, YouTube decided on a whim, it felt like, family content, if it looks like it’s geared towards kids, you’re not gonna be able to monetize that.  People went from making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to zero. When they decided they didn’t want pranks anymore, people went from making 50 grand, 150 grand a month to like literally zero, I’m not even exag— I know people who had to give up their house in the Hollywood Hills when YouTube was like, “We’re not doing that no more.” And that’s when I was like, “Oh, this is too dangerous to be only on one platform.” You gotta use them all but you also have to have an exit strategy. To me, you know? Everybody doesn’t have to do that but, to me, you gotta have an exit strategy. Dan: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I think the way you structured it makes sense too. I mean, yeah, you mentioned you’re still getting some income from those platforms but the majority is outside of it.  And I’m curious, what do your splits and breakdowns look like from a percentage perspective of, you know, like how much does come from those platforms versus how much comes from your other content or your stand-up or any of the other ticketed type of things? Kev: So, the most lucrative by a mile is live events. Touring, live events is the most lucrative. That’s why when the pandemic happened, I was like, “Oh my God,” because that — before the pandemic, that was foolproof. As long as people wanted to come see you, you will be able to eat forever, and then all of a sudden, no.  So, for me, the most important thing is touring. The second most important thing probably is my Patreon, because that’s a group of people who really believe in what we’re doing here and support me and if I lost my other platforms, they would still be there.  Outside of that, YouTube and Facebook, YouTube was really consistent monetarily. Facebook can be a blow up, for me at least, a blow up and then nothing. You have some months where it’s, you know, 2 grand and some months it could be 10 grand, you know what I mean?  So it’s like, you really can’t build a business off of that, you know, wave of, you know, unpredictability. But for me, I probably say 60 percent is live, 40 percent is — or I’m sorry, 20 percent is Patreon, and the other is like podcasting. Podcasting can be really lucrative with the ad revenue. It’s also platform agnostic. Like I don’t need to be monetized on YouTube because I’m monetized through the ads that are baked into the podcast, you know?  So, for me, those are what I focus on and everything else is gravy. Whatever Instagram pays me, gravy. Whatever Facebook pays me, gravy. Whatever YouTube pays me, gravy. And those are the things I have the least amount of control over anyway so, yeah. Dan: That makes sense, yeah, and I think like that split too, honestly sounds like what it’s like for a lot of artists as well. I mean, so much comes from live performances, more than half for most of them, but that other chunk, you know, whether it’s through their branded partnership or any of their influencer revenue that they may have but also what they get actually selling their music through streaming or the publishing revenue that comes in.  So there’s definitely a ton of similarities there, which is why I like the model of what you all, and what you specifically have done to build it up. But I think the difference though is that I probably see a little bit more creativity on average from some of the more successful independent comedians than maybe some of the more, you know, successful artists. I feel like there’s been more of like a standard path but whether it’s you or some of the others that have, you know, risen up, especially in the past 5 to 7 years, there’s definitely, you know, I think a bit more variety and, you know, especially whether they’re building their own studios or they’re trying to do a few more creative brand partnerships and deals, I’ve always been fascinated with that piece about how comedians and stand-ups are able to monetize and use the internet. Kev: Absolutely, and I think like look at any 85 South, man, like they have — their live event is huge. And then they can just put that exact video on YouTube or their app and they sell merch and even if they did nothing else but live shows and merch, they’d probably be okay, but now, they’re building their own app out. It’s already out there, the Channel 8, and they’re expanding that. So, you know, another smart thing, like let me diversify what we’re doing and own the media aspect of it. But, for me, that’s merch and brand deals like, to me, it’s hard to be good at everything, you know what I mean? So I don’t try to be.  I’m like merch, I’ll focus on the road, if I have a great idea, but it’s not my strong suit, because fashion and design aren’t my strong suits so I’ll just really make stuff for the Stage Crew who loves it. And I’ll focus on live events, video content, and podcasting and I’ll be strong there.  I mean, you got people like Kountry Wayne who like master of Facebook and Instagram, like he knows the amount, you gotta be at least 3 minutes to get really paid. His sketches are 3:01. They’re gonna be over 3. On Instagram, they start really quick so he’s mastered that and he’s also on the road.  So everybody has their skill set and it’s kinda like, to me, basketball players, like LeBron’s the greatest player to me, ever, and he’s good at a lot of different things. Steph is the best shooter ever so he doesn’t have to be a rebounder like LeBron because he’s gonna shoot threes from the logo so you won’t be able to guard him.  And that’s kinda how I think of creators, like very few people are as well rounded as LeBron but you can have a long career being really good at one or two things and that’s fine too. Dan: Yeah. And as long as the platforms that are there are still aligned to like where your skill set is the better. Kev: Yeah. Dan: Because it’s one of those things where Steph also was really good at something that he was able to set a trend with and, you know, just gotten more and more favorite too as the game went on. But it’s like if you’re really good at, you know, like that Charles Oakley, you know, old school right? This next game, you might not have as long of a career is you may have had in ’93. Kev: That’s a fantastic point. Charles Oakley wouldn’t know what to do in this game, like he’s still gonna be big and strong but he’s gonna be guarding Luka or Kevin Durant and they shooting from three, they’re driving around, the game has changed so that’s a good point as well like the game changes so you have to be able to, you know, change with the game. The internet changes.  The same thing with comedy, like what was funny and tweetable 10 years ago isn’t funny or tweetable this year, and I’m not one of those who complains about cancel culture. As a comedian, our job is to know where the line is. Know what society thinks is funny and stay there and not to be like, “Well, this was funny 12 years ago.”  Yeah, The Nutty Professor was hilarious before but it wouldn’t be as funny if it was made now. People would call it fat phobic or whatever. But if you watched it then, it was great, you know what I’m saying? Pepé Le Pew, hilarious as a kid. Now you’re like, “Yo, what’s was he on, man? Where’s the consent? Leave her alone, man. Let her go,” you know? So I think comedy and everything is similar. Everything is changing. Fashion, language, music, all of that stuff. So, you know, as a creator, you have to be aware of that change or you get left behind. Dan: Yeah. And to bring it full circle, what you brought up with Vine is a great example of this. You yourself may not have been the most successful on that platform, like you said, but there are many people who had some of the most popular Vines that were like winning and spread everywhere. And, unfortunately, I just haven’t seen them as much because there’s something about that 6-second storytelling that they did so well with that just didn’t translate as well to where things are right now. Kev: Absolutely. 100 percent. That’s what I was saying, like some people translated but for some people, that was it. They never reached the heights they had on Vine ever again, you know? And some of the same trends on Vine probably would work on TikTok but not exactly.  So, you know, you gotta get in where you fit in and fit for as long as you can. And then, as the world changes, you gotta fit there too. And that’s, to me, the only way to survive. Dan: Definitely. So, for you, just because you are wearing, as we talked about, all these different hats, all these different roles, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, of course, we don’t know where things are going, but in the ideal scenario, what would you like to be doing more of or what would you like to be doing less of? Kev: More of helping other creators create their content. That’s actually one of the things we wanna do at KevOnStage Studios. It’s the hardest part though. Much harder than I realized, you know, to even maybe make somebody else’s show, to even go through the legal process of trying to make it is already expensive.  So I found that that part was a lot harder than I realized. If somebody comes in and is like, “Yeah, whatever deal is fine,” it’s very easy. If somebody is like, “I’ve got these ideas and stuff,” talking to their lawyer, our lawyer, it’s tough. And to do development, you need somebody who can focus on that, you need the resources for legal, you need the production staff to be able to go and make that.  So I would hope that we could grow enough to be making more of stuff for other creators and creating those opportunities. Right now, we’re kind of focusing on building the foundation with the team we have. But in order to do that, we’d have to scale out a little bit so that would be our goal. I would also love to be making independent movies. That’s always been a dream of mine. I just love the experience of movie, either in theaters or at home, I don’t care. I’m not like one of those creators, like, “It’s got to be in a movie or it ain’t real,” like I was poor so we couldn’t go to the actual movies that much so all my dreams and memories are watching them at home.  So I don’t care if you’re watching it on your phone or TV or whatever, but I’d love to be doing those two things, if nothing else. Creating content with others and then creating movies and creating stuff that I would love to create and hopefully distributing it to a lot of people.  The one thing about the KevOnStage Studios app right now, it’s still very small so, you know, to the viewer, that’s fantastic, but the other streamers and distribution sites, they have a lot more access. If I tell you to go watch a show on Netflix, the chances of you having Netflix are very high. Or HBO Max, something like that.  If somebody tells you to go watch something on KevOnStage Studios, the chances of you already having that app are not as high as you having Netflix. So our goal, our hope would be that, “Oh, yeah, man, I’m gonna check that out. I didn’t even know we had that.” But you gotta have the show that breaks through.  Like if you think about Apple TV, as much money as they have, people didn’t really click in by and large until Ted Lasso. Like I watched See, they had a lot of stuff. Nobody cared, by and large, until Ted Lasso.  So even — and they have trillion dollars in cash. People were like, meh, you know what I’m saying? So it’s not just unique to what we’re doing, it’s a lot of places that struggle. Peacock and Quibi. Quibi had all the money in the world, access to every A-list star in the world, people were like meh, so it’s not easy, man. It is not easy.  It’s not even unique to being small. It’s just not an easy business to be in. So I would just hope to still be here, in fact. Low key, to still be able to do this for a living in 5 years, I will be happy with just that. Dan: No, man, I think you will. And I mean, I’m not just saying that as someone that’s been a fan of your content following you for a while. I mean — Kev: Thank you, thank you.  Dan: I really do look at you as one of the success stories when we think about this era of the Internet and what creators were able to do in this phase. I feel like we’ve seen folks in, you know, past eras and eras before that and the Internet has always been so nascent but I think your focus and consistency. Wait, which one? Kev: I really don’t know. Nascent, what’s that? Dan: Oh, in terms of like just being early on a trend and just being, you know, like quick with it. Like I think that, you know, for you, oh, man, lost my train of thought — Kev: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Dan: No, no. Kev: When people use a word that I don’t know, I always ask because then I’ll be like, you know, “That was nascent,” and then people would be like, “What did that mean?” Oh, you know, what it means is early on to the trends and whatnot, you know what I’m saying? So I didn’t mean to get you off track but I was — that’s a good word that I don’t know so I had to ask you real quick. I could have Googled it later but — Dan: Oh, no, no. I appreciate that. I know, people appreciate this too, just from like, you know, the conversation, for sure. No. So, normally, some of these things, editors, I’m like, “No, can you all take that out?” They’re like, “No, we’re leaving this in here,” because — Kev: Leave it in, editor.  Dan: They’ll learn too. But, yeah, man, I mean, like I said, you, the focus that you had with so much of the content that you put out and also just how you continue to enjoy it, I feel like that is the model. And I’m really excited for you and where you continue to grow and the fact that you’re leveraging your platform the way you have to put people on, I mean, that’s the dream.  I mean, I know that, you know, I’m definitely, you know, in the days of it, it could likely feel like a lot of work but, hey, man, you’re doing the work, man. And it’s much appreciated. Kev: Thank you, man. That truly means a lot, Dan. I appreciate you even saying that. And I’m glad that you think, you know, I’ll still be here in 5, 10 years because I hope too, you know? But if not, you know, I own a house in this small town. If you see me living in South Carolina, just figure out that it didn’t work. Dan: Hey, man. Kev: But I’ll still be happy. I’ll still be making videos or doing podcasts or something. Dan: And joy will be there. The joy will be there. For sure. Regardless. But, hey, man, Kev, this was great. I really appreciate you for making the time.  Kev: Thank you, man.  Dan: But before we let you go, anything you wanna plug the audience, let them know some of the content you got coming out with the streaming service? Kev: KevOnStage Studios. man, go to your app store, whether you’re on Apple, Android, Roku, Amazon, go to KevOnStage Studios, download that. Go ahead and subscribe for the year. Don’t worry about what’s on there. Just subscribe for the year. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.  We’ve got a lot of amazing things on there. We got the Real Comedians Challenge Show, which is just knockdown drag out funny. We’ve got What’s Good?! which is a food show with comedians and comedians are more like regular people than chefs so you’re gonna feel like it’s you and your friends going out to eat in a different city.  We got Love On Stage, which is a dating show my wife created and produced. That’s fantastic. You can stream that whole season in there. Just fun stuff like Get Your Black Card Off Layaway shows, Keon’s All Stars, Crafts and Cocktails, just fun stuff, man. Just go on there, check it out. Destination Evrywhr is an amazing travel show that, you know, has a musician who went all the way to Cambodia to make music with Cambodians. We have stuff like that.  I mean, just go over there and check it out, man. Just don’t worry about the monthly fee. Don’t pay monthly. Pay by the year. You get two months free when you pay by the year. Just go ahead, go from here, wherever you’re listening, right to KevOnStage Studios and pay for the year. You won’t regret it. And even if you do, we already have your money. Dan: We’ll make it easy for people too. We’ll put the link in the show notes. Kev: Perfect. Thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it. I’m a big fan of yours. I’ve been watching your podcast and be like, “How does Dan get these guests?” And then you tweeted like I just be asking, I was like That ain’t no secret. That’s just — He’s like you just know somebody or just shoot your shot. I’m like, you had Rick Ross though, man. You had Issa Rae. And you’re like, “Yeah, just ask.” I’m like, “Okay, we’ll see how that works, Dan. I’m gonna just ask too, see what I can get on my podcast.” Dan: I will say, I mean, there’s something a bit more nuanced to that and I was like, you know what, I could have added more because I made it seem like, “Oh, y’all could do it. Why don’t you just DM Rick Ross?” Kev: Yeah. I was like, “Dan, it is not that easy.” It is not that easy and you know that. I just believe all we got to do is DM him and he’ll be like, “Yeah, I’m gonna be on there.” You know it took more than that, Dan. Dan: Oh, man. Well, no. So ’cause I think people probably appreciate this for the folks that do listen. So the Rick Ross one, real quick, so the Rick Ross one, I had had his attorney, Leron Rogers, on the pod. Him and I had had a good conversation and, you know, stayed connected afterward and I saw that Ross was putting out a book and I was like, “Alright, if someone’s put out a book, they’re gonna be on the tour,” and then I was like, “Okay, hey, you know, I know that Rozay is gonna be on the tour, would love to have him, he’s writing about business. This literally is the avenue to do that.” And he was like, “Alright, send me some details, let me see what I can make work,” and then we made it work after that.  Kev: See? Dan: Yeah. Kev: It is more than just DM-ing. It’s timing, it’s relationship, it’s an audience people care about and a podcast that people actually watch and download. So, sorry, guys, it’s not as easy as Dan made it seem. Dan: No, you’re right. If someone has to be, “Oh, hey, how did you get KevOnStage on your pod?” I’d be like, “Oh, I just DM-ed him. Y’all could do it too.” You gotta get all these people flooded. They will be like, “Oh, KevOnStage, can you come to do my thing? Oh, KevOnStage — Kev: Guarantee you it’s not gonna be that easy. ’cause if I don’t follow you, I don’t even really see your DMs. I’m a fan of Dan so I saw his and I already wanted to be on this show so when he asked, I was like, “Finally, my time is now.” Dan: It’s funny, man, because I so remember, it’s like one day on Twitter and, I mean, like I said, I’ve been following you on, you know, all the other platforms. And then, one day, you just quote tweeted something I said and you were like, “Y’all should follow this guy.” And I was just like — Kev: Yes. Dan: Yo, KevOnStage — I was just like, okay, all right, we hear this. Kev: ’Cause you’re really smart, man, and you take stuff that is like out there and you make it so digestible. Like what Westbrook is doing, I’ve been following them but when you made that graphic about the flywheel, it’s like, “This is exactly what they do,” but it makes so much — I sent that to so many of my friends.  I was like, this is what KevOnStage Studios has to become and the way they did The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion, all of the stuff they did with that and then they ran that same thing back for King Richard, genius. And then with Will’s Best Shape of My Life, I watched that, get YouTube to pay for it, boom, use it to actually lose weight and promote your book. Dan: Brilliant. Kev: I said what the heck? I wanted to get the book because of that. Genius level marketing and even somebody as big as Will Smith, everything they do is not behind the paywall. They gotta use YouTube and Instagram just like regular people. So I know I’m on the right track.  And I also met Will Smith, I don’t know if you know that. I don’t like to talk about it.  Dan: Oh, no, you only post a photo, what? Every month or so. Kev: I haven’t posted in a while. I should bring it up again today. Dan: If he wins this Oscar for Best Actor, you gotta be part of that campaign. Kev: He might thank me from the podium. He might be like, “This wouldn’t have worked without KevOnStage’s dad joke to help promote the film. I’m so glad that he did that and that’s why you heard about King Richard,” and I’m gonna be like, “Thanks. You’re welcome, Will. And you’re welcome, world.” Dan: Oh, man. I’m kind of waiting for that moment, that will be dope. Kev: Oh, man, I’ll be so happy for him. I’ll be so happy. And he was great in that, like it was an Oscar-worthy performance so I really do hope he wins. Dan: Yeah, no, definitely. No, he does too. But, hey, man, this was great. I really appreciate you coming on. Kev: Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I appreciate it, man.  (outro) If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That’s how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you’re at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

In the 1990s, Interscope Records played by its own rules. Most new labels started with big stars, but Interscope had a clean slate. Most labels were scared of rap music, but Interscope leaned in. Co-founded by Jimmy Iovine, a producer, and Ted Field, a film producer, people questioned whether they had the chops to make it. The label has had a hand in some of the most memorable music moments like Death Row Records, the rise of Eminem, and the creation of Beats by Dre headphones.  To break down Interscope’s success, I brought back Zack O’Malley Greenberg. His book, “Three Kings,” covered Interscope’s story. Together, we unpack what’s made Interscope such a long-standing player in the music industry. [0:53] The most successful individual label of the past 30 years? [2:40] Key figures in Interscope’s come-up story [6:57] Nontraditional way to build a record label  [11:07] Death Row Records partnership  [16:44] Biggest signing?  [19:14] Best business move? [28:07] Darkhorse business move?  [33:21] Where will Interscope be in 10 years  [36:07] Would Interscope’s 90s approach work today? [43:39] Interscope’s entrepreneurial challenges today  [50:36] Biggest winner in Interscope history? Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Zack O’Malley Greenburg, @zogblog This episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fm Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:27] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about Interscope Records. It has been one of the most influential record labels since it was started in 1990. This record label has been home to Dr. Dre, Eminem, 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Olivia, Rodrigo, and countless other names in between. So we talked about what made Death Row records wanna partner with a company like Interscope and what made Interscope succeed time and time again. So we talk about the business model of being able to sell controversy and why that worked well, especially in the 90s. We also talk about leadership and how important it is to have people at the helm that understand what's needed and how that continued to help Interscope time and time again. We also talk about some of the challenges that Interscope has had and how they're able to navigate that too. And in this episode, very similar to the Cash Money one that we did a couple months ago, Zach and I, that's Zach O'Malley Greenberg, you may know him from his work back when he was at Forbes as the entertainment editor there. And from the books he's written like Three Kings and Empire State of Mind. We talked about a number of things and answered several questions that we talked about in the Cash Money episode as well. What was the biggest signing? What were the best business moves that were made? What was the Dark Horse move? What are the missed opportunities? How did this record label handle transitions? And who is the biggest winner overall from the success of Interscope Records, which is now Interscope Geffen A and M today, one of the umbrella labels under Universal Music Group. This is a really fun episode to do, and we're gonna do more of them. So let us also know if you have any suggestions on other ones you want us to do at the end of the episode, and we'll go from there. Here's our breakdown on Interscope Records. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:13] Dan Runcie: This episode is a breakdown on one of the most storied record labels of the past few decades, Interscope Records and we're back to break it down with my guy, Zach O'Malley Greenberg. Zach, welcome back, man.  [00:02:24] Zack Greenburg: Thanks for having me, as always.  [00:02:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I knew that this was a topic that was near and dear to you, given the work you covered in the spaces. Well, this is one of the more interesting record labels, but following their work for years. And just to just kick things off, this record label starts 1990, right at the beginning of a new wave for music and since it's come out, would you say that this is the most successful record label, individual record label that we've seen in music since then? [00:02:52] Zack Greenburg: I mean, it's certainly hard to think of another one, that's been more reliably at the top, right? I mean, and I think the thing that really sets Interscope apart is it's not like, you know, the label was made off of just one act or two acts or three acts. They just have a, track record of continuing to find, you know, artists that push the envelope, that, you know, break records and that end up at the top of the music scene and, you know, kind of across genres and eras too. So, you know, and really even across, chief executives, which is I think, pretty unusual. So, I think there's some kind of secret sauce in there and, can't wait to dig into it with you. [00:03:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think it. In terms of the longevity, in terms of the phases they've gone through, whether it's dominating in hip hop, dominating in pop, dominating in rock, they've been able to do it across genres across decades. The one record label that I do think could also be worth mentioning in this respect is Republic Records started a few years after 1995, but I think there's a few things there too as well. The consistency and the ability to do consistent deals, win challenging Bit Wars and get some of the top artists. So I do think it would probably have to be one of those two. But from a timeframe perspective, just all of what Interscope was able to do even before things got started at Republic, do give them a edge. If we're talking past 25 years, that's probably another discussion, but past 30, 32 years, I think Interscope is probably there. I think there's also maybe a case to be made for Columbia or a case to be made for Atlantic as well, but I do think that Interscope, especially just with the way that they went about things a little differently, which we'll get into, but I feel like they have a strong advantage there.  [00:04:33] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, particularly when it comes to the sort of entrepreneurial spirit, you know, and we've talked about Cash Money and Def Jam and you know, Rockefeller certainly, hip hop, specific record labels that have been uniquely, entrepreneurial, you know, especially given some of their leadership, but like, I think for a label that, you know, kind of delves into pop so much. And of course Interscope obviously, you know, huge home for hip hop too. But to have that entrepreneurial streak, outside of it, mostly hip hop label. I think that's pretty unusual too in some of the things they've done around beats, which we can get into. you know, j just, you know, being almost, you know, like a venture fund or an incubator as much as a record label in some ways. I think that's another way that Interscope has been, you know, really different from the rest.  [00:05:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. That beats thing, we'll get into that one in a minute. I feel there's so much to dive into there but let's start with the quick backstory. I'm sure a lot of folks already know this, but there are three main figures that were involved with. The beginning of this record label. You have PBIV, you have Ted Fields, and you have John McLay so. Let's first start with Jimmy. So as many of you know, this was someone that was a record producer. It started as that worked with legendary artisan music, whether it was John Lennon, Springsteen, and several others. And with that, he was able to carve out a lane, figure out what works for him. And I know that now the jump from producer to executive may not seem like it's that much, but back in 89 ' 90', there were a lot of question marks around whether or not this record producer guy could run a business, could he be an executive, and make the decisions and call the shots? And there were a lot of things that Jimmy did that may seem conventional, but there were a lot that were seen unconventional. But I do think that him having the partnership with others helped craft Interscope to where it is today. And Ted Fields is one of those first, one of those people where the name comes from. So yeah. Zach, tell us a little bit about Ted and some of his  [00:06:28] Zack Greenburg: work before.  Yeah, I mean, you know, and it was, this was at this point, over 30 years ago, but, you know, I was five years old. But kind of looking back on it now, I mean, it seems to me the way these things go, like Ted Field was kind of the money guy. Jimmy was the industry guy and you know, Ted Field was one of the heirs of the Marshall Field Fortune, he had been involved in film production and like race cars and all kinds of things that heirs to Fortunes are option involved in, which are maybe not as lucrative as Interscope Records turned out to be. but interesting nonetheless, he was a producer on, revenge of the Nerds and some other really interesting films. but yeah. In 1990, he came along, basically thought of Interscope Records as its division of this film company. and he brought on, he teamed up with Jimmy. I think they were actually introduced by the manager of u2. and, David Geffen was sort of involved in negotiations along the way. And, it was like kind of a who's who of the music world, you know, at kind of the cusp of the 1990s there. And so he came in, he brought on John McClain, to run Interscope at first. So John McClain is like one of these people who's incredibly, he might be the most influential person in music who nobody's ever heard of. And, unless you know, you know, John McClain was, critical in Janet Jackson's success. he's also now become the co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate. you know, really since MJ died, along with John Branca, who's sort of the, public face of it, but, you know, John McClain, if you want to like, try to find a picture of John McClain. I mean, this guy is so, under the radar, but he's so deeply in the mix. I don't really know how he manages to avoid the spotlight quite as much as he does. But, you know, obviously contributes a ton, of expertise, and as a true power player behind the scenes in the music business. So, you know, you kind of, you kind of put that dream team together and then you have sort of the ingredients for, you know, the beginning of, what we now know as Interscope records.  [00:08:18] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I'm glad that you brought up Geffen earlier because when this started, a lot of people looked at Geffen as the model for what this could be, but also how Interscope went about things differently. Geffen's whole thing when he had started Geffen Records was who were the established artists that he could go after? Again, whether it was Elton John or a few other folks that they were able to really secure, because at the time, the thought was you wanna have the proven people on your roster because it's so hard to be able to build that from the ground up. So not only is Jimmy and the team already going into this from people that don't traditionally have strong music experience in terms of running a music company, at least in late eighties, early nineties, but you also have them try to do it completely with new artists and going in from a new perspective. And this was part of one of the things that I think helped set them apart because they lead into genres and aspects of genres that other folks avoided. So of course, in the early days of Interscope, they focused more so on rock music. That's what Jimmy was known for. And you had artists, I think their first hit was Ricoh Suave. They had had some stuff with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. So you started to see a little bit of more interesting ways to go about stuff. But then they also had Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. So you got a vibe for the fact that this wasn't just rock music. They were in many ways going after that shock value like what was the thing that was somewhat controversial, but there was the controversial stuff that did sell and was resonating and they were able to take risks that others weren't, and it worked out to their advantage. [00:09:58] Zack Greenburg: Absolutely. And you know, another executive, who deserves mention is Tom Whaley, who came over from, I think it was, he was at Capital and a and r there. And you know, he was the one who had originally signed Tupac, in I think 1991. So that was like way before Tupac was a mainstream success. He was really getting in early, you know, the seed round of Tupac, if you will. and  [00:10:18] Dan Runcie: Digital underground era of Tupac.  [00:10:21] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, whereas maybe Geffen was more of like a series B kind of fund, you know, looking for series B and C, kind of sure things, you know, I think Interscope was really willing to get in there early and Right. They didn't really care if, somebody was controversial. And I think, I think Jimmy, I think that was part of his genius, was being able to tell like, you know, we shouldn't shy away from controversy. And in fact, you know, as, as long as it's. Not crossing certain lines. controversy can actually be good for a record label because it generates publicity and, you know, certainly as Jimmy got deeper and deeper in, you know, into the hip hop world, you know, I think, he followed that, strategy pretty closely.  [00:11:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think this speaks to something that worked effectively in business in the nineties as well. There was almost this monetization of pearl clutching, if that makes sense. What is gonna make people actually be like, oh, did so-and-so just say that? And that's why MTV was able to reach heights in the late eighties and early nineties that VH1 necessarily didn't at the time. And that's why Interscope was able to do things, other labels weren't. And then I think similarly, you even look at gaming back in the day. You look at a company like Sega and the types of games they were willing to release on a council like the SEGA Genesis, they were taking risks that Nintendo didn't wanna take. And I think we actually saw Sony continue to do that. So I feel like there was this ethos of that in the nineties from the get-go, and Interscope was willing to go there where others weren't. [00:11:50] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, hundred percent. And, you know, I think it's, also just interesting to know that I think a lot of people look at the Tupac saga and they think about, you know, there's this whole, and we can get into this later, the whole Suge Knight and bailing him out of jail and all that. But, he was already in the Interscope, family, you know, years before that. So [00:12:06] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:12:07] Zack Greenburg: It all kind of comes together.  [00:12:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, definitely. And I think with that it's time to talk about what are the most important things that does set the stage for this record label. In general, it's the partnership with Death Row records and signing them to the deal that they did. So it's funny because I think that when a lot of people think of hip hop artists signing deals and getting ownership, we often hear about cash money. We often hear about Master P and No Limit, but Death Row was able to do something quite similar and have that type of relationship with Interscope as well. It was a distribution deal, and for as notorious as Suge Knight is for his bully tactics, and that's probably a light way to put it in terms of how he goes about his business. He was very adamant about what they owned and they were able to use a few hundred thousand dollars investment on their end. Largely gotten from some money that, Suge Knight didn't get that he was owed from a vanilla ice steal and that that becomes a start to death row records. And they sat on the chronic for over a year until they found the right company. And the right company ended up being Interscope to partner with. [00:13:14] YT Clip 2: All I remember is that Dre came in, then plays the chronic. I said, who recorded this for you? He said, me. I said, wow. This guy will define Interscope.  [00:13:24] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. and you know, I think that, you know, there's the old story of like, when Jimmy first heard Dre and Snoop together on a track, he's like, these guys are like Mick and Keith just, you know, they're just, just different genre but saw it immediately, right? He saw the, like behind the scenes musical guy, you know? and then the sort of like the forward facing storyteller, the performer. And, he saw formula that worked in rock and that would work in hip hop. And, I think in many ways, You know, Jimmy's genre agnostic, right? It didn't really matter that this was hip hop or that was rock. The point was the formula works and it works in whatever genre you put it forward in. So, at one of my other favorite Jimmy Stories was, I don't remember which song this was, what was it? It was, maybe it was off the chronic or doggy style and that he couldn't get the, radio stations to play it, because it was too obscene or whatever. And so, he just bought like 32nd or 62nd slots, or maybe he bought like, full three minute slots on drive time in LA just terrestrial radio and just played the song and people didn't realize that it was an ad, and they just, they loved the song and they started calling the radio stations requesting it, and that's how they rocketed it to the top. Which, do you remember what song it was? it's, not such, of course, the listeners are gonna be like, oh  [00:14:41] Dan Runcie: someone's gonna come back and ping us about it.  [00:14:44] Zack Greenburg: But I just, I love that story and it's, just like classic Jimmy Iovine, you know, you know, and it works. and I think also, you know, to your earlier point, like monetizing the pearl clutching, the best way to, get somebody to want something is to tell 'em they can't have it, right? I mean, so whoever's mom is like clutching their pearls, but the kid is like, wait a minute, my mom is freaking out and I can't have this record, like, what is this record that I can't have? Even if they didn't know what it was, you know? and I think in a funny way, like that era, you know, the whole parental advisory sticker, I mean, that became like, you know, like almost a badge of honor,  [00:15:18] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah, I was a marketing employee at that point.  [00:15:21] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, exactly. and you see that, know, obviously throughout music, but even, to draw parallels, with basketball, which as we get into talk about, beats by Dre, you know, I think there are a ton of them. But like one of the reasons that, Eric Jordan did so well early on was because they were like finding Jordan for wearing them. And this was a big story, you know, he was kind of like breaking the rules by wearing, cuz it, you know, the sneakers they had to be like white in the nba, white sneakers. We could only have a certain percentage with color on them. And like the Jordans were 50% red or something. And, this was like a big problem and, you know, resulting in fines. But Nike decided to just pay the fines and take the publicity. And I think that sort of attitude is, the one that was, you know, adopted by Jimmy and, you know, by Interscope more broadly throughout.  [00:16:04] Dan Runcie: Yeah, great story. And I think that speaks a lot to both the blessing and to be honest, in some ways the curse of, Jimmy, what Jimmy's great at, and some of Jimmy's challenges as well, because from a leadership perspective and from the risk taken perspective, he was always willing to go there and spend the money to make the things happen, right? Whether it was taking a less lucrative deal to work with Death Row because you're working with Death Row, what you're able to put out, right? Three other first four albums they put out are classics, you have the chronic, you have Doggy Style, you have the above the Rim soundtrack. They just came so strong. And even that moment when they're able to have that cover on vibe, that is just such an infamous cover of, you know, the three main artists and show together. No one else could really do that, and that's why that does stay as strong as it is. But with that, Jimmy also did get a lot of criticism for overspending and not necessarily having as many checks of balances in place. A lot of people felt that, you know Doug Morris, who, this was a little bit later, but Doug Morris, who was leading Universal at the time, pretty much gave him a green light to do a lot of the things he wanted to do. And I remember in the nineties he had side Tom Jones, which was in many ways a bit antithetical to like how he's been running the business so far to spend the money on an act like that. And then even some of the things later on with Apple Music, and I mean, that's a whole nother conversation, but it's the way that the money was spent, worked well when it worked well. But then things don't work out, everyone has, you know, the criticism ready and some, some businesses that can work well, but in other businesses it can be a little bit challenging. [00:17:47] Zack Greenburg: Right. Yeah. absolutely. And, you know, I think as with many businesses though, if you spend a lot of money and you spend it, you know, intelligently or at least you know, in the right direction, maybe you overspend a little bit. If you spend in the right direction, you know, the rewards accrue to you. And, you know, I don't know if I'm getting too ahead of myself here, but. Just while we're on the topic of controversy, you know, just the whole corporate history of Interscope, it had started off as a, or it eventually was a joint venture between, Time Warner and then Field and Iovine. And in 1995, after all this controversy, with some of the lyrics and, you know, Dolores Tucker, you know, and all this T ime Warner divested, sold it's half of the company to field an Ivy for 150 million bucks. And then year later they just turned around and sold that half for 200 million back to Seagram. And, you know, so they made a tidy little $75, 85 million in like a year, you know, after, having their hand force by this controversy. So, it's just kind of funny how that all works out.  [00:18:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought that up. But I think we could get into some of the categories now cuz some of this probably fits there with that too. At least, I'd say the biggest signing here, I think the biggest signing, there's a number of them in Interscopes, 30 plus year history, but I think it has to be this Death Row deal. [00:19:02] Zack Greenburg: I think the death row deal, because it kind of paves the way for everybody else. But, I would say though, if there were a single artist that, you know, sort of, if you had to pick one artist to define Interscope, I'd probably go with Eminem. I mean, just in terms of like the overall, the controversy, the evolution, the sales. I mean, you know, just, nobody can touch Eminem from a sales perspective. you know, certainly when it comes to hip hop, over the past, you know, couple decades and, you know, just, all of the, kind of, the good and the bad and everything that came together. I mean, you know, but that doesn't happen unless you have Death Row. It doesn't happen unless you have Dr. Dre. I mean, you know, if you say like, what artist was most critical to Interscope overall, like on a broader kind of like holistic spectrum, I'd probably go with Dre. but as far as assigning, I don't know. It'd be hard to top that in my book.  [00:19:53] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think Eminem is a good counter there because this is kind of like the cash money conversation we had then, right? Do you say that it's Lil Wayne or do you say it's Drake and it actually is Drake from a pure numbers perspective, but obviously Drake doesn't happen without Lil Wayne and the same thing as here with Dre and Eminem and then everything else there. And Eminem is specifically because I think even if you looked at the 2010s, he's still probably up there in terms of the most commercially successful artist. He's already number one of the two thousands. He was already pretty high up from the nineties just given the work that he did in the late two thousands and his. In 2022, his greatest Hits album was the most popular rap album in the UK. And this is a album that's 17 years old, a greatest hits album. And then you just look at the streaming numbers. I'm pretty sure he has two of the three most streamed songs of the two thousands being Lose Yourself and Till I Collapse, which wasn't even like a big single at the time, but ended up being a staple on workout playlist. So yeah,  [00:20:57] Zack Greenburg: and he has remained relevant in a way. I mean, I think if you walk down the street and you ask the average, you know, 15 year old, they'll know who Eminem is and they might not know who Dr. Dre is.  [00:21:08] Dan Runcie: Which is wild to say, right?  [00:21:10] Zack Greenburg: I know,  [00:21:11] Dan Runcie: Wild. Yeah,  [00:21:12] Zack Greenburg: It's crazy, but I think but I think it 's also true, for better or worse, so,  [00:21:17] Dan Runcie: What's the best business move in, Interscopes done? [00:21:20] Zack Greenburg: I think it might be cheating a little bit because it was part Interscope and it was also part Universal more broadly. but I would go with beats, right? Just, you know, by way of background for those who don't know the full story, you know, uh, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre founded Beats in, gosh, what was it, 2008? Something like that.  [00:21:36] Dan Runcie: Yep, 08'  [00:21:37] Zack Greenburg: But like from the very beginning, you know, the story goes that they're like walking down the beach in Malibu and, Dre has some kind of sneaker deal on the table and he says, you know, Jimmy, should I take this sneaker deal? And Jimmy goes, you know, like, F sneakers, let's sell speakers. And so that's how Beats was born. Is that exactly how it went down, you know, we'll never know, but it's a great story. and You know, to kind of tie it back to what we were talking about earlier with Air Jordan, they really did follow the Air Jordan Playbook in a lot of ways. And, when I wrote my book Three Kings, which was about Dre, Diddy and Jay-Z, the Dre section really focused a lot about, you know, beats and sort of how Dre set up this business and everything with Jimmy. And, you know, I actually went to the former CEO of Best Buy and I said, how did you sort of like, get kids to pay 200 bucks for a pair of headphones when like, they had been paying 200 bucks for sneakers before? And he said, well, we very consciously told our salespeople, when somebody walks in, you've gotta tell them like, you know, you're competing with Jordan not Bose, you know, you're gonna tell that kid like you know, this headphones set is like, more interesting for your wardrobe than that pair of sneakers or, you know, like that's how you're gonna really kind of win and create a category, not just sort of become the, best player in an old category. And, I think that was like the brilliant thing that they did. But the way that they got it to happen was they got full buy-in from Interscope and from the parent company, universal. And actually Universal invested a pretty big chunk of money into Beats. so that, you know, I think gosh, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think when Apple finally bought them out, in 2014, I think Jimmy and Dre had 25 to 30% each. I think Universal had something like 20%. LeBron had a little bit and, will I am, but, you know, the fact that Universal was bought in, the Interscope was bought in, and that Jimmy was able to get them to put, beats headphones in like every single, I don't remember if it was Interscope video or all universal videos. I think it might've just been Interscope.  [00:23:33] Dan Runcie: Yeah, they had 'em in Ineterscope cuz like they had 'em in like Gaga videos and like she would wear them and stuff.  [00:23:39] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And it's like, it's brilliant. Like what a brilliant move. So, you know, off of the two, that, whatever they put into it, intermediate, a lot of that was free, right? They just put in, you know, their own free product placement. They have to do anything and they help build this, you know, build beats into this $3 billion company. and so, you know, I, I don't know how the pie sort of divided, but it ended up being, you know, worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, to the sort of universal Interscope family. And then, you know, also, you know, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for Jimmy and Dre. So, there are a lot of great signings. I'm sure they made a ton of money off of Eminem and all these other artists, but like, it's really hard to top that one. And, they just really knew how to do it. They really knew how to, I mean, Jimmy, you know, yeah. Again, it's a perfect partnership. Dre is this perfectionist artist and Jimmy is the market critter. And I remember, man, it must have been like 2010 or 2011, I got invited to this like launch of some new Beats thing, for New York media only. And, you know, there were like 30 people there and it was Jimmy and Dre and they were kind of like standing around in this, big conference room. And, you know, Jimmy was just like talking and yacking it up and telling stories and he told the story about the walking down the beach and, you know, sneakers or speakers and Dre's just kind of nodding and, you know, chiming in occasionally, but like, that was their deal. you know, Jimmy, Jimmy was the talker and Andre was the, you know, the, the quiet genius artist. and that was a pretty potent formula.  [00:25:10] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that was my answer too. Beats has to be the best deal. All the reasons you mentioned as well. They also saw a huge opportunity with speakers as well because at this point, the predominant way that so many people were listening to music were those cheap white iPhone headphones or the iPod headphones, I should say, at the time that people were listening to. And I remember Jimmy was adamant about how poor the sound quality was coming out of them, especially given how much focus there was in the nineties around surround sound and both speakers and all this stuff. And sound shifted to these very cheap plastic headphones that just came for free in the iPod, cases. So them putting a bit more money into the technology there. Granted, there were other companies that did come through and really expand further, and that's how we're able to have products like the AirPod Pro Maxes, which are now several hundred dollars more than beets ever were because beets was considered to be expensive at that point. And now people will buy those like it's nothing the same way that people will buy Yeezys. Like it's nothing. So that other point about category creation, not just building within an existing area was key there. [00:26:20] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And I think it's also worth noting, you know, Jimmy clearly looked up to Steve Jobs a lot and, you know, took cues from Steve Jobs creating the iPod, right? I mean, that was a very, like, he created the iPod. It was a music thing that helped basically revive apple and, and get it on the track that it is today. And you know, there, I don't think there's an iPhone if there's no iPod, but, you know, how did they get the iPod to be so sexy? It was like, It was those YouTube U2 commercials with the like, hello, hello to place golf to go, you know, and everybody was dancing and, and the crappy white, you know, earbuds with the, you know, chords and everything. you know, that was like, that was a creation of a category. And you know, I think that Jimmy looked at that and he thought, gosh, you know, I could do something like that. And I think he always thought it would be a great fit for Apple but Steve Jobs, you know, while he was alive, I think he kind of thought he could do it all himself, and he didn't really want to be involved in, you know, in that side of the business. So I think it's why, it wasn't until after Steve was gone that, you know, Apple came in and, and bought beats. But yeah, I remember reporting on that deal when it happened and happened at the worst. I was like, I had just gotten on a flight to like go to Italy for vacation with my wife. and I woke up at 7:00 AM and we landed or whatever, and I had like 70 texts and it, you know, it was like be, while I was over the Atlantic Ocean Beats, had gotten sold to Apple. And that, video came out with Dre saying how he was, you know, the new king of the Forbes list. And,  [00:27:54] YT Clip 1: The Forbes list just changed. They need, Hey, it came out like two weeks ago. They need to update the Forbes list, shit just changed in a big what? Oh my understand that. Oh my. The first billionaire in hip hop. Right here from the motherfucking West Coast. Believe it. Oh.  [00:28:11] Zack Greenburg: and so I just said to my wife, I was like, honey, we're gonna have to hang out in this airport for a little while before we started our vacation. I was like, you know, trying to put together a story and figure out what happened. but I think that one of the things that people talked about, you know, and at the time everybody's like, that's a crazy amount of money, you know how, you know how like Apple never spends money like this, you know, what's the deal? But a lot of the scuttlebutt was that they kind of like viewed Jimmy and Dre as, you know, maybe not like a replacement Steve Jobs, but almost like a piece of the Steve Jobs Voltron that they were gonna try to recreate, you know, like Tim Cook would, you know, the, would be the brain and the like, Dre and Jimmy would be the heart and somebody else would be the, I don't know, like something like that. They would piece it back together and get these little aspects of Steve and that they thought that Jimmy and Dre could really help out on the marketing side of it. and, you know, I don't know, I know that they had kind of like, there was a period of a few years where they were getting paid to hang around and, do stuff. And, you know, they did some, I think they did some more commercials, promotion, that kind of thing. But I never got the sense that they really were like, all right, you know, apple for life. And I think they kind of just, the thing ran its course, and, you know, they, took the last bit of their cash and off they went to do the next thing but it was interesting at least. that a lot of people really thought that that was kind of like part of the reason why, the deal was for such a big number, you know, that it was almost like an acquihire type of situation.  [00:29:36] Dan Runcie: Right, and the other big piece of it was the streaming service that they had created at the time. And Apple wanted to get into streaming. They didn't have a streaming service. They were starting to develop one. So Beats music eventually became Apple Music, and then that's how Jimmy became so integral with  [00:29:52] Zack Greenburg: And, I think even by that point, beats already had some really interesting people, I think like t Trenton Resner and so forth who were like deeply involved with it. And I think, you know, part of that was appealing to Apple too. that they felt that, you know, not just that the product existed, but that it, you know, that, the people existed who could kind of like grow it within Apple and, you know, eventually turn it into, into, iTunes like, you know, Apple Music and so forth. [00:30:17] Dan Runcie: Right, which speaks to that partnership in Jimmy's connections, right? He had been working with trend since the nine Inch Nails days. So yeah, all comes full circle. what do you think is the dark horse move or the dark horse thing that Interscope has that doesn't get talked about as much? So mine for this, I actually think it's the longevity that they've had with leadership there because I think that other record labels, this gets talked about a fair amount, but, and it's true for auto scope, I feel like it just doesn't get talked about in that same way. So since 1990, there's been two people that have been the head of it. So you had. Jimmy from what, 89 or 90, the founding until 2014, and then John Janick takes over and he's been there for almost a decade. And then if not more, if you just consider, you know, I think the total time working in the organization. So that's like you think about other organizations too, whether. You look at a team like the Pittsburgh Steelers, there've been two head coaches there since the early nineties. You look at the Green Bay Packers, there's been two quarterbacks that they've had as starters since the early nineties, and those teams have been consistently competitive and you rarely see them getting the first round or the number one draft pick. I think like Mike Tomlin hasn't had a losing season, and in some ways I kind of think about Interscope in that way. Yeah, sure. Every record label's had ups and downs, but these teams that have consistency, especially in an industry like music where there's so much turnover, so many of these other labels that are their competitors can be revolving doors in this way, which can lead to a lot of challenges for people to really be able to execute a strategy. This is one thing that I think has helped their longevity quite a bit. [00:32:01] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I would say for my dark course, I would say John Janick, specifically, and I think people don't really realize, you know, just like how successful he's been cuz everybody talks about Jimmy. But, you know, first of all, at this point John's been there, I mean, he's been running the show for almost 10 years, which is nearly as long as Jimmy was. And, you know, who knows how much of the time before, Jimmy left in 2014, John was actually really, you know, running things on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, the, just like so many times you see a, visionary founder like Jimmy, leave a company and then, you know, the thing just kind of like Peters out, but, you know, I mean, under John Janick, you know, look at, you know, like Billy Eilish for example. I mean, I think Kendrick Lamar was also under his watch, probably Machine Gun kelly must have been under his watch too.  [00:32:51] Dan Runcie: Yep. And then even Olivia, Rodrigo more recently.  [00:32:54] Zack Greenburg: I mean, what a huge, you know, like, so that's definitely like on the level of, you know, of the biggest acts that Jimmy was able to bring in. And you know, it's like, you know, even with some of them it was really more Dre than it was Jimmy. So I think that's, you know, yeah, I think John deserves a lot of credit too. you know, and we haven't talked about Lady Gaga, so she's not exactly a dark horse. but, you know, lady Gaga is somebody who came in under Jimmy, but like, jimmy should not get credit for Lady Gaga because Lady gaga was kinda like languishing, you know  [00:33:23] Dan Runcie: He was on the bench chilling and then like it was like the Akon's, the one that's like, Hey, what about her?  What about  [00:33:30] Zack Greenburg: And I remember I interviewed him, for Forbes. This was back in, you know, oh nine or 2010 or something like that. And, and I was like, so tell me the Lady Gaga story. And he said, basically I heard her stuff. And I was like, this is amazing. And I called her up, or I called, I think you called maybe Troy Carter, who was managing her at the time and said, you know, I wanna assign you, to my Interscope imprint. And she's like, I'm already on Interscope. So, so they just kind of like moved her around, within Interscope and, you know, they were able to, you know, that first song Just Dance. a lot of people forget that was like, when that came out. Akon was much bigger than Lady Gaga and, you know, that was at the height of Akon's fame. He's not out there as much now, but he is out, you know, he's all over the world making probably even more money than he was, back then. But, you know, yeah. He was hosting or appearing on SNL with Lonely Island and all those guys and, you know, he's kind of like showing up in the back of just dance, you know? Oh, yeah, you know, doing his Akon thing and, you know, and kind of really helped get her off the ground you know, and then just kind of like, pieced out and Lady Gaga became this incrediblesuperstar. So, you know, I think that's, certainly some serendipity for Interscope there, but, yeah, I wouldn't give Jimmy full credit for that one.  [00:34:45] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely not Interscope, collectively. Sure they had her on the roster, but yeah, that one has to go to Akon on that one by extension, who himself, you know, clearly worked with Interscope and then just given, cuz we didn't even mention him himself, just that whole run he had from like oh four to what, 08', maybe 2010 if you wanna go a little bit longer. He was everywhere.  [00:35:05] Zack Greenburg: yeah, yeah.  [00:35:06] Dan Runcie: So of course we talked a lot about consistency. We talked a lot about Janet and the role that he's been able to do there, and I think consistency does naturally lead itself going further. So let's flash forward 10 years, let's go to 2030, 2033. Do we still think that Interscope will be at the level that it is now, where if you look at the market share numbers, it's roughly alternating, right? Around 10% of recorded music may be a little bit less, but I feel like it's like them Republic and then Columbia alternating to some extent. And it all kind of depends on who releases when but do you think that changes? Do you think they're more likely to stay there? Or what do you think 10 years from now  [00:35:46] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I think they're gonna stay, I mean, it's not like, one of these situations where their top artists are leaving or, you know, you're really too concerned about it, or they're kind of in the wrong genre mix. I mean, they're really heavy in hip hop. you know, they have some of the biggest stars out right now. I mean, we already talked about Olivia Rodrigo, Kendrick. Billy Eilish obviously is enormous Machine Gun Kelly, but you know, they have Black Pink. That's huge. Like, that could be a big place for growth  [00:36:11] Dan Runcie: You got SZA through the TDE deal, right?  [00:36:13] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. yeah. I mean, that's a great point, you know, hard to find anybody, who's having like a bigger moment that says it right now, so, You know, there's a lot. let's say that to go back to the sports analogy, it's not like this is a team of like, you know, 38 year olds who are nearing the end, you know, this is, like a win now team, with plenty of talent in the pipeline. and they've proven that they can keep working the farm system or something to continue the sports metaphor. But, and you know, I mean, John himself is not an old guy. I mean, John is,  [00:36:40] Dan Runcie: Mid Forties?  [00:36:41] Zack Greenburg: You know, I I forget old he is. Exactly. Yeah, you're talking, you know, where are they gonna be in 2030? I mean, you know, he'll be like in his early fifties and, still I think doing what he's doing, and doing it really well. So, you know. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't really see them fading. And if anything, you know, all it takes is like, You know, like another Monster Billy Eilish album in a given year. you know, and they start to gain even a little more market share. So I think they're in a pretty darn good place.  [00:37:09] Dan Runcie: And it's arguably one of the best jobs in the recorded music industry because of the amount of leeway that I think Janet and by extension, the Interscope Geffen a and m umbrella is given relative to a lot of the other labels that are either under Universal or even others under the majors in terms of the decision making, the things that you could do, and when you have that much control based on his relationship with Lucian compared to others, it does make a huge difference.  [00:37:37] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. And you know, I think another, another guy who's kind of in the background, who's been in the background, you know, for a really long time there is Steve Berman. He's another executive, who doesn't get you know, like a ton of limelight, but, you know, is kind of like quietly, like, like the cons. He's been kind of the cons area type over the years. and, you know, I think that might be part of the, you know, continuation, the connective tissue between Iovine, and, john Jank as well. [00:38:02] Dan Runcie: Right. Good point, especially just given how important lawyers and they are in terms of the influence direction of this industry. Another thing that I think is interesting, just thinking about the future, is also looking at the past of Interscope and how this record label did start and rise because of this controversy, because of the pro clutching business model. Do you think that could work today? Because I have my skepticism, but what are your thoughts? [00:38:31] Zack Greenburg: I think it depends, you know, what sort of pearl clutching is about, right? I think, know, in, in many ways the world is a nicer place than it was in the nineties. Like, you know, things were kind of a little rough and tumble in the nineties and it wasn't as sensitive a time as it is now. you know, I think, I think in general it's, good that, you know, we're like a little nicer, a little more sensitive, but, you know, in other ways, you know, I think, sometimes perhaps too much. But, you know, I think that, you know, certainly when it comes to music, I don't know, in a like this moment, for whatever reason, music isn't at the. Forefront of the culture wars and the way that it was in the nineties. And you know, instead it's like books in Florida, right? I mean, who knew? But, you know, people aren't really like, kind of, this is not a, like a campaign issue in the same way, that it might have been in the 90s, you're not seeing as many politicians sounding off about it. I mean, I think certainly you're hearing stuff, about, you know, can lyrics be used as evidence in court? you know, which is, can be a really troubling topic. But, you know, I think the sort of focus of that argument is, it's not like in the middle of national campaigns in the way that this was in the 1990s. So, yeah, I think, you know, like Interscope certainly as an experience. walking the line and it's maybe a little bit less of a delicate line, that they need to walk these days for just whatever reasons, with the political headwinds.  [00:40:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I don't think it would work in the same way because I think the people that do try to create shock value were so desensitized to things compared to when we were the way things were in the nineties. Even for people that weren't that threat to society, but because of how they were depicted, it was easier to do that and still release great music, right? The chronic could be a shock value type of work, but it's still something that is critically acclaimed. That is in the National Registry and Library of Congress and all of these other areas. But now the stuff that creates shock value in music, whether it's even someone that's like more on the personality side, like a dj academics or someone like that will literally just say like, you know, the wildest shit just to go viral or partner with right wing organizations in order to create momentum that still has this area where it lives in somewhere like YouTube, where yes, you can get a following and you can make a living and you know, do things for yourself. But I think there's somewhat of a ceiling to that in terms of how much you can like, create, you know, broader impact and truly monetize the bases and the masses. And some of it even extends to artists as well, like those, I think someone like NBA Young Boy is quite popular and has had a bit of a number of transgressions in his track record, but still I think there's a pretty big gap of, you know, him relative to like some of the other names you mentioned just from some of the exposure and opportunities that he's given that doesn't lend itself to that. So, you know, Interscope in the early nineties probably wouldn't have wanted to try to sign Olivia Rodrigo because it didn't make sense. But it makes perfect sense now just given where things are and where things are going. So you can maybe do it on a niche level, but I think it's hard to have shock value sell in mass quantities and for the mainstream in that same way.  [00:41:55] Zack Greenburg: Well, I think it's also just harder to shock people now, right? I mean, you know.  [00:41:58] Dan Runcie: Or desensitized  [00:42:00] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you were to put out the chronic today, you know, with, the marijuana leaf on the cover of it, it's like, and you know, and like this has been legal in California for like how long, you know? And certainly in terms of like things you could say or do that would be truly shocking. It's like after Donald Trump has been president in the things, you know, that are kind of, came out of that, it's like, you know, I don't really know many things an artists could do that would be more shocking, you know, and in this sort of like, hilarious, I dunno if it's hilarious, but this, let's say, ironic juxtaposition, you know, you had Eminem, the king of shock value Like making a track against Donald Trump when he was in office, you know, you have the rappers protesting against the politicians, instead of the other way around. So I think we're still, as a society, been kind of turned on our head, you know, by some of the developments of the past. you know, let's say eight years, eight years plus the past decade or so. you know, it's, guess in some ways hard for politicians to be complaining so much about music when, a lot of the obscenity is coming from them. So,  [00:43:05] Dan Runcie: Right, and I think too, you were mentioning about how what Congress or what the American government can rally against in how so much of the nineties was. I still remember that infamous cover of Snoop Dogg on the cover of Newsweek, and I forget what the title of the magazine was, but it was something, along the lines of, oh, this is the greatest threat to America, or this is the greatest threat to our country, or something like that someone could probably pick me and find it, or maybe you'll link to in the show notes. And that's what people were able to get riled up around, right? Now, the biggest thing in music that has gotten anyone on a congressional level or congress level riled up is ticketmaster and Live Nation and Taylor Swift's tickets, which just shows how different things are, people used to be riled up about the content. Now this is a way to try to get at big business or whatever the exact complaint is. So, such a different time.  [00:43:58] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, yeah, No, I Couldn't agree more. [00:44:01] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So we definitely spoke a lot of praise about the current era of where things are with the Interscope and the work that Janet has done the past decade. If you were in his shoes, would you be doing anything differently? And I do think that he's done a few things. So you mentioned black pink earlier. So there's clearly a way to be able to pivot and move more into music that isn't from the United States. It isn't domestic, and you're able to rise there, clearly done different types of deals from a flexibility perspective. Some artists do have, licensing deals like Olivia Rodrigo will own her masters for the long term just based on what she's shared about the nature of her contract moving forward. But for him himself, I mean, I think there's other IP things that could be interesting, but what does the type of things that Jimmy was able to do back in the late 2010 or late two thousands with beats? Like what could that look like or what could that look like for Interscope  [00:44:59] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. You know, I think it's a different time. One of the things that's changed so much is over the past few years, I would say it's like, it's not quite as cool to be rich anymore, you know? I think sort of the Bernie Sanders movement, the sort of like this, right? I remember seeing it at Forbes, you know, when I started out it was like, woo, like I wanna be a billionaire and  [00:45:20] Dan Runcie: The Forbes Remix  [00:45:22] Zack Greenburg: Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you had, Jay-Z, Diddy, and 50 being like, you know, the Forbes, yeah, they put out this Forbes 1, 2, 3 billionaire remix they called it. But you know, even now, even within the past couple years, you know, certainly, I think the Pandemic really crystallized this. But even before that, you know, with sort of like Bernie and, that whole, you know, movement, There was this kind of questioning of like, should there even be billionaires? And you know, I remember starting to see, people who you had thought, you would've thought would be, you know, jumping to be on the cover of Forbes. Just say like, eh, you know, like, I don't want to be seen as crowing about my wealth. so, you know, I think that's a big cultural change. And that's post beats, right? That's post, you know, Dr. Dre's situation. And, you know, I think that there's certainly a lot of leeway for Interscope still, to be entrepreneurial and they've always done that. But I think the challenge for Interscope or for anyone really is like, how can you be entrepreneurial in a way that is sort of like, you know, not necessarily charitable per se, but has some kind of impact, you know, like some kind of impact investing sort of thing. how can you, like, make money but, you know, drive change at the same time? I think that's sort of like, as we look going forward into the, you know, celebrity earning, you know, celebrity business sphere, I think that's gonna be the big question because it's no longer the thing that's just, it's cool to make a bunch of money on some random app or, you know, selling, some crypto thing as we've seen. And you know, you can get a lot of blowback, people think you're selling out. People think you're greedy people don't think you're selling outta greedy just cause you're doing something business related. But, you know, I think, over the past couple years it's become a lot more like, well, you know, is this something that really helps the world are using your money for good? and so I think whatever it is, if it's gonna be public facing and, you know, and I think. That's the value when you have a stable of celebrities, right, is to do something public facing. It's like, what is this doing, to help the world. So, you know, I think there are a lot of ways to take that, but certainly, you know, I think that's a bigger, bigger and bigger component going forward.  [00:47:22] Dan Runcie: This is something that has changed in a relatively quick time span. You even think back to the Obama era and just the Obama presidency and just how music was and how people interacted and thought about music. You look at a album like Watch the Throne In, which I do think was one of the more popular albums from that decade. Granted, I don't think JayZ or Ye are even on the terms or desire to put something like, like that out again. But if they put that out about now, it would not get the same reception. There would be all these think pieces about, oh, here are these two men talking about, you know, their, you know, Hugo watches and there other, other bends and all this stuff. And people would be complaining about that in a way where just as recent as 2011, they were celebrated, like people, like revered so many of the songs. And just the talk about black excellence and wealth and even some of the conversations around Jay-Z himself as a figure, I know you know this well as probably some of the responses you've gotten over the years when you've talked about Empire State of mind and how people react to him, statements he's said and stuff like that. And yeah, we're just in a very different spot and now we're kind of in this space where, Yes, people can have commercial success. People, businesses can do it too. But I think it's especially difficult for companies in music because of so much historical context of how people view the record label as the enemy. People view the record label as this, and then even when the topic of the prices potentially raising for some of these streaming services, the number one thing you often hear from fans is, well, I hope that extra dollar or $2 for a potential raise in the streaming service goes back to the artist. And it's like, yes, you, you do eventually want those things, but we're losing the opportunity to talk about the value that these record labels create because of how media disseminates, right? If you talk about, oh, Olivia Rodrigo has a very favorable record deal. No one wants to hear that. But if there's ever a report, oh, Olivia Rodrigo's upset about, you know, Interscope, that thing would be a news topic for five days. Cuz that's where we are right now. [00:49:27] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you know, so to to your point, I mean, you mentioned my book, empire State of Mind, which was this business focused biography I wrote of Jay-Z. it came out in 2011. but you know, It was such a different world back then. And when it came out, you know, their response was basically like, whoa, awesome. Like, this is Jay-Z's blueprint for how to, you know, be a centi millionaire. And this is so cool because now I can apply this to my career, or I can, you know, learn some lessons from him. And, you know, and there was just definitely like a sentiment of people rooting for Jay-Z to become a billionaire, race to a billion, and who's gonna get there first? Is it Jay-Z or Diddy or, you know, whoever. And, you know, and then it happened and Jay-Z you know, crossed the threshold in, I think it was 20, early 2020, something like that. I think late 2019, early 2020 was when we put him in the magazine as a billionaire for Forbes. but even when that, like, by the time that happened, you know, about 10 years later, I put out the billionaire edition of the book. after, you know, let's say, what was it, in 2021, this was 10 years later. It was a totally different story, right? people were like, why is this guy, you know, like, who cares? Like, you know, like he should be giving it all of it back, you know? Why are there billionaires in our society? Something's wrong in society that has billionaires. So, you know, and I think it has gone, that narrative has gone even faster than Jay-Z has kind of evolved into this, like very socially aware, you know, type of philanthropic mogul, you know, people are not even that into the idea of like, oh, I'll make a lot of money so I can give it back, people are like, just, you know, do the good, like do philanthropic stuff, do impact stuff the whole way through and like, don't even try to become a billionaire. So, it really is such a different world, and it's, been fascinating to write about this stuff as these attitudes have changed on a broader societal level for sure.  [00:51:25] Dan Runcie: Did you hesitate naming it the Billionaire Edition, knowing like this would change and seeing things over the years? [00:51:32] Zack Greenburg: Well, I had it in mind that it would be a cool thing to do whenever he did become a billionaire, because it was like, it was almost like the realization of a prophecy. It's like, you know, in, in 2011, I sort of like, I'm telling you he's gonna be billionaire and he's telling you, you know, and it's like, okay, here it is. He's a billionaire, you know, and I actually wanted to get like a, gilded cover and do the kind of watch the throne type of thing and you know, like embossed gold and all that stuff. But, it's not the right era. I mean, like, you're saying, it's just not, it's that era anymore. So yeah, I did wonder, like, should I kind of like back off of that narrative. But, you know, to go back to the Jimmy Iovine Interscope conversation, it's like, whether it's good or bad, it starts a conversation and you want the conversation to start, so that people will read the book, you know? And it's not like, a bad thing for me if people think it's bad that Jay-Z's a billionaire, it's just a fact. And even since I put out the Billionaire edition, he's like, more than doubled his net worth, you know, again. So that's just, that's just how he operates. And, you know, that's Jay-Z.  [00:52:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, you had to put out something. So much had changed since when you first put that book out. And this is how, in many ways the. Business model of books works when there is something to be able to add, that's a refresher new forward based on this one. you had to do it. So, yeah. I think it made sense. But to bring this all full circle with Interscope in this conversation, the last thing we'll dive into is who is the biggest winner, artist, executive producer, so on from everything that has happened with Interscope in the past 33 years.  [00:53:09] Zack Greenburg: Hmm. it's a great question. I mean, to me it's between Jimmy and Dre. but I would probably go with Jimmy because, you know, Dre was gonna be centimillionaire, you know, music legend no matter what. And although Jimmy had done a lot of great work, you know, in the rock world before then, and I'm sure, you know, was, very adequately compensated. You know, he wasn't sort of like a, an international business superstar in the way that he became as a result of, Interscope. And, you know, Jimmy and Dre both got a lot of money out of it. but I think Jimmy really got a lot more than he would've otherwise. in his, prior iteration of his career and Dre, you know, I mean, Dre has founded a bunch of things, right? And Interscope, you know, obviously he wasn't the founder of Interscope, but, you know, I kind of tied B to Interscope and that whole thing together. So it, Dre had lots of different paths to wealth. and so did Jimmy, but I think Dre had more, and, Jimmy kind of like ultimately got more out of it.  [00:54:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think between the two of them, even if Interscope had said no back in 92 or 91, whenever the initial deal was made, I do think that Dre would've likely found a home. Dre and Suge would've found a home. It's still been able to do something similar elsewhere. Maybe it would've made the Tupac thing a little bit more challenging, but I think they still would've figured that out too.  [00:54:30] Zack Greenburg: Yeah.  [00:54:31] Dan Runcie: I don't think the same would necessarily be true for Jimmy though, because if you don't have them, you don't have this. And a lot of this, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this unlikely watch the Defiant ones or maybe you've seen should do a few interviews. I don't know if a lot of that would work.  But I think I'll actually take a different approach. I think the person that probably won the most, just from a situation perspective, I know we've talked about him a fair amount, but I'll say Janet with this one because he didn't build this company himself. But the fact that when it's your time to come up, you have this opportunity to be able to step into, you have this much leeway, this much assets that already work in your favor because we just know how valuable the bat catalogs are. You walk into that position and then that has you then. Then that just makes it much more easy for you to have things set up because we know how a lot of this stuff is, right? People leave record labels all the time, especially if there's an opportunity to go to that next level. And this was before streaming really broke out. So if it wasn't Interscope, it may have been one of the other opportunities that could have opened up. And for him to be able to take that and then continue things for the next decade and then prove that, to our point earlier, this isn't just a one trick pony. This was able to live beyond and in some ways, maybe even operated things a bit more efficiently than Jimmy did as well with some of the recklessness at points from spending too. I do think that there's a case to be made for Janet, in terms of how that's been able to help that career too. [00:56:00] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good pick too. Although, I think probably if you're going in terms of wealth creation, Jimmy,  [00:56:06] Dan Runcie: Jimmy, for sure. Yeah, a hundred  [00:56:08] Zack Greenburg: you gotta give it to Jimmy. But point, taken, for sure.  [00:56:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Well, good stuff. This one was fun. I feel like after this we definitely went on a few different tangents on beats about even one on Apple music. We didn't explore too deeply. And even some of the other record labels here, there's a lot we could dig back into with this one.  But yeah, Keith, and though controversy can sell, but not in the same way it did in the nineties.  [00:56:33] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, that, that's absolutely, absolutely,  [00:56:36] Dan Runcie: Well, Zach been a pleasure to us all, man. [00:56:39] Zack Greenburg: Thanks, Dan. Have a good one. [00:56:41] Dan Runcie: You too, man.   

This week, I’m running back an interview with one of the most popular episodes we ever did with Matt Pincus from 2022.  Matt Pincus is without question one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the music industry. He sold his independent music publishing company, SONGS, for $160 million five years ago. And now, the music holdings company he co-founded, MUSIC, just raised $200 million to invest in music and music-adjacent companies.  Though, Matt doesn’t see MUSIC as an investment fund, but rather a holding company. That’s because he’s taking an operator role in the companies he funds. And unlike the splashy catalog acquisitions that’ve dominated the space over the past few years, Matt is looking forward with his investments and targeting brand-new growth opportunities instead. In particular, Matt sees big opportunities in the technology sector, web3, and even record labels and publishing. At SONGS, Matt was able to spot and develop up-and-coming songwriters, inking early deals with the likes of Diplo, Lorde, and The Weeknd. He’ll be tasked with finding similar success at MUSIC.   Matt and I dove deep into a wide-range of topics during our conversation. Here’s a few highlights of what we covered: [2:47] Why Matt created MUSIC [7:19] MUSIC’s investment thesis? [13:22] What Matt doesn’t like about the music business  [19:36] Recent inflow of capital into the music business [20:54] Two lanes to entering music business [24:08] Finding left-of-center opportunities among musical talent  [27:30] The structural problem of the music business [30:44] Continuity was key to SONGS success [35:59] The Weeknd as a business blueprint for other artists [36:53] Sync business opportunities  [43:46] Have streaming subscriptions peaked? [48:12] Tiktok brought back music frequency [51:13] Matt’s five-year predictions Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Matt Pincus, @mpinc Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Newsly is your all-in-one audio super app to hear the trending topics on the entire web. Download newsly.me for free and use the promo code ‘TRAP’ to receive a 1-month free subscription. Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Matt Pincus: Defensibility in the music business is not a patent or a technology or some special recipe you have someplace. It's your understanding of music, the people that make it, and then your ability to develop relationships with people around the business and to keep your reputation such that people want to be with you. But the real key in, at least in the music technology side of it is you need to be able to spin the technology yourself and understand really how it works.  [00:00:37] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:56] Dan Runcie: Today's episode is with one of the most successful music entrepreneurs of the past few decades. His name is Matt Pincus and he is the founder and CEO of MUSIC, which is a holding company that invests in music tech and music-adjacent companies. MUSIC just launched a 200 million fund to invest in this space, so Matt and I talked all about it. He's looking for companies that still have a clear understanding for how music gets made and understand the art behind it. He's also looking for startups that have a true defensible moat that is something unique that they can do. And he's also looking for the companies that have a huge total addressable market that can clearly grow and expand as we're seeing things continue to grow in this space. Our conversation covered a bunch of topics in this space. We talked about sync and the impact of that. We also talked about how much further streaming can go. And we talked about a bunch of insightful music trends. Really fascinating conversation. I feel like every few months we have one of those conversations where people reach out to me and say, Hey, I took a bunch of notes in that conversation. Thank you for this. And I have a good feeling, I have a good feeling that this is going to be one of those conversations. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Matt Pincus.  [00:02:16] Dan Runcie: All right. Today, we're joined by Matt Pincus, who is the founder of MUSIC, which is a holding company that invested music and music-adjacent companies. Matt, I'm really excited to have this conversation because you have had a very impressive career with what you did with Songs and everything that you had done in publishing specifically. And what always stuck out to me about you in this space is how you've identified opportunities where others didn't see them. So I know when I saw the announcement for MUSIC and the $200 million fund you launched, I said, okay, he's seeing something and he's seeing an opportunity to dive in. So what did you see? What made you want to get involved with this? [00:02:58] Matt Pincus: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big admirer of Trapital and your work in general. And I'm really happy to be with you here today. So, you know, I started music, it was sort of an organic process. I sold Songs after running it for about 13 years. And it was a fairly abrupt end. So we decided to sell the company and neither me nor my two partners really wanted to run it for somebody else. So we decided that once we sold it, it was time to step away and it was fairly quick. So, you know, I ran the company for 12-plus years. And then 90 days after the sale, I was out in the street, like, what am I going to do with my life? So it was a bit of an organic process. It started with meeting a lot of really interesting founders of music businesses and companies that were around the music business. It's obviously an interesting time in our business in a number of different ways. The streaming market has matured. There are a lot of music tech businesses with interesting founders cropping up over the past four or five years. The web three crypto business has, you know, started the early days of really coming online. And the way that labels, publishing companies, management companies reach audiences is really different than it was like, you know, six, seven years ago. So I met a lot of really interesting people. The first one was Steve Martocci, who was the founder of Splice. He and I hit it off particularly well. And I sort of said, listen, I've been, you know, doing talent deals with young people, you know, in the early twenties for the past 12 years, I think maybe the next chapter is working with founders of companies that are more like 10 years younger than me, as opposed to, you know, 20, early 20s. And taking the experience that I had in the last, like, four or five years of songs when we were trying to figure out how to really realize returns on the business and build on that to try to help people do the same thing. So I was out looking for, you know, are there interesting companies that I might be able to work with in some way or another? And the answer to that quickly became kind of yes, on the music tech side originally, in growth companies, when online music and music technology was shifting to a subscription-based backbone as opposed to a packet software business. And then also on the music side of it, you know, interesting independent labels, music companies operating in a different way. And so the first thing was, are there interesting companies out there? The second is, do they need capital and where would they get it from? And the third was, how am I going to get the money to invest in these businesses? So it was kind of a bit of a bootstrapping exercise where I would go find an opportunity to invest in a company, put some of my own money in LionTree, which sold songs for me and has been a partner and champion of mine since I sold the company, would invest some money too, and then we'd find some other people to round out the investment. We did that first with Splice, put about 20 million into the company over a period of time. We also did in the same way, made an investment in a company called HIFI, which is a FinTech platform benefiting artists in a bunch of different ways, and also with DICE, the ticketing business. And you know, they started, a couple of them did well and actually, they all did well. And so I decided that I wanted to raise some capital and have my own sort of, it's not really a fund. It's more of a holding company 'cause I'm less of an investor and more of an operator. And so the question became, how are we going to raise the money? Now Aryeh Bourkoff who runs LionTree is somewhat of a magic maker, and he took me on and introduced me to two families, the Schusterman Family and JS Capital, which is Jonathan Soros's capital vehicle. And they agreed to invest in a four-way partnership. So it's between me, LionTree, Schusterman Family, and JS Capital. And we formed MUSIC, which is a $200 million holding company. We do deals in a couple of different areas, music tech, which is sort of where I spent most of my time after Songs. We also invest in independent music companies like Songs. So labels publishing companies, management companies. Increasingly, a few of those functions are in one company, as opposed to when I was running Songs, it was like you were either a publisher or a label or a management company. And then we partner sometimes with a larger private equity firm if we are interested in acquiring something that's, you know, of a larger size. And so we're in the middle of one of those right now. And so we were able to find a bunch of interesting opportunity, a bunch of interesting ways, and it seems to me to be, you know, a really good time to be putting money to work in the music business.  [00:07:32] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's an exciting time to be investing in these companies and to be acquiring them too. And you mentioned something there about the types of companies you're looking at and whether they are modern music companies or whether they are doing something that's unique in the space. Can you talk a little bit more about your investment thesis and what you're looking for, and specifically, because, as you mentioned, you're not a fund, you're a holding company, so you're not necessarily just doing, you know, angel investments or early stage. You're trying to make investments for the long haul. So how does that shape your strategy? [00:08:07] Matt Pincus: Very good question. And I think the answer to that depends somewhat on the different areas of investment. So the first is in the technology side of the business, which is kind of where I started as an investor. So, you look for a couple of things there. So first of all, you need to invest in companies, not products. So some of the music startups can be sort of, it's an interesting widget, but can it be a scalable business? So you need to make sure that you have a couple of things in order to know that you're investing in a company that has the ability to grow. So the first thing is you need your own tech stack and it needs to be built to suit whatever market you want to be in. So for example, with Splice, one of the reasons, and there were several, but one of the reasons I invested in the company was because Steve had built this subscription stack from day one of the company. So it was a native SaaS company in a world where the rest of the market needed to move from the old way of doing business to the new way of doing business. Splice was always in the new way of doing business, so it was going to be ahead of the curve. And so you need to make sure that your technical capabilities and your technical assets are going to, you know, be where you want to go. The second is that you need to make sure you're in a part of the market that has a big enough user base to make a real company out of it. You know, it's great to make a widget that, you know, 1500 people love, love, love, but 1500 people is not a lot of people. So you need to make sure that the addressable market around the business has a lot of users. And again, in Splice's case, you know, they are the content business in music tech. So they can be used in an infinite amount of applications across the business, which gives them, you know, a really solid user base. And so, you know, that's kind of the second thing. And the third thing is that you need to kind of own where you live or have the ability to own where you live. So, you know, it's great if you get into a category in the technology side of the business, that, you know, breaks some ground and shows everybody what can be done. But if then, you know, Apple or Google just says, thank you very much and does it instead of you, it's not so great. So you need to have a defensible business that you can build and scale. And again, back to Splice, you know, they are the content leader and I'm a music publisher by trade, so content is the water supply in the music business. You know, in publishing, it's the song that starts the whole conversation. Splice owns music. And so no matter where the market is going to grow, no matter where it ends up going, they have the supply that feeds the music tech business. And so it's inherently defensible when it gets up to a certain level. You know, at this point they have 3 million works in their database. To catch up to them is, you know, difficult, if not impossible. And so you need to be defensible now on the music side of what I do, which is investing in music companies, there's a couple of things I look for. So first of all, I don't do catalog acquisitions. I invest in people. So the first thing is that you need to have really talented executives that understand music and know how to find repertoire and make it bigger. I tend to like businesses that give advances to artists. There's a certain way, like at Songs, we built a catalog over a long period of time, but we built it through signing young writers and giving them advances. So I call it a mattress out of sheets. If you do that one after another, over many, many years and you do it well, all of a sudden you wake up, you know, 7 to 10, 12 years later, and you're like, holy shit, it's a big catalog. And so I tend to like businesses that advance money to artists and build catalog that way or manage catalog that way. There's a certain magic to understanding how to compensate artists and doing it fairly. So I tend to look at that. You know, the music business has changed a lot. It used to be that if you wanted to be an independent, you needed to own your own vertical. And you know, at Songs, we had our global administration business that we owned and built. We had our own technology. So we were self-contained, standalone competitor. Now I think, you know, solutions have become available everywhere. There's a lot of good publishing administration, a lot of good record distribution solutions. There's a lot of off-the-shelf stuff you can get. It's really about music. It's really about understanding artists and the music that they make and connecting them with an audience. So I look for people who uniquely understand that. Now that can be, you know, somebody who has a geographical lock on a particular kind of music. It can be somebody that has a particularly unique understanding of how the studio works because I think if there's one big change in the music publishing business lately, it's that it's gone really back to the studio. And the interesting companies are actually making songs in real-time in a studio environment. So it can be that. It can be that you have another business that you do and music is associated with it. So why not, you know, get into the music business while you're doing whatever else you do, but you need to have some reason why you have access to a particular group of artists in a particular kind of repertoire, and you're helpful to that in some way or another. And so it's quite a different set of things that I look for on that side than on the technology side.  [00:13:34] Dan Runcie: And with the way that your firm is structured, too, I see parallels with the types of companies you're looking at, right? You're not just focused on one particular type of investment area. You have the music tech companies that you're looking at. Splice is an example. You also have the companies that are working more directly in music itself, whether that is giving advances or companies that have a unique edge on who they're reaching. And I think that translates as well when you're talking about the types of companies you're looking at because a lot of times, especially 10, 15 years ago, as you mentioned, there were more silos and now you're starting to see companies have different types of roles that they do or different divisions to try to be this nebulous term that I've heard several times as broader entertainment company. And while I think that that's effective, I could also see how that could challenge some of the challenges of being able to have a business that is defensible or having a moat and the focus that comes with that. So how do you balance that and what are the things that you look for when evaluating companies that are both trying to do it all, but also are trying to have something that they can be defensible with?  [00:14:40] Matt Pincus: Well, so on the music side of it, you know, it's about relationships. You know, the good companies, their equity is their relationships with different people around the business. And it's really a human-centric business. So, you know, defensibility often is correlated with reputation in the independent music business, at least. That was certainly true of Songs. One of the big success factors of the company and in fact, like, kind of our asset was that me and Ron and Carianne had really good relationships around the business that we built over many years, and that allowed us to punch above our weight class. You know, when we were a very small business, you know, we acted as a bigger business because we were able to get champions that helped us along the way, both in terms of the artists that were willing to sign with us, but also in terms of, you know, other people around the business that took us on and helped us out. Oddly enough defensibility in the music business is not a patent or a technology or some special recipe you have someplace. It's your understanding of music, the people that make it, and then your ability to develop relationships with people around the business and to keep your reputation such that people want to be with you. You know, on the tech side of it, it's a little bit different. You have to make sure that your innovation curve is constantly there. You have to make sure, like, I would not invest in a business that did not have a technical co-founder. You know, ideas are great. Everybody's got ideas. You know, there's an app for anything. But the real key in, at least in the music technology side of it is you need to be able to spin the technology yourself and understand really how it works, which when you get into the crypto side of it's really interesting 'cause a lot of people understand the implications of it, but they have no idea how the shit works. They don't actually use it. And they get kind of confused thinking that it's much more complicated than in fact it really is. Or, you know, they get so fascinated with the technology that they don't make a product that stands on its own bottom and has value to the end user. So it's a little bit different in the different areas of the market that you look at. And one of the reasons why I like the field that I play on and I feel very lucky to be able to do the different things that I can do with music is because some of it is about sort of analytical, scalable technology-oriented investments. And some of it is just about people in tunes. And so you're kind of mixing a lot of different things together. You know, the one thing that I don't like so much about the recent music business is somehow we all slipped into talking about music as assets and fractional finance and cash flows and securitization. And I'm like, listen, if I wanted to do all that shit, I do it not here. You know, the music business is not assets and finance and cash flows and, you know, securitization. The music business is moving people, motivating people, creating an audience, assembling humans to want what you make, and distributing that and delivering it and all the rest of that stuff. You know, the fact like, listen, what I'm doing is either really smart or really dumb because either you can make a real investment business just out of the music business. And I think you can because there's lots of different types of investments in music and there's lots of growth and lots of possibility. But also, you know, it's a pretty small business. And I live in, play, you know, a neighborhood, the size of a postage stamp. We'll see if they can be done, but I think originally, you know, it starts with the creative and it starts with the means of delivering the creative to the people that want it. And then all of the rest of this stuff, you know, yield, debt payments, multiples on equity, bonds, all the rest of this stuff just is a happy accident that comes from doing your job well. [00:18:35] Dan Runcie: I'm glad you mentioned this because there's a version of what you do that could easily look more like a traditional private equity firm, where they are just going in and doing all of the things that you just mentioned and they're coming more from that perspective, but in many ways, your defense is having this laser focus on music, but you're going deep within all of the areas that it encompasses. And with that, I have to assume that this also maybe has a bit of a flavor on what your take is about the money that has come into the music industry and some of those other non-music companies or those that are purely looking at it for the financial opportunity or for the noncorrelated opportunities and how that in a lot of ways, even though on paper, someone that's fundraising may see the money they can get from you versus the money they get from others. But I'm hearing it from the record labels. And especially the independent ones they're getting reached out to all the time now about acquisitions. And a lot of those calls are coming from non-music related companies that are trying to make those moves. So it's been fascinating to see how that shapes, but I do feel like you are going about this in a much more unique way than a lot of them are. [00:19:49] Matt Pincus: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. I will say that the recent, like, huge inflow of capital into the music business has one very good byproduct, which is it's giving a lot of money to songwriters and artists. Some of these catalogs getting valued at 20 times, 30 times, you know, NPS where they would've been valued at 10, you know, four or five years ago, maybe 10 years ago. It just results in people that make great music, making a bunch of bucks. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. On the catalog side of it, it makes a little bit more sense that some of these like larger capital vehicles are coming into the market and, you know, bidding things up and structuring the leverage in a certain way that makes sense. There's a big difference between what's going on now and what was going on when this first happened, like in 2006, 2007 timeframe because the people that are doing it now can afford it. They've got lots and lots of money. They don't need big returns on that money. They have the ability to structure this stuff financially in ways that don't make no sense. And so it makes, you know, more sense that people are doing that with the IP catalog acquisition business. When it gets to new music, you know, I think it's still a human business. I think you got to know the people, you know, and you have to understand how it's really about managing what I refer to as the working capital of the business. So, you know, you need to advance money, you need to collect that money, you need to reinvest the money. And so a lot of that, you know, it's not a big enough business that you can structure it like a bunch of bonds. You need to kind of understand the market that you're in, how many deals you could possibly get, and what about you ought to pay for them, and what kind of infrastructure you need to address all of that to do a good job. And that's hard to know from outside of the business. It's even hard to know, like there's sort of two lanes in the music business. There's people who came up through the building where they started at majors and they kind of built their career, you know, up from coordinator to director to senior director to VPs, SVP, EVP. And then they end up running the company, a lot of great people who came up that way. And then there's people who kind of feed in the wild. Like, come outside of the building and need to figure out, like, what's available. And there's some real differences, you know. Sometimes they cross over like Ron Perry who was an instrumental person at Songs from, you know, the very beginning to through time we sold and now runs Columbia. So sometimes that happens. Or Carianne who, you know, also was my partner at Songs who now runs Warner Chappell with Guy Moot. It's like there, you know, it happens, but there are really two lanes. And I think in the independent side, it's a lot about systematic A&R so about looking at, listen, none of us are overfunded with tons of money. So, you know, everybody's stretching the dough. And it becomes about how can I build this system in the world that I live that can do deals inexpensively, and then find the ones that are working and invest and push them forward. And all the great independent music companies, you know, Chrysalis, Jive Zomba, A&M Rondor, all the great ones throughout history sort of did that really effectively or were usually like the other ones. So everybody goes to the majors to get their offer. And then there's these other cooler guys that are there, like, you know, kind of fucking with the majors by picking off all the left to center stuff that was us at Songs. You know, and all those other companies I just mentioned were kind of some version of that. But there's kind of, all of these mechanics that come both from history, so understanding the history of the business, but also understanding the people and how they sort of work 'cause as much as the world is changing and it's changing a lot, it's still kind of about A&R. It's still about creative in some way or another. I mean, Carianne's superpower, which she's got many, but the original superpower was understanding not only what works well to picture, but the people that choose music in film and television, advertisements, video games, she's particularly uniquely talented at that. And that's still a core skill that people need to understand. So, you know, I'm the guy that kind of pulls the pieces together. I don't do any of those things. I, you know, originally hired some great people and now I try to invest in great people that do all that stuff, but it's still about understanding it and if you're coming purely from the outside, I think it's challenging. [00:24:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think your career experience speaks a lot to this, right? You mentioned being able to find the left-of-center opportunities when you're at Songs, whether it was Lorde or The Weeknd. And you saw how those turned out. It worked out brilliantly. I'm curious to hear what you think about the way things are right now because, especially with the way that TikTok is and so many of the companies, whether it's the major labels or the independents, they all have access to the same information. So the cost of acquiring and being able to find and develop those same artists is much more expensive. So what do you think those left-of-center opportunities look like today in the current environment where it feels as if there are more and more outlets to find different types of people, but the way that people are going about it, it does seem like a lot of people are now playing a pretty similar game. [00:25:13] Matt Pincus: You mean like a moneyball... [00:25:15] Dan Runcie: Yeah.  [00:25:15] Matt Pincus: ...type of, yeah. So, you know, again, I go back to like, there's sort of in the building and there's outside of the building way of thinking. So in the major system, it makes logical sense that they want to sort of hang back, see what reacts, and go and get it when it reacts, the more predictable something is the more you're willing to pay for it. That makes logical sense. There's nothing wrong with it. They're not idiots for doing that. It's just the way that they traditionally operate. And now it's about, like, seeing the shiny pennies and then grabbing them right away, whatever the cost, because music is much more efficient than it used to be. It used to be that you'd have to, like, release a whole album and sink a bunch of capital into seeing if something works. Now you can kind of tell pretty quickly if something's going to work. So it makes sense to pay a lot for something predictable, as opposed to, you know, paying a little bit for stuff that is wildly uncertain. So, you know, that makes total sense. I think on the independent side, and I really count in that like A&R mentality, like people who are finding artists and developing artists. So it's not just like, you know, independent labels, but it's also like, you know, Electric Feel is a really interesting company that does this, Hallwood. You know, APG is obviously the really great example of this, of finding artists really early and developing them into something or representing people who do that. A lot of, you know, that is about iteration and about understanding, you know, what makes a good story in a particular market. Now, part of that is the music itself. Part of that, most of it is the music itself, but part of that is also all the other stuff around it. You know, how you unfold the narrative, how you stage market entry for an artist. You know, all of those things, again, I come back to the stick to your knitting thing where it's like, as much as the world changes, it kind of remains the same to some degree. So, you know, the interesting and frustrating thing about the music business for people that run companies like I did at Songs is that there's just not that many good, really good, talented people, you know. If there's one structural problem in the music business is there's not enough, really good A&R people, promotion people, you know, creative people.  [00:27:29] Dan Runcie: And why do you think that is? [00:27:30] Matt Pincus: I think it's hard, for one, I think it's hard. And as much as people try to play moneyball, now I'm a big believer in systematic A&R, which some people would consider, you know, moneyball. So in other words, like having a funnel that gives you a group of things that might work, that I'm a big believer in that as a starting point, but that only gets you like 51% confidence. That's not much more than a coin toss. The rest of it is really doing the work of developing the product itself, the music itself, and then the story around it. And it's just a hard business, plus you got to know everybody, you know. So it takes a while to develop those relationships and those skills. One of the things that's interesting when I look on the music tech side of it that I think is one of the great things is that the technological development in music production is allowing people to learn how to use the gear quicker. So you're going to have hit singles coming from 13-year-olds within no time at all. And that used to not be possible because it would take you four or five, six years just to learn how to twist the knobs on a board. Like, it was hard. Now with like, you know, presets, with things like Splice, with AI-assisted creation, you know, anything that makes it easier for an artist to get what's inside of them out, the learning curve is becoming less steep. And that's a good thing because talent shines in that environment. You know, it's one thing to be able to, you know, have a knowledge-base to tweak things. It's another thing to just be a talented and expressive artist with urgency. And so maybe some of that will happen. And on the executive side, like on the A&R side, as things like radio, you know, radio's been so monolithic and so hard to penetrate. And now maybe it's loosening up a little bit, but it still takes a while to figure out what's going to work. It's very hard. And it is one thing to be a fan and be like, this is good, this is not good. It's another thing to take a look at something that doesn't yet exist and be like, this is what it will look like if we can pull it off. I don't have that talent, you know. I'm not an A&R person, but I watch people do it and it's pretty miraculous. And it's not just A&R, it's also promotion, which is an undervalued piece of the equation and increasingly, marketing, digital marketing, like the first cut of it was just, you know, sort of advertising on Facebook. Now it's much more sophisticated than that. And so I feel like it's just hard and I wish there were, you know, there's also the part of the problem in the music business is nobody trains anybody. There's no HR infrastructure. You know, I went to Columbia Business School and I had been in the music business. I didn't have one single meeting about a job that came through the school.  [00:30:14] Dan Runcie: I'm not surprised. That wasn't the case for me either.  [00:30:17] Matt Pincus:  That’s what I'm saying like, nobody trained you. I mean, I remember going on a job interview when I was like 21 coming right out of college or 23 coming right out of college with a guy at ICM. And he said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to be an A&R .He said, great, find a band. That was it. That was the interview. And so it's like, it's that kind of business, which is kind of wonderful in its own way, but it doesn't train people really. And so that's also part of the reason. We don't develop our talent, executive talent pipeline in a really great way.  And that's why people like, you know, Mike Caren at APG is so special. You know, the LVRN guys are so special because they bring along executives in a really concerted kind of way. And I wish there was more of that in the business in general.  [00:30:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's a huge opportunity for it. And I think you see a lot of it play out when there are executive shake ups and who gets picked for certain things and why people get picked for certain things. And to some extent, you see this in other places too, whether there's a mix of internal hires versus external. But one thing that I have noticed is the units that do tend to stick together, or there is some continuity there. You do see a lot of success happen if they understand what works, everyone's into it. And I think some of these other places where it could be a bit of revolving doors with who's in leadership, who's trying to get where it's very tough to have that infrastructure.  [00:31:35] Matt Pincus: And that was one of the great blessings for me at Songs, which is not, doesn't speak well for the industry, particularly, but, you know, Ron and Carianne were two of the most talented people of their generation for sure. And the business didn't know what to do with them. The fact that I could get the two of them and we could all stay together for 12 years and build a company is like a miracle. And that was a big part of the reason why it all worked is because we knew each other really well and people knew us as a unit. We had different things we did. It's a little bit like, you know, kind of what's going on with the professional sports a little bit too, is, you know, it's great that all these individual players are celebrities. And again, great that athletes are making more money, but great teams don't stay together in the same way that they did before. And I think that's changing a little bit now because you don't have to do a deal with a major and get your money the traditional way in order to build a company. And that's one of the reasons I exist as MUSIC, is because there's opportunities to bring outside capital into the business under terms that look a little bit more like sort of venture capital or private equity, which is in a way more fair than the traditional music business has been on a per transaction basis. There's natural reasons why the major music companies finance the music business for as many decades as they did, and it's not to rip people off, it's because nobody else would do it. But now it's a different world and so hopefully some of these things will change. You know, when you have really great entrepreneurs that own their own business, as opposed to, you know, in some JV with a major that's really a compensation agreement, then it's in their interest, like it was in mine when I was running Songs, to bring along really talented people and find new ones. And so that's one of the things that I've sort of hoped for in some way.  [00:33:24] Dan Runcie: Are there any artists that stick out to you as examples of yes, they're building their business and they're doing this the way that could be a blueprint for what we'll see more frequently moving forward? [00:33:34] Matt Pincus: Ones that I talk about all the time is The Weeknd, which we were involved with, you know, from fairly early on. And Sal who's, you know, has been his manager for a very long time, and Cash. You know, I think you're going to see what they did with XO happening in a lot of different ways going forward, where you get a group of people that form a partner and distribute responsibilities between artist, manager. You know, there's people like La Mar Taylor involved with those guys that does all the visual. There's a lot of cooks that need to be in the kitchen to make something really successfully work. The label model of sign to a label, they'll do everything that existed in, like, the nineties is way long gone. Even management where you sort of have somebody who's a commission person that's just doing the business of an artist, that's not true of the good ones anymore. The good ones get in it with the artist and really help them build an entrepreneurial life. I mean, to be an artist now, you need to, like, be like a 140-character joke writer. You need to be an accountant. You need to have a corporate entity. You need to deal with all these different vendors. And you need to be like, you know, P. T. Barnum, like, step right up, step right up, check this out, you're going to love it. It's a complex skill set. And so I think one of the things that you're going to see in the talent representation business, like the management business is I think you're going to see more entity partnership formation, where people are going to go into partnership together. Managers and artists will be like Sal, Sal and Abel have been together for, how long now? Like, I mean... [00:35:08] Dan Runcie: It's at least a decade, right? [00:35:09] Matt Pincus: Yeah. And they've been able to scale and grow and make a lot of money and still be together. And that's because everyone provides value. I'm sure they adjust their relationship, however, over time, I don't know. But I think you're going to see that approach because it takes a village in a way to make really durable stuff. I mean, if you're talking about a viral hit that's here today, gone today. That's one thing. But if you're talking about really building a franchise over a period of time, it requires a lot of work from a lot of people. So I think you'll see sort of, you know, entity formation with partners that include business people and artists in with interest aligned. You know, Diplo's another one. I mean, you know, TMWRK and Diplo have been together for again, going back to since I started working with them. So that was 2011, you know? You look at firms like CRUSH, Jonathan, Daniel has built franchise after franchise of artists that stay with him forever. And he works with him as a partner and that's why it works. So I think you're going to see more of that going forward and and I think that's a good thing. [00:36:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. The Weeknd's a very good example because even from the origins of his career, you could see the mentality of where he saw things. Drake famously offered him the opportunity to come on OVO Sound. They had the whole Toronto connection, Drake put him onto that blog post and everything, but then he was like, no, I don't want to be under another artist when I think I can be just as big as that artist, even bigger and do my own thing and look what he's been able to do now. So I think a lot of it... [00:36:41] Matt Pincus: And by the way, the record deal is a distribution deal.  [00:36:43] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:36:44] Matt Pincus: You know, I mean, there you go. And so in terms of distribution of value, you know, if you can do it, if you're smart enough to have a cool head and plan like those guys did, you know, you can have a much larger enterprise than you normally would. So I hold them up as an example of, you know, what I think is going to happen and is happening really in lots of different areas of the business now. [00:37:07] Dan Runcie: One of the other areas that has gotten a bunch of attention right now has been syncs, and this has been growing, I think, especially given what we've seen with people, especially from outside the music industry, trying to get more involved, but especially this past summer with Kate Bush being featured in Stranger Things. This conversation has been happening more and more. This is another example where it's a mix of that art and science of what does finding a good sync looks like and what happens with it. And I think so much of it, there's maybe a little bit of luck with just how the internet works and how things take off, but there's also a good amount of work that's put into finding the right type of placement for the right type of artists that could make all those things work to make it happen. So how do you view the opportunities for sync right now?  [00:37:53] Matt Pincus: You know, it's interesting. I was sort of a student of Carianne. She taught me the sync business. I literally remember she had a binder where she kept every single interaction she ever had around a song and a placement. And she not only showed me how it all worked, but then we made a software platform out of her own process of how she did it. So I was trained by the best. One of the interesting things about sync is how it always comes back in cycles. You know, when we started Songs, it was like 2004, sync was the whole game. Like, between 2006 and sort of 2009 timeframe, it was the most important thing in a pitch. You know, it was responsible for a lot of our really early successes. And then when it became a largely pop business there in the early days of streaming, it was like sort of radio and super reactive and viral repertoire. It sort of stepped to the background for a minute. And now with the way that kids are bouncing around on a playlist from like, you know, Taylor to like a hip-hop track to, you know, Kate Bush back to Metallica and they don't care. It's become all of a sudden, perhaps one of the top, most important ways repertoire gets discovered now. It's amazing the enduring power of synchronization over time. The thing about sync that I think is interesting is part of it is selection. Like, is this song going to work to picture? But there's a lot that goes into making the deal happen. I mean, that Kate Bush deal as my understanding, I was not involved, but my understanding from, like, just hearing about it was that it took 'em forever to get the clearance done. So a lot of it is not only just is this going to work the picture? Is it the right BPM, the right mood, you know, the right tonality, the right cultural notes, which is a very special thing that music supervisors are particularly good at, but it's also the real politic of like getting the fucking thing cleared. And one of the things that I look at, I tend to have thesis sort of areas when I look at investing in the music business, and one of them is just how fuck the sync business is. That, you know, there should be a buy it now button in the music business if you want to use something for your film, buy it now. And if it was easy, people would pay more. But the problem is they have to roll around a glass to clear a copyright, getting the same deal with 13 songwriters and the master side and it's horribly inefficient. So I think part of the interesting thing with sync in the next generation is how do we do right by the music by making it more usable. Because there's also a couple of different ways this sync business cuts. So, you know, you have stuff that's used in a more traditional sense, and that has a real, like the standard pairing of like, it matter, it makes a huge creative difference and it's very hand selected. Front title and title, you know, big placement in a film television advertisement, but then you have this huge blanket sync business where a lot of the new promotion platform are AV platforms. It's technically synchronization, TikTok, YouTube, you know, Instagram it's technically sync. And I would argue that if there's one element of the business that gives radio a run for its money, it's AV platforms because what happens is people use it in so many videos that you end up hearing the song a thousand times, however many times it takes for you to be like, oh, my God, I have to hear it again. That's really the only place it happens and that's sync. There's a couple of different ways it cuts. You know, the great, like, placements of all time, and we had quite a few of them at Songs that sort of are like, you know, really make a song and make a film. Those are works of art. But also a lot of handling everything else is like maybe 50, 50 at best creative to handling. And so a lot of it is understanding, having those relationships, understanding how to price things, understanding how to clear repertoire, getting permission from the artist to do it. There's a lot of process that goes into it. [00:41:49] Dan Runcie: Is there a sync from your days that song that you look back on that you were like, yeah, that's the one. It took some work, but looking back that's the one.  [00:41:56] Matt Pincus: Wow. That's really, that be would a really better question for Carianne than for me. In terms of like the stuff that really made a difference to us as a business, one of the things that I think was meaningful was when Lorde did the Hunger Games soundtrack in the follow-up movie. That gave us a really good look at how music can be a content element in overall entertainment. The Weeknd did a similar thing with Black Panther where, so it was those sort of tie-in, you know, big-ticket where our music was woven into the substance of the film or the ad in some cases. That I think are really the special moments. Those are two that pop out. There's always like the random one where you have a relatively smaller artist and you get them a sync and, you know, it changes their life. It gives 'em more money than they ever thought was possible. There's also the ones, we had an artist who had a very high level of ethic and I won't name the artist, but independent artist, good earnings, but not a pop artist. And we got a $90,000 ad and for very good ethical reasons, he said, fuck, no, it's not going to happen, not going to approve it. And as much as I was like, it was to do early days of the company, it would've made a huge difference to write 90 grand into my books in a quarter. There's some beauty in the level of control that artists have over their own work in the music business that they don't in a lot of other media that I was like, you know what good for him, I guess we're saying no. There's this artisanal component to it that's really special. [00:43:32] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Being able to have that power and knowing when it isn't right. I've heard similar things as well from other podcasters I'll talk to when they get pitched with certain deals and stuff, and they'll be like, you know what, that's just not a product I'm willing to do, or that's just not an endorsement I'm willing to have. And it could have been a game changer for them and their business and everything. But I think we're going to see more of this with creators as they just are leveraging their own independence and being able to make their own decisions.  [00:43:59] Matt Pincus: Yeah, exactly.  [00:44:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:44:00] Matt Pincus: Exactly.  [00:44:01] Dan Runcie: I want to close this conversation out talking about streaming 'cause I know this is a topic that you've shared a number of insights on over the years. And one of the things that you've said before that has always stuck out to me and resonated is this path that streaming has been on where it has been growing year over year, but a lot of people, especially in recent months, have started to question how many more subscribers out there are willing to pay the full price for streaming services and even if there is growth in some of these other regions where the revenue coming in is only a fraction of what it currently is now, what does that growth necessarily look like? So I hear that there's two camps there. Some people are skeptical about the future, but others are looking at smartphone adoption and just the way that things are trending as an indicator of where things are going. But how do you view the opportunity and especially streaming's growth from here on out.  [00:44:55] Matt Pincus: Okay. So I think there's a couple of different things there. You know, one is just on-demand streaming and what the growth curve looks like for on-demand stream. I think the broader question is what does overall growth look like for music consumption going forward? And I'm not sure those are totally the same thing. So, you know, listen, Spotify's done an epic job growing that business. It's a difficult business from just the word go, you know, you're relying on content licenses, you're inherently undifferentiated. Like on paper, it looks like this is impossible. And yet they build an unbelievable business out of it. And I really, you know, sort of think it's worth, you know, whatever opinions people have about streaming, to take a step back and realize that the people who did this originally, you know, Larry Jackson and Apple Music, the people who did it originally did a really fucking tremendous job of making it work. It will mature. There's some debate over whether it may have already started to mature in some distinct ways in Western, you know, sort of developed economies and even maybe in some of the larger sort of secondary territories. The really interesting places that we used to see at Songs in our own data are high population, low discretionary income countries, Indonesia, Philippines, a lot of the African continent. I'm not sure it's necessarily in all of those places going to be an on-demand streaming function that, you know, ultimately wins the day. There are people fucking with a model in a bunch of different ways over mobile. Boomplay in Africa is doing a buyout model. You know, it can be woven with other kinds of entertainment in a bundle in a bunch of different ways. So the question of where on-demand streaming goes, it is a little bit like anyone's guess, but there are different opinions between reasonable people about how the growth curve looks. You know, one of the things that I really love about the web three thing, and I think it's in the early days of really grinding the gears to figure out what actually works, 'cause like this sort of, you know, sucking on the laughing gas tank and you know, watching your crypto go up or over now. So it's entering into like a moment where people actually like have to figure out how it works. But the thing that I think is true is that it's unlocked a premium, that people are willing to pay over the cost of consuming music permanently. How big that premium is, we'll see. I think it was overinflated and inorganic in some of the early times of crypto, not a lot, humans are doing it and they're doing it for high ticket prices, you know, but if you look at some of the stuff, for example, that's going on in Asia, where people are throwing money at artists they like just because they want to you know, people paying sort of eye of the beholder price to be associated with an artist that they feel strongly about, that they love early in their career. Like, that's not going away. So whether, you know, the subscription fatigue is a reality, whether effective penny rates, times units of consumption are going up, flattening, going down. You know, we'll see. I mean, the Goldman Sachs people think they're going to go up forever. I'm not sure I totally agree with that. But what is true is that the willingness of people to invest in artists they love is increasing. And I don't think that's going back to zero, so it may not be, you know, that subgrowth continues on forever and on-demand streaming, but it may be that there are other ways that people can figure out how to engage with artists that keep the value, you know, exchange going up. Now, the one thing about streaming that's interesting is that, you know, the TikTok thing, in ways that people, like, talk shit about it all the time, whatever, but the thing that's interesting is that it did introduce frequency back into the equation. And one of the things about music that's unique is that you need to hear a song a number of times before you like it. Like at first you're like, I hate that. And then you hear it like five times and you're like, maybe I want to hear it again. And then by like, whatever end time you hear it, you're like, I can't get it out of my head. I got to hear it. It's like, Barry Weiss used to call it a record finding its bottom, where it would kind of come out and people would spin it, and then it would drop and then at some level would start to rise again. That's a function of promotion. That's a function of frequency. And in the early YouTube time and on-demand streaming time, you didn't really have that. Like, the people couldn't make something frequently play. And the AV platforms, not only TikTok, but also Snap and Instagram changed that equation and that music needs that. The thing that I'm wondering where it will happen, where it will come back into the equation though, is the music press, which has largely disappeared. And so I'm looking for who, on a consumer level there, people like yourself covering the business, part of it, that are doing an extraordinary job, but who sort of tells people what's good, gets it in front of them, filters it and what does that look like? It's probably not printed on a page. It's probably, it's sort of associated, I think in some way with what's going on with the NFT world, you know, with getting people to buy in, getting a community of people bought to projects, but it's still that same mechanism of filtering. And so I'm wondering where that's one of my thesis areas that I have my on. Where's the next one of those?  [00:50:08] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think this is a role that, of course, MTV and so many other places own and were able to do so well decades ago. And now the commonality I've always referred back to is that TikTok in many ways is the new MTV, but it's more so in the broader sense of just the cultural appeal, but not in that solo aspect of yes, if you want to know what this group of people are pushing, or what is the thing that's in, this is the place to go to find that. And I think it's very tough, the way that things are right now, just with how fragmented things are. But people are always going to want to feel like they're part of what's in or feel like they know what's in that desire also isn't going away. So I think there were always be a space for this, no matter how fragmented. [00:50:53] Matt Pincus: And people don't always know what they like. I mean, who knew that all these people love Kate Bush?  [00:50:58] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:50:58] Matt Pincus: We all understand why. She's amazing. Song's amazing, but people don't always know what they like until somebody shows it to them and repeats it. And then all of a sudden they can't get it out of their head. And that's the magic of music. So how that happens, you know, the cool kids like it up from the bottom, you know, like to be selective, know about the stuff first. The general audience likes to hear things multiple times and then, you know, be addicted to it. And I think that those things will reinvent themselves in a bunch of different ways going forward.  [00:51:27] Dan Runcie: For sure, Matt, before we let you go, do you have one big prediction for us on where you may see things in the next five years or one thing that you think will change from where music is right now to where things will be come 2027? [00:51:40] Matt Pincus: Well, I think as I touched on before, I think younger and younger people are going to be making music that the world reacts. And that is going to be miraculous when it happens. And not necessarily in like a sort of criss-cross Whip / Nae Nae type of way, but in a real, like expressing the core thoughts and feelings they have and getting them out there in a way that sounds good to the world. I think that's going to happen in a bunch of different ways. I think the way that repertoire moves across the planet is going to be revolutionary in the next five years. If there's one thing that's really going to change, you know, it used to be that sort of music went west to east and technology went east to west. Now, I think that's all scrambled eggs right now. If you look at stuff, like, you know, some of the music that's coming out of West Africa right now and how it gets into the global culture. It's not like in a, you know, used to be like you had like a world music business. Like, that's ripped up and thrown away. And so I think, you know, the way that the in-country community relates to the diaspora community in around the globe is going to be really different. You know, I think if there's one thing I have my eye on, it's sort of how all that stuff travels. And obviously, there's some obvious examples like BTS. But I think this is going to happen anywhere and everywhere. And one of the things that I heard somebody say the other day that I felt was really interesting is that the music business thinks about countries in its marketing. You know, they've Europe and Asia and Australia, Canada, US. It should be cities because music is about scenes and it's going to travel that way. And so your Amsterdam strategy is going to be different from your Seoul strategy is going to be different from your São Paulo strategy. And so if there's one like broad thing, I think we're going to look at the way that music travels around the planet in a completely different way.  [00:53:37] Dan Runcie: That's spot on. Look at the way we think about music here in the US. That should be an indication of how it should be looked at elsewhere, right? We know what Atlanta hip-hop sounds like compared to what you may hear in LA or even the New Orleans bounce sound. Like, it's so different place to place. So you look at a country like Nigeria, which is soon going to eclipse the US in population. What you may hear in Lagos would be completely different from other parts of the country. So that's a really great point.  [00:54:05] Matt Pincus: Yeah. So that would be like, if I, you know, sort of, if I had to obsess about something, it would be that.  [00:54:10] Dan Runcie: And I think a lot of people listening probably will too. This is a good one. I think that you got a bunch of notes for people to jot down. So Matt, thank you for making the time for this. This is fun. Thanks for coming on.  [00:54:21] Matt Pincus: Thank you so much. I just really appreciate your thinking to me. And it's a pleasure to talk to you about all this stuff. [00:54:27] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

The first weekend of Coachella is here: Bad Bunny, BLACKPINK, and Frank Ocean will headline for 2023. Coachella is expected to gross well over $100 million with over 100,000+ attendees per day. In this episode, broke it all down withMIDiA Research’s Tati Cirisano. Coachella started in 1999 as a niche festival for indie rock and quickly morphed into the biggest brand-name festival in the United States. These days, the Coachella brand is big enough to sell the experience itself, regardless of who’s performing — a rarity in the festival business.   Tati and I discuss why that is, the implications, and what the future of Coachella could hold. Here’s what we hit on: [1:20] Coachella’s brand sells itself [2:19] Festival’s origin story [7:09] Advantages and disadvantages of performing at Coachella [9:09] Success by the numbers [11:28] Coachella bump for brands, influencers, and local economy [16:38] Untapped opportunities for future Coachellas [22:02] How individual music show prices influence festival attendance [24:22] Artists that are above playing Coachella [27:08] The festival that’s the antithesis of Coachella  [31:10] Festival lineups becoming homogeneous  [39:36] Predicting Coachella’s 2024 headliners Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Tati Cirisano, @tatianacirisano Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Tati Cirisano: Being a performer at Coachella has become almost like a badge of honor or like something that goes on your one sheet, you know what I mean? Like, it's something that like gives you leverage as an artist and also is just, I don't know, seen as like it has a certain level of prestige. Like I would compare headlining at Coachella to like, in the same way that a lot of artists would love to get like a rolling stone or a billboard cover, even if like, regardless of whether that's selling or regardless of what that does, just that as a concept has, is just something that's like on a bucket list for most artists. I feel like headlining Coachella, if you're someone who's trying to be a superstar, that's like a bucket list item too. So yeah, it's, interesting How entrenched this festival has become in the music industry when you really think about it. [00:00:43] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:01:25] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is about the business behind Coachella and the unofficial start to music festival season in 2023. Coachella's history is pretty impressive when you think about it. This festival started in 1999. It was announced the week after Woodstock 99, and the shit show that that festival. With just 60 days’ notice to then put on this festival that attracted just 25,000 people and ticket prices cost $50 each, and the headliner was Beck and the festival didn't make it money that year. Didn't even make enough to continue in 2000, and it wasn't until its partnership with Golden Voice in 2001 that it was able to get things back on track and slowly build up to the behemoth of a festival that we see today. It's an event that attracts well over a hundred thousand people per day for the six days of the festival itself. Two straight weekends and it attracts some of the biggest artists in the world. And this year they're especially making its footprint scene on the global scene. The headliners include Bad Bunny, Black Pink, Frank Ocean. There's also artists like Burna Boy, Calvin Harris, and many others that are making up this year's lineup. To break it all down, I'm joined by Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research. We talk about what this festival does well, how it's shaped music culture overall, and its broader impact on music festival culture. Here's our breakdown. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:55] Dan Runcie: All right. Today's episode is all about festivals and the granddaddy of them all, at least in the US, Coachella. We're here to break it down with Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research. Tati, welcome back to the pod. [00:03:09] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, thanks for having me, excited to dive in.  [00:03:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this with you is because I feel like Coachella reminds me of some of the conversations we've had about, a lot of these platforms that they, in many ways have become the bigger brand and the destination than the actual creators on some of these platforms. And I feel like Coachella, at least from a music festival perspective, has some of that because at least in the US this is the most popular music festival. We've seen it expand over the past two decades. And while most music festivals do rely so heavily on their headliners, Coachella is one of the ones that it's still able to, in many ways, capture the same audience and just get a consistent following and culture around it. That doesn't seem like it's stood as dependent on the headliners, but they still get big headliners. So how do you think that shapes the festival and how fans themselves interact with that festival? [00:04:10] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. I mean, just to like prove out what you're saying, I think, I'm pretty sure Coachella tends to sell out or at least sell a lot of tickets before their headliners are even announced or before the lineup is announced at all. So you're totally right. I think it's become a big enough brand in itself that people are just kind of, ready to buy into it. And I think it's because Coachella has It's kind of created a culture. I remember kind of the celebrity era of Coachella when like, you know, Vanessa Hudgeons was like the queen of Coachella and you could go and run into Rihanna and Paris Hilton and like they kind of created that aesthetic of like the hippie style and all of these things. And so, when people buy a ticket, it's like they're buying into a lifestyle and a culture more so than the music itself. I think a lot of people go for that experience and to dress up and like buy into that, that lifestyle, maybe even more so than the music. and it does seem like Coachella over time, maybe because of that. The lineups have become a little bit more like crowd pleaser and mainstream to me. Like I was looking, just in preparation for this episode, like kind of looking at the history of Coachella and I didn't realize that when it started, part of what Paul Tollett wanted to do was create like a more niche festival where you would bring together like a lot of niche artists and hope that they all have big enough individual following that, you know, putting all that together. Would be enough for a festival. and it seems like the complete opposite today. In many ways like I think Coachella still sometimes tends to have like more left of center artists that line up this year is like super diverse and interesting. But it does seem like they've maybe become a little bit more mainstream over time. And maybe it is because the people are going not as much for the music as they're going for, like the vibe of it all. [00:06:02] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and dating back to that first festival, it's kind of crazy that this even became what it is today because it starts in 1999. They announced this festival and put tickets on sale. I think it was two months before the actual festival started, so not that much time. They announced it the same week or the week after Woodstock 99, which is just a complete shit show, which said so much about where people viewed a festival like this and their headliner was Beck. They didn't make as much money, I wanna say like 25,000 people showed. So they couldn't even have a festival in 2000. They had to wait until the next year and do the partnership with Golden Voice and make it happen. And then, yeah, fast forward to where we are today, where it is mainstream pop artists that are doing it. And what was once this niche culture of people that just really enjoyed indie rock music. It now is this mainstream thing. It almost reminds me of something like Comic-Con in that same way where it was this nerd thing with people that you know wanna do live action, role play, and Dungeons and Dragons, or dress up like Zelda. And now every mainstream celebrity is there to promote their movie. [00:07:19] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. And in the same way, you're going to dress up, you're going to like, kind of put on a costume, Coachella, it is kind of a costume for most people and like have that experience regardless of who's playing.so yeah, I totally agree. And I think the other thing, like over time Coachella has gotten to a place because of all that we're talking about, where it has such a, power on the festival market, like written into its contracts, like it has a radius clause that they get to release their lineup first. They are the first festival of the season, mid-April is like pretty early, so there's also now like I think built in ways that Coachella tends to be kind of the North Star for all of the festivals, and so it's just the one that people are going to regardless of, yeah, regardless of who's playing. [00:08:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I also feel like because it has a bit more of that brand and that audience command, regardless of who the artist is, I almost feel like it has a little bit of that Super Bowl effect where artists want to be able to perform on that stage because sure, they may bring some fans themselves, but they're likely gonna be reaching a new audience and having exposure to people that may not necessarily have tapped in general compared to, and I think Coachella is similar, but if you compare that to some of these other festivals that are so heavily reliant on that headliner themself. There's a case to be made that, okay, well if the headliner pulled those fans into the festival, then they have to then share those tickets essentially, you know, soft tickets with everyone else. How does that compare to actual hard tickets that they could have done themselves? So, I feel like there's a Coachella advantage there.  [00:09:01] Tati Cirisano: And there's also a disadvantage in that you don't get, I mean, I know that I'm pretty sure already, like the data that you get on who's in your seats at shows is pretty minimal. But when you go to a festival, you don't really know who's going to see the festival for you and you don't really know who dis how many people discovered you or how many people came to your set. It's not the same as like if you sell out an arena, you know, the number of seats that were there, you know what I mean? So that's also an interesting thing is like you are probably getting a greater audience and this artist might be the whole reason the festival is selling tickets, but nobody's actually able to quantify that. [00:09:34] Dan Runcie: Right. And I feel like for some artists too, there's almost a bit of risk mitigation that can come with doing a festival. Risk mitigation may be the wrong word, but I think that's certain artists that have a lot of buzz or may have a lot of fanfare, it may be a lot harder for them to sell hard tickets. But if they could perform in front of this large festival crowd, they get a big advance or they get a big guarantee with the, promoter and through their agent as well, they can feel much more confident performing in front of, you know, thousands of fans or maybe even tens of thousands of fans on stage, even though they may not be able to sell, you know, sell out a house of Blues for instance. [00:10:14] Tati Cirisano: Totally. Yeah. No, and it also feels like being a performer at Coachella has become almost like a badge of honor or like something that goes on your one sheet, you know what I mean? Like, it's something that like gives you leverage as an artist and also is just, I don't know, seen as like it has a certain level of prestige. Like I would compare headlining at Coachella to like, in the same way that a lot of artists would love to get like a rolling stone or a billboard cover, even if like, regardless of whether that's selling or regardless of what that does, just that as a concept has, is just something that's like on a bucket list for most artists. I feel like Coachella headlining Coachella, if you're someone who's trying to be a superstar, that's like a bucket list item too. So yeah, it's, interesting How entrenched this festival has become in the music industry when you really think about it. [00:11:02] Dan Runcie: Yeah, let's look at some of the numbers here, cuz I think that's another fascinating piece. So we don't have hard numbers for this. A lot of it is based on past things that have been shared. But in 2017, this festival grossed to 114 million. And they had around 125,000 people coming per weekend. So if you roughly do the math thing, you look at ticket sales, I feel like that's like just under $500, like per attendee that ends up coming to the festival. And we likely saw similar, maybe even greater as well, because that doesn't take into account sponsorships that doesn't take into account these brand activations and other things as well. And I know that Coachella is a festival that has taken some shit for not paying artists well, at least the artists that are further down that list, that have much smaller font size, I think it's seen as paying the headliners. Well, at least I was talking to, someone that understands the business well, and their estimates were that the headliners this year, so you have Bad Bunny, Black Pink, and Frank Ocean. Their thought was, Frank Ocean and Black Pink got 4 million per weekend, so 8 million total and that Bad Bunny likely got 5 million per weekend. So then 10 total and then I believe that Calvin Harris's name was, towards the bottom of that list, like returned to the desert, Calvin Harris, I think he got one and per weekend. And then the artists that are on let second row, like Burna Boy and a few others, I think it was around like seven 50K per weekend but then it's a steep drop off after that, right? I mean, I remember hearing from Cardi B, this was, you know, after invasion of privacy, but still before, you know, she blew up, blew up. Or maybe it was the year before that, I forget. But she talked about how she was paid 70K, but she saw it as an investment in her career as an opportunity to pull up and get more. And obviously she's someone that you know, is now getting a million dollars. Private shows where she's doing 35 minute sets, but I feel like that like plays into that. So I don't know if all of those artists are getting paid, but yeah, I think some of them are willing to take that because of the exposure.  [00:13:14] Tati Cirisano: Right. Yeah, I think you're probably right. And the number that I would love to know is like how much money that, cuz I know you, you were also talking about the boost of the local economy and that I think it was400 million, in Coachella Valley. I'm also wondering, like, even outside of that, just the whole business of it, like you mentioned the sponsorships, the influencer deals, you know, H & M having a Coachella section in their store. Like all of these things, I'm almost more fascinated by all of these kind of like satellite businesses around Coachella than the business of Coachella itself like I would love to know the total number for how much revenue this festival is just kind of generating for all these things outside of it, if that makes sense like, cuz it seems to go so far, like e every store has a festival section in March and you know that what they're really talking about is Coachella. [00:14:06] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Yeah. Like, could we look at, I'm sure they wouldn't share this, but if Forever 21 and H & M and those types of stores shared, how much more do they get from, you know, their festival and attire, whether that's, you know, the flower headdresses or whatever, you know, the crowns and the stuff that people wear or just shut general outfits as well. And then I forget the name of the brand, but there's one of those brands that I'm sure many of them do, but they pay for all the hotels that are in Palm Springs, that are in Indio in the general area, put all the influencers there, buy all the clothes for them, and then buy all their tickets and just have them work almost the same way a reporter would work the festival.  [00:14:47] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. like what is the influencer economy around Coachella specifically? Like how much money is there? I would love to know. [00:14:56] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I feel like, because if you count that, I wouldn't be surprised if you're over a billion, especially like just when you count the overall impact for sure.  [00:15:05] Tati Cirisano: did you happen to see the price of the first Coachella ticket? When you were doing your research,  [00:15:12] Dan Runcie: I saw this a while ago, but I forget now. How much was it?  [00:15:16] Tati Cirisano: Guess, guess,  [00:15:17] Dan Runcie: oh, guess. Okay. I'm gonna guess it's like $75. [00:15:20] Tati Cirisano: It was $50 [00:15:22] Dan Runcie: Oh, wow.  [00:15:23] Tati Cirisano: Was and this year's was $550 and that's before, so  [00:15:28] Dan Runcie: Wow. Wow. What a come up 50 bucks to see all those artists and then only 20 other 25,000 other people there.  Wow, that's something crazy. Yeah. I mean, so 10X there, everything's grown. And then even just the expansion, right? Because I think it was around like 2007 or so that they first went to multi-day, then they went to multiple weekends. Yeah [00:15:51] Tati Cirisano: I wouldn't be shocked if they added a third. I think anything more than a third weekend would be kind of overkill and maybe wouldn't be special anymore, but I actually would not be shocked if they made it a three weekend thing.  [00:16:02] Dan Runcie: Yeah,  [00:16:02] Tati Cirisano: One of these days.  [00:16:04] Dan Runcie: I feel like it, because if you look at the opportunity, we can talk about this now, but if you look at the livestream play that's been happening, they've only been expanding that. So this was the first year that. So YouTube has been partnering to livestream this show since 2011, I believe, but this is the first year that all six stages are now gonna have a dedicated stream. And I think the pattern that we've seen now is you have a artist like Beyonce, she obviously gets the full recording of her show. She then sells that to Netflix for 20 million dollars or however much that deal is, and then she ends up monetizing that. I assume that there's likely some compensation or some participation that Coachella and more broadly golden voice get from that piece of it. But what could the stepped up livestream look like further. I mean, I've watched it in past years and it's nice, but could there ever be a Super Bowl level production that goes into at least some particular part of these artists sets? Because they're clearly putting more and more into it as it does become a big stage and you do have a little bit more flexibility of Yeah, it's not a 13 minute set, it's a hour long thing and the higher the production value, the more fans are gonna wanna see it, the more YouTube can get more ad dollars for it and the more goes to Coachella too. [00:17:26] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, no, I think there's definitely an opportunity for that and not just higher production quality of filming the show, but also when you mentioned the Super Bowl, like having like commentators and doing interviews and there's like know what I mean like there's like a halftime like conversation. I could see there being like hosts and like interviewing fans and things like that. I feel like that's probably happened at festivals before. before. I haven't watched that many festival live streams but I'm trying to remember, like Glastonbury's was really good, this past year and it was everywhere like, because they did such a good job with the live stream. There were clips on every social media app I looked at. It was all over the news. Like it really became this cultural moment.so I think, yeah, I think there's definitely an opportunity to like have a higher quality live stream that people will pay for. I also think on the other end of things, I wonder how much more. Like UGC Live streams will come into play. I was thinking about this because, bill Wordy, who's the former, billboard, like editor-in-chief, he has a newsletter, you probably know, what is it  called? Full Write No Cap  [00:18:28] Dan Runcie: Full Rate, No cap.  [00:18:30] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, he spoke recently, or he wrote recently about how so many Taylor Swift fans are live streaming the entire. concert for the Eras tour on TikTok and on YouTube and getting tips for it. And these streams are like pretty low quality and they're often like from the nosebleeds and you can't even see Taylor, but they're getting like thousands of viewers and people are paying them to do it, and he kind of suggested, like what could the opportunity be here, whether that's artists partnering with TikTok to livestream it or what I think is more interesting maybe is like partnering with creators to do this. If they're already doing it, why not create an infrastructure around it? But then I also don't wanna advocate for like, everybody to be at the show live streaming the entire show and like have their phones in their faces and like I know artists hate that. I know fans hate that, I hate that. So it's an interesting question and I don't know exactly how it would look, but I feel like UGC live streams could come into play like on the opposite end of these, like more high production shows or live streams.  [00:19:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think so too because you, of course, there's always gonna be something for the high production quality camera that you see, and even that I still do believe is under monetized to a lot of extent. I mean, we don't have public numbers, but I could just assume based on what you see from sports and other rights. But the UGC thing is huge because I just feel like you could have some unique angle. You're getting the experience yourself. I'd love to know like what those tipping numbers do look like. But yeah, I think it's huge because while a tour. I think there may feel like a less scarce aspect for that, and just in the fact that, yeah, you know, Taylor is only doing this once, but she's doing roughly 50 shows, right? But there's only gonna be two of these times that, at least right now, that Frank Ocean is gonna be doing this headline set and it's, you know, when we release this podcast, it'll be right in this timeframe but like that's it. Like there's scarcity around that people wanna see that they're gonna wanna go back and watch it time and time again. So I think there's something there. I feel like we start to see some of this where, I'm sure you've seen it. Artists are starting to record one of the shows from their concert and then have that as something that you could watch on Amazon or something you can watch on HBO Max or Hulu. So we're seeing some of that, but I still feel like there's an opportunity to get more fan, like even if you get fan views in there and get them, have some type of participation from when the doc ends up getting sold or whatever that is. I feel like there's a few interesting ways to do it. [00:21:04] Tati Cirisano: I mean, I even think about like YouTube reaction videos and how like that's such a huge space of people. For all sorts of things, like listening to the new Taylor Swift album and live reacting, and people watched that and I could see a similar thing at a festival like live reaction to the Frank Ocean Set. And then afterwards you're like telling everyone what you thought. Like again, I don't wanna advocate for more phones at shows, but I feel like people are already doing this and so maybe it's a question of like how to support it and make it a better experience. I don't know. [00:21:36] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it'll be interesting to explore. I feel like the other unique thing about Coachella, we can talk a bit about pricing. You mentioned itself the price is 10X'd in 24 years since the first Coachella. But as this festival becomes more expensive as touring itself, especially to see these headliner type artists becomes more expensive. You talked a lot about, or you mentioned how does that impact the actual experience and how does that impact what fans may wanna do? Like how do they justify buying separate tickets to see just one artist versus being able to see multiple ones in a festival? What are your thoughts on that? [00:22:13] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's multiple factors kind of pushing toward festivals. Being a kind of solution for a lot of fans today. One is, as I've, you know, shouted from the rooftops in so many of our conversations, like listenership is really fragmenting and people tend to listen to way a wider spread of artists today, making it kind of hard to have a mainstream or a superstar, or harder to have a superstar. And they're also focusing more on songs often than artists. and then on top of that, costs for pretty much everything are skyrocketing. So yeah, if you're someone who listens to a wide range of artists and you're more likely to be, to kind of center your fandom around songs than artists themselves, and you also are not maybe able to afford going to five different shows anymore, why would you not rather go to see a festival? And not that festivals aren't expensive, cuz their enormously expensive, especially when you factor in travel and the outfits like we've talked about and all of these things. But I just given all the trends with, listenership that we're seeing, I feel like festivals will become even more popular for consumers. [00:23:23] Dan Runcie: I also think some of this may shift genre by genre, and to some extent I do look at it. A bit bittersweet to some extent because I look at festivals like, let's look at two of them rolling Loud and this Lovers and Friends Festival that I know had been canceled and I know they, had recently had one rolling loud, of course, is primarily rappers and hip hop artists, lovers and friends is more of that R and B that I think that a lot of millennials and even some,younger Gen X folks grew up with. Because those festivals exist in that same way. It's great to be able to bring those artists together. I do wonder though, has that dynamic hurt any of those artists impact to be able to generate not just real fans that may definitely wanna see them by buying hard tickets, but how does that help them grow the fan base in a way that doesn't make them just reliant on doing, rolling loud and then just getting an upfront check to do that as opposed to the long-term gains that could come from. Okay, yeah, you may not be performing for as big of an audience relative to your social following, but what could that build up to down the road? And I think even for some of these legacy artists that are doing lovers and friends fest, I remember I was talking with someone, about this recently and they were like, yeah, you know, as much as you like lovers and friends fest like t hose artists are the more indirect way, seeing them all the way they do now.  [00:24:48] Tati Cirisano: Right, like the festival makes a lot of like on paper, logical sense for consumers, but does it make sense for fandom? Like is it actually helping artists nurture fan bases or is it just feeding more into what I was saying about, you know, a lot of people just kind of listening to songs and not artists So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and a lot of these artists that are playing. Those smaller, more niche festivals are playing a ton of them. And if it's like Megan Thee Stallion is playing at 10 different festivals, why are you going to buy a ticket to her tour? Like, I think it could kind of cannibalize some of those sales or like diminish people's interests in, going to the tour as well, or maybe they go and they're like, oh my God, Megan was incredible during her shorter set. I want to go see her on tour like, I don't know, maybe it, goes both ways, but I do think that we might see more and more of those smaller and more niche festivals for all of the reasons that I've mentioned. Like I think we've seen more and more, there's so many nostalgia festivals now there's so many, like speaking to a very specific scene, like, I forget what it's called, but there was one that was almost like, it was kind of like emo night, but as a festival, like I think we're, I think we're probably gonna see even more of that, and those are gonna be the ones that don't cost you, you know, two grand to go to Coachella.  and it's maybe a little bit more accessible. so yeah, I think, I think we're probably gonna see more of those type of niche ones. [00:26:14] Dan Runcie: Do you think that there's certain artists that don't need Coachella? I know we talked about how it's beneficial for headliners, but I thought a lot about the weekend doing Coachella last year, and he was a late edition, Travis Scott was supposed to be the headliner, but after Astroworld and the tragedy there, he didn't do it the weekend does it? The weekend already had this tour planned. He did that tour in Southern California, he had still performed at SoFi Stadium later on that year. I don't know how the radius and the timeframe works out there, but I'm sure there must have been enough time there. But I wonder if, okay, beyond the $8 million, we could assume that he got from that. I mean, that's roughly what he would make from one of these stadium rougnights that he would do on his own tour. Did that benefit him in the same way? I don't know. I mean, I think I can clearly see the benefit for Black Pink or even Bad Buddy and others where, hey, this is a statement. You're here on one of the biggest stages we have in the US and you aren't from this country and you don't live here. There's a big, influence that that can have, but does it make sense for the weekend, right? I know that people have often talked about when would Taylor Swift do it, and whether that's talking about the Super Bowl or even Coachella, but even if we just talk about Coachella even if you paid Taylor 10 million dollars or 12 million dollars, is that going to be more beneficial for her when she can sell out football stadiums herself doing her own thing? So [00:27:47] Tati Cirisano: Right. It's been more important for Coachella than it is for Taylor Swift. to be at Coachella, I guess. [00:27:54] Dan Runcie: I would think so, because I mean, on one hand, yes, we know Coachella is gonna sell out regardless, but they could get more of those fans that may do participate in other, you know, economic, you know, aspects of the festival. [00:28:08] Tati Cirisano: Totally. Yeah. And they have more control over things and everything. Yeah, I think, you're right, for an artist like The Weeknd or Taylor Swift, it's probably more about like checking off that bucket list item or like having that prestige of performing at Coachella than it is like a material benefit. I think you're probably right to question that, but then you're right. for an artist like Black Pink, it means a lot more and is probably a lot more impactful in terms of like revenue and fan building and things like that. [00:28:35] Dan Runcie: Another topic you brought up about festivals right before we had started recording, you're talking about a festival you had went to recently in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it was spread out across different music venues in the city itself. And you also said you're done with festivals on festival grounds. So can you talk a little bit about that? Cuz I think that could be interesting to dig into a bit. [00:29:01] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, no, it was perfect timing to do this episode because I went to the antithesis of Coachella last weekend, which is, a festival called Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee it was a 10 year anniversary of this festival and in terms of the types of performers there, it was a lot of kind of like experimental and independent and folk music, instrumental artists, like Sun Ra Arkestra was one of the performers. I also, my favorite performer was a rock band from Niger called Atron Delea, like it was all these kind of like from all over artists and so that was one part of it that was cool. It was very niche and it was very much a scene, kind of like I'm talking about having these like more niche scene oriented festivals and it was held across the venues in Knoxville, of which there are like, 10 or 15, and they're all about a 10 minute walk from each other. And they also had performances in movie theaters and in cathedrals and in these sort of like non-traditional spaces and. It was just such a more enjoyable experience to me than being locked in a pen in like a parking lot and like, you know, having to pay $10 for water and like feeling very Lord of the Flies for 12 hours like, it was such a better experience and it also struck me how much it could be, you know, a big thing for the venues in that area. It's a big thing for the community and for the culture of the city, like, I don't think you could like turn Coachella into a festival, like across the venues in LA or like New York or something like, I don't think it would work for something at that scale, but it did make me think that, there could be more of, I think, and I'm sure that there are, I'm sure others exist, but that there could be more of these types of festivals that are a bit smaller, a bit more niche, and are held in a city. And you're also bringing the music to consumers rather than people having to travel to someplace like LA like just having these festivals in smaller cities. I just think there's a big opportunity there and also just to innovate the festival experience in general. Like, why do we have to be, you know, in a parking lot and, you know, all that kind of stuff. There's been better. Innovations in like, like I know the food at festivals has gotten a lot better over time. It used to be like frozen pizza was like your only option, and now there's like crazy food tents. But yeah, it just got me thinking about like how to innovate the festival experience and what the future of things looks like. [00:31:23] Dan Runcie: That's a good point because it makes me think of the film festival variety that we see where there's different vibes, but a lot of it is based in existing venues, and it does bring a bit more traffic in general activity to that area, but it's a bit of a different experience, right? Whether it's, you know, Tribeca or even here in San Francisco or in Sundance, I mean you could also get a little bit of a different vibe too, where, okay, if you wanna go skiing in Park City, then you can go to Sundance in January, right? If you want to go on the French Riviera afterward, you can go to Cannes like there's so many different vibes, but I feel like in general, when people think of music festivals, it is wearing that Coachella outfit and being somewhere in an open field with not a lot of shade and, you know, like that type of thing. So I feel like it couldn't then, yeah, it could just bring a little bit more variety to some of these things. And the fact that it already exists is good, but it could probably bring a bit more, you know, boom, to some of these other areas that may want something unique and ideally, if they're not overlapping on headliners, which is another thing that I know is an ongoing challenge with these festivals. I feel like when Outkast did their whole festival run where I forgot how many they did in 2014, that was the first year that stuck out to me where I was like, oh, some of these artists are just going boom, boom, boom. Same festival. Same festival. So you have that some artists that would do it in the same years, but then you also have some artists that will just come back and do the same festival time and time again, and it really isn't that much different. What are your thoughts on that?  [00:33:02] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. I wanna say one more thing about the big years thing, really quick before that question, which is, how that kind of festival could expand the audience, like the tam of festival goers like I would say about half of the people at Big Year's were 55 plus, these are not people that are going to Coachella, you know, like, I mean, maybe they are, but I, I think there's other demographics and other age groups that would enjoy going to a festival if there was a bit of a different experience. So I feel like there's a lot of groups that were not hitting with the traditional festival market. and like this venue model could be kind of like that. but yeah, in terms of festival lineups getting a lot more homogenous, I kind of can't help but attribute it to the fragmentation trend that we've been talking about and how much harder it is to create a new mainstream superstar today. Like, y eah, I think that a lot of festivals are finding it harder and harder to find these kind of crowd pleasingheadline acts and there aren't as many new ones coming up. And it also seems like, festivals are kind of continuing to dip into these legacy acts from times when the industry was less congested and less fragmented like the Glastonbury lineup, it's Yeah, Arctic Monkeys, Elton John and Guns N' Roses. And it's like this could be the lineup a decade ago. So it does feel like not only are festival lineups becoming more homogenous, but a lot of them are tending to book legacy acts rather than newer, mainstream stars. Maybe because there aren't as many newer mainstream stars, I don't know. [00:34:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that, that headline spot is probably where some of, I don't even wanna say contention, but some of that decision making can lie in, maybe a lot of this applies to festivals that aren't like Coachella a bit because they are a bit more reliant on the headliners themselves, and because of that, they're more likely to make, what they feel is safer picks and unfortunately, a lot of these safer picks end up being more male, more white, and more legacy acts that have likely been there before. So if they're like, okay, well we knew that Arctic Monkeys were, you know, huge in 2012, then let's bring them back in so we can try to command some of that same audience that is like, well, you also have local stars and others around the world that don't fit into those same categories that could do it. But they feel like that's a risk, unfortunately, and then if they do invite those folks, it's for less money and their name is smaller and they're not presented as a headliner in the same way. So I think that's one of the downsides of it. And the fact, I think fragmentation plays into this, cuz I think, you know, regardless of who you are, it has just become even harder to have artists break out. The artists that do break out, they're more likely to maybe break out within their particular region. It's harder to have that same global appeal in that same way and I think we've seen maybe a few outlier examples of that more recently. Especially when you look at Coachella's lineup this year with Burna Boy and Black Pink and Bad Bunny all having prominent placement in their festival. I'm curious what that looks like in future years. How do you maintain that? Because even from that perspective, yeah, there's other artists that are huge, but they've already kind of gotten some of the biggest ones that we've at least had at this particular moment. But there's others. I'm curious. I forget if Dual Lipa has headlined one of the big, huge festivals in the world, I don't think she has yet, right? [00:36:41] Tati Cirisano: That's a good question. She hasn't headlined Coachella, she definitely had a big set at Glastonbury, but I don't know if she headlined. I don't know.  [00:36:48] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. I feel like that may have been a few years ago, but I forget if that was like before or after,  [00:36:53] Tati Cirisano: Oh yeah.  [00:36:53] Dan Runcie: of Nostalgia tour and then after that, just thinking of other artists that have gotten huge in the past recent years, whether you have Billy Eilish or SZA, I mean, there's a few but. I'd be interested to see whether or not those names have become headliners, maybe we're seeing some of these festivals do this now, where outside Lasnier, which is, you know, right here in my backyard of San Francisco, their most recent poster. Instead of having three headliners, one per day, they have 10 artists that have big font size names, and then they have the other 60 or 70 that all have, you know, smaller, but it's all kind of the same. And, you know, you just look at the names of these artists. I'll just say right now for outside Lasnier, Kendrick Lamar, Foo Fighters, Odessa, Lana Del Ray, the 1975, Megan Thee Stallion, Zed, Janelle Monáe, Maggie Rogers, and Fisher. and I mean, I'm, I'm not shy to be mean, I'm not trying to call anyone out, but there's certain artists on that I just mentioned there that would not headline outside lands if it was presented as, oh, these are the three headliners. And they may not even be on that second row either, but. Is that in some way reflective of where things are, where it may make it easier, and of course you could probably guess based on the order of those names, Kendrick Lamar's name is at the top, you know, of this list. But still like, is this some type of reflection of this fragmentation where you have all these different genres, most of these artists, more modern, current artists, except for, you know, Foo Fighters, a bit more legacy that has continued to play on but I wonder how often we'll see that with other festivals that are maybe closer to outside lands and Coachella where, you know, still a major huge festival, but they're not getting the same headliners that Coachella is. [00:38:42] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. No, I think, you're absolutely right and I think we're gonna see that type of lineup more, at the same time as we're seeing that, there are fewer of these like Beyonce level mainstream stars, we're seeing a growth in the middle tier. We're seeing a lot more of these like, cult stars and also artists on that list who are huge but aren't really at the level of, you know, some of like Madonna or you know, these artists of the past, these icons of the past. So I think it makes more sense rather than having, you know, three headliners to have like six, not as huge artists still have a really big following. I think that makes a lot more sense, for the festival, the people going, and I think we will start to see more of that just because of the way that fragmentation is playing out. Yeah. I also wonder, when we're gonna start to see like the millennial version of legacy artists start to perform, like, was funny when I saw like the lovers and friends line up, I was like, oh my God. when you start getting an nostalgia festival marketed to you, that's when you know you're getting old. That's when you know you're no longer like the youngest And like, I wonder, when we'll start to maybe tap into like 90s and 2000s era. Sort of icons, like I would love to see like Missy Elliot headline, Coachella, like that type of thing. And I wonder if that's gonna be like the next step once we've exhausted all the times that like Foo Fighters can possibly headline a festival  [00:40:09] Dan Runcie: I know, right? Like  [00:40:10] Tati Cirisano: Who are also that era but, you know, what I mean, like.  [00:40:13] Dan Runcie: For sure. For sure. Yeah, because I feel like we saw. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were headliners maybe around 10 years ago, and then they had brought, the Tupac hologram out infamously. You remember that? So, we did have that. And of course, you know, that kind of reminds me of the Super Bowl that, from a couple years ago. But I do feel like there's a sweet spot there, given. Where Usher is right now, the popularity of his residency, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps back on this circuit and he's doing less of the lovers and friends and he's doing more of the headlining major music festivals  [00:40:49] Tati Cirisano: He would be amazing.  [00:40:50] Dan Runcie: There's a huge opportunity there. Yeah. Great performer. I think he still does great stuff. I wanted to see if I can go make it to Vegas to go catch this, residency before it ends. But yeah, I I think that there is a sweet spot there for that. I mean, you think about other artists, I think Justin Timberlake has probably done some of these already, so we've seen him do them. I don't know if Britney Spears would probably perform in that same way. But we'll see. I feel like there's a number of artists that they can tap into from that era. [00:41:18] Tati Cirisano: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.  [00:41:21] Dan Runcie: And yeah. I guess before we wrap things up, are there any predictions you have then for let's predict what 2024 would look like? Three headliners. Who would you think would most likely be a headliner for Coachella 2024?  [00:41:37] Tati Cirisano: I would say SZA, probably, I would say Dua Lipa I think she makes a lot of sense as a headliner too, just in terms of like how, I hate like, I don't wanna say like crowd pleasing or mainstream, but like, cause I feel like that sounds like I'm giving her shade and I'm not. I think she's incredibly talented, but like she would please a, a big swath of people with her music and she's a cool performer and she has some time now, I think, since she's not touring. but, okay. So Du Lipa, SZA, This is about to be an all female headliners. This is a bit of wishful thinking, but I would love to see, cause I don't know if she's ready for this yet, but I would love to see Rosalia, headline Coachella. I think she's getting there and I actually saw her in 2019 at Coachella. She was playing the tiniest stage ever and she treated it like she was in a stadium. Like the production quality and the dancers and just like everything she put into it was incredible. And she's risen a lot over the past few years. So, yeah, that's my trio. [00:42:35] Dan Runcie: Nice. Nice. All right. We have one in common. We have SZA, so I'm gonna go SZA, Madonna, and Usher. I think that's gonna be my prediction, I feel like, Madonna has this tour coming up. Maybe she'll cap things off with a Coachella performance. But I feel like yeah, if you're gonna have this tour, I forget the name of it, you're gonna go back through all her eras. I feel like there's something unique there, so, so,  yeah. I know, I know. And we'll have to revisit this. We still have a number of festival lineups to get announced this year, so we'll have to check back in and see how do these continue to develop, what continues to shape in how these festivals continue to evolve over time. So tati, this was great. Thanks for coming on. [00:43:17] Tati Cirisano: Yeah, Thanks for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. [00:43:19] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:43:20] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

This week, I’m running back an interview I did with Will Page in 2022. It was our most popular episode of 2022 and we talked about a lot of topics that are still timely and still being debated right now in the industry.  One of the most unique insights into the state of the music business today doesn’t come from a record label exec. Not from an agent. Not from an artist. No, it comes from Scottish economist Will Page, who served that role for Spotify from 2012 to 2019 — a period of explosive growth for the streaming giant. But if you ask Page about streaming’s future, he’s not nearly as optimistic as the rest of the industry. “The party has to come to an end,” as he told me on this episode of Trapital. Page believes the music industry is transitioning from a “herbivore market” to a “carnivore” one. In other words, future growth will not come from brand-new customers — it’ll come from the streaming services eating into each other’s market share. Not only has subscriber counts possibly tapped out in Page’s opinion, but streaming services have also put a ceiling on revenues by charging only $9.99, a price that hasn’t budged in 20 years despite giant leaps in technology and music catalog size.   That against-the-grain prediction was one of many Will shared with me during our in-depth interview. But he has plenty more research- and experience-backed thoughts on touring, vinyl records, Web 3.0, and everything in between. Believe me, this is an interview you don’t want to miss. Here’s everything we covered:  [3:21] The Global Business of Music [4:15] Vinyl Records $1.5 Billion Recovery [08:54] Will’s Bearish View About The Future Of Streaming [14:46] Ongoing Price War Between Streaming Services [18:33] The Changing Economics Of Music Touring  [21:44] Performing At Festivals Vs. Tours  [24:57] The Evolution Of Music Publishing [28:34] How Music Revenue Gets Distributed To Publishers [32:41] What Does A “Post-Spotify Economy” Look Like?  [33:44] The Current Business Landscape Of Hip-Hop  Listen to Will’s mix right here: https://www.mixcloud.com/willpagesnc/we-aint-done-with-2021/ Check out Will’s Podcast, Bubble Trouble, where he breaks down how financial markets really work. Read Will’s book, Tarzan Economics: Eight Principles for Pivoting Through Disruption. Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Will Page, @willpageauthor  Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Will Page: When you have 110 million households, and you have more than 110 million subscribers in the United States, then we are in a race to the finishing line before herbivore turn into carnivores. In oil, we have this expression called peak oil, which is we know that we've extracted more oil in the world than is left to extract an oil that's left is gonna be even more costly to get out the ground. I think we're in peak subscriber territory where at some point soon we're gonna start seeing growth happen through stealing other customers as opposed to finding your own. [00:00:29] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:01:12] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: For today's episode, let's revisit the most popular episode that we did in 2022. That's the conversation that I had with Will Page. Will Page is the Former Chief Economist for Spotify, the author of Pivot, and Advisor consultant to many of the companies that are leading the music industry today. In this conversation, Will and I talked about a lot of topics that are still timely and still being debated right now in the industry. The price of streaming. Streaming, especially for Spotify, is still $9.99 in the. Pound and Euro in many markets. But Spotify wants to keep that price for several reasons. They want to continue to grow as much as they can. They also want something in return from the record labels. They want some type of concession if they're going to raise their prices. But as we've heard, the push has got louder and louder from the record label CEOs that want that price to increase. So we talk about some of the origins of that debate and where that may be. Then we also talk about some of the competition among the digital service providers as well, whether it's Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and others. We talk about how it's transitioning from a herbivore market to a carnivore market now that the market's getting saturated. You probably heard that term a bit over the past year that originated from this podcast. So we talk about that a number of other timely things and more we'll eventually have will back on the podcast soon. But this is a nice precursor to refresh the memory a bit and with some of the topics that are still going on in music today. Here's our episode. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:48] Dan Runcie: Some of the work you've done for a company that is very heavily focused on playlist, which is Spotify, and I think more broadly looking at the streaming era we're in right now. This is a great time to chat because we just saw the IFPI results and streaming as continuing to grow as we've seen. But I feel like you probably spotted a few interesting trends about where things are heading, and I think that's a question mark for a lot of people. Streaming continues to grow, but how far can it grow? What are we seeing in terms of differences within genres or regions? What are some of the things that stuck out [00:03:21] Will Page: to you? I'll give you a couple. The first one is the global business. Well, last time I looked at United Nations, I think there's 208 countries in the world. The global yearbook that we're discussing here has, I think 58. So we have to be careful what we define as global. I think Africa's clubbed together as one continent and where they need to work on that. But I think the global business is growing, but it's also becoming more American. So if you go back to when Spotify launched America, 22, 20 3% of the business round about just over a fifth. Today it's 37%. So we have seen the business grow and become more American, and that raises questions, you know, economic questions like globalization, questions, should poor countries catch up with rich ones? The theory says yes. The reality often says no. So we're seeing this kind of lopsided growth where the business is growing, but it's growing in favor of an American market. The biggest country is growing at the fastest. That's a positive problem, but I just wanna flag it, which is, that's not how it was supposed to play out. And then the second thing I'd wanna point to as well is just vinyl. this vinyl recovery is just, well, I don't know how much my bank balance is responsible for this vinyl recovery, but I'm telling you, Is define the laws of gravity. Now, we're now looking at vinyl being worth one and a half billion dollars, which is more than it's been worth in the past 30 years. It's worth more than CDs, cassettes, and downloads, the three formats that we're supposed to declare that vinyl is dead. But there's two things you can kind of cut out the vinyl recovery, which I think will be of real interest to your audience. Firstly, on the consumer side. I saw a survey which suggested that the majority, just over half of all vinyl buyers today, don't own a record player. I mean, something's cooking here. So what are we buying it for? I'll extend that as well. the cost of wall frames to frame vinyl on your wall often cost more than the record itself. So I'm willing to pay more for vinyl to you know, framed on my wall than I am for the record. And by the way, I don't have a record player. There's a lot of people who will tick those bizarre boxes. But on the crater side, something else is interesting. This'll take a little bit of working through. But if we think about the streaming model, it's monetizing consumption. That's what it does. So if there's an album with 10 songs, three killer and seven filler songs, and an album, and let's say Dan Runcie wrote the Three Killer Tracks and Will Page, he wrote the Seven Duff Filler Tracks. On streaming, Dan might walk away with all the money and I'll walk away from none because we're only streaming the killer tracks and nobody's touching the filler. As the album model kicks out from vinyl, I would get 70% of the cash. That's crazy because nobody knows what's being consumed and it's a lot of cash. If I just kind of do some rough math here of a million fans streaming your hip hop record on Spotify, and let's say they're stream. 200 times in a month when the album drops, you only need 20,000 of them of that million to make the same amount of money from vinyl than you would do from streams, which is entirely plausible. But then how do you pay the copyright owners from those songs on an album is very different from how you pay them on a stream. If you go back to the late seventies, the, one of the most successful records of all time was Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Ges and a bunch of other people. It's crazy to think that Ralph McDonald's Calypso strut his record there, which nobody has listened to, got the same royalty as staying alive by the Bee Gees because it was a vinyl record. So to reiterate, on the consumer, I don't know how many of these vinyl records are being played, and on the crater side, it raises questions about how these craters are gonna get paid. [00:06:53] Dan Runcie: That's a good point book that I don't think is being talked about as much about the vinyl search because there's so much like wow, about just how much is being purchased. I think I even saw the stat that Adele's 30 album sold 8,000 cassettes. Or there was stuff tied from Stat about that, and I think the similar thing that you said, lines up having those people actually still own a watman or whatever type of cassette player that they have. So I do think that that is something that probably there could be a deeper analysis on because. A lot of the people that write the filler songs, how do they feel? Or whether you're a songwriter, whether you, you know what's behind it, especially when you know that there's so much clear path to be able to determine, okay, this is going to be the lead single, this is what we're gonna push most from this album. It really shifts things even more to where things are going in terms of a single market. Like the way that people have talked about pop music for a while now, right? And I guess that brings a, brings me back to the streaming trends that you mentioned. Overall, we're in this area, as you mentioned, streaming itself, the US penetration is grown from 22%, I believe you said is now through your 35, 37, somewhere around there. But where do we go from here because as you've written before, the price of music streaming, at least the monthly subscription hasn't necessarily been increasing. The average revenue per user overall because of the international growth is decreased, and you have plenty of people that are still trying to get there, fair share of what they can. It's streaming so. It's in like five, 10 years from now. If you could see into the future, where do you think streaming distribution is? I think the good thing is that people have smartphones and there's more and more growth from that perspective. So streaming is going to grow, but on the other hand, the economics of these things do have some theoretical goal point where we've maximized the global penetration of this. What do you think about, where that is going? [00:08:54] Will Page: Let me unpack it in two different lanes. Firstly, I'll deal with the saturation point question, which is, you know, how long can this party keep going for? It's three o'clock in the morning, who's gonna call time on it? And then secondly, I wanna deal with the pricing point on its own lane as well, but on saturation point, you're now in a situation where I put it as in America, we've had herbivores. We've had Spotify growing Apple, growing Amazon, growing YouTube, growing. Everybody's reporting growth, Pandora even is growing. What we are gonna see some point soon is carnivores. Which is Apple will grow by eating into Spotify's growth, or YouTube will grow by eating into Amazon's growth. So the key question we gotta ask is when do we go from the herbivore market? We're in today to a carnival market of tomorrow, and I output Spotify's US subscriber number around about 45 million, Apple at 49 million. We dump on top YouTube. Amazon, Pandora, you're well past 110-120 million. Now, that's important because I reckon and there's around about 110 million qualifying households in America that has at least one person who could pay for a streaming service. This is crucial because if you look at what Apple One's bundle is doing $30 a month for news, music, television, gaming, fitness, and two turbos of storage per six account holder. It's a household proposition they're saying to the home, I got you convenience. Everyone under this roof is covered with Apple products. So when you have 110 million households, and you have more than 110 million subscribers in the United States, then we are in a race to the finishing line before herbivore turn into carnivores. In oil, we have this expression called peak oil, which is we know that we've extracted more oil in the world than is left to extract an oil that's left is gonna be even more costly to get out the ground. I think we're in peak subscriber territory where at some point soon we're gonna start seeing growth happen through stealing other customers as opposed to finding your own. So I just wanna put that warning flag out there. Just now we're partying like it's 1989, fine, but at some point the party has to come to an end and gross is gonna come at the expense of other players that then flips, you know, from the A side to the B side of this record. We flip it over to price and then the pricing debate is interesting. I published this work called MELD Economics,uh, which we can cite on your, your wonderful website there. Which was to look at 20 year history of the nine 19 price point, and its crazy story back in the 3rd of December, 2001, over 20 years ago. Today Rhapsody got its license for a $9.99 offering, which had 15,000 songs. First point. The origins of 9 99 bizarrely date back to the Blockbuster rental card. Some coed up label executive would've said, if it cost 9 99 to rent videos from Blockbuster, that's what it should cost to rent music. Secondly, there was only 15,000 songs with limited use case. There was no smartphone back then. No apps, no algorithms. That was all a weird welded into the future. So you just. 9 99 for 15,000 songs. We are now chatting in early April, 2022, and it's still 9 99 in dollar in Euro and Sterling, but we're offering a hundred million songs. That's the crazy thing. So in the article, Mel Economics, what I do is I strip inflation out in the case of the uk, 9 99 has fallen down to six pounds, 30 pence. Remember, you know, Family Plan makes music cheaper too. If 2.3 people are paying $40.99, that's six pounds 50. There's way too many numbers in this conversation for Trapital, but still we'll stick with it. Student plan makes it cheaper too. So music in real terms, has fallen to six pound 30, which is less than a medium glass of Malbec wine, so 175 milliliters of Malbec wine costs than a hundred million songs, which is available offline on demand without adverts. That for me, is certified bonkers. I don't understand what we've done. We're offering more and more, and we're charging less and less, and you only have to leave the ears to the eyes on the video streaming to see what they're doing on the other side of the fence. Netflix has got me from $7.99 to $8.99 to $12.99, to now $14.90. In the space of 15 months, and I haven't blinked Disney plus. The reason I'm paying $4.99 on Disney Plus is because I paid $19.99 to get Cruella live on demand. So they're charging more and more, but only offering part of the wells repertoire set for eyeball content. We are charging less and less and offering more and more of the wells. Ear hole content, so it's like two ships passing each other in the night. It's a very interesting dilemma. It's intriguing because when you look at the way that video is structured, as you mentioned, you have all these price increases, and I think Netflix for some plans is, you know, $18.99, it's approaching that level, but in music, It's this thing where, yeah, there's some price differences where I think I saw today that Amazon music is increasing a dollar, but that's from $7.99 for prime subscribers to that being $8.99. So we still have to cross that. I wonder if I won't cost that. [00:13:57] Dan Runcie: I mean, honestly, I feel like there's something here because when I think about this, I think about a few things. Obviously you do have this fight where the artists wanna get more and the labels wanna get more, you know, not just for the artists, but for themselves. And obviously Spotify wants to earn more logically. You would think, okay, if you increase the price and people just understated the economics of what's likely. If Spotify increased up to 1299 a month for the standard base rate, how many folks would boing. But to your point earlier, I have to imagine that the fear is looking at the trends and where that penetration is. If they jump up to $12.99, then they're going to lose those customers to the other streaming services that haven't jumped there yet because of that thought of, you know, shifting to that carnivore mentality of competing with each other. So because for roughly 80% of the content that they do offer, it is roughly the same between each of these services. It's led it to be more of a price war then in video streaming, where most of them do have some differentiated content. [00:15:02] Will Page: A hundred percent. And two things to bolt onto your very eloquent points there. And firstly, let's just remind ourselves that Apple launched superior sound quality. You may remember the, commercial of Lossless audio. You buy your AirPods, which cost two years of Apple Music or Spotify to put in your ears and you get superior sound quality, the subtext underneath it said at no extra cost. That was the actual marketing message. So there again, we are improving the offer we're supplying more but we're charging less in real terms. And that's a really interesting kind of point kind of cut into. And the second thing, and we should get balance into this discussion cause it's delicates, we have to remind ourselves that, you know, there's 120 million subscribers in America. There's still another 120 million to go, but we know they're not that interested in paying for music because they haven't paid yet. Now the best way to attract them is not necessarily to raise price. So we gotta remember that there's still, you know, oil to extract. It's not gonna be easy oil to extract, but the best way to get to it might not be to raise price, but there's a catch to this. I can remember in the early nineties, right up to 2010 piracy, ripping the asset out of this business and concept promoters were saying. We love piracy because the kids are getting music for free so they can pay more on concert tickets. I wonder if now they're saying we love Spotify because they don't raise prices, which means we can raise ours. This is not a discussion of how to rip off the customer. This is a discussion about value exchange and I just wonder whether recorded music is leaving value on the table. That's the key point to hammer on. [00:16:32] Dan Runcie: That's a good point. And I think that also made me think too, could there be some notion of maintaining the perception of Spotify as something that still has high pricing power and still has high consumer surplus, because then that helps the stock price. And then seeing that the major labels are all invested in Spotify itself. It's about like having that perception of, you know, the future growth and whatever it is. So what you just said made me think about that being a factor potentially too. [00:17:02] Will Page: A hundred percent. And of course, you've gotta distinguish the Spotify Apple music cost structure from that of the video streaming companies in that they have a kind of variable cost. You double your business, you double your cost base. Whereas Netflix, you jump up costs and you have, you jump up your revenue, you know, you raise me from 7 99 to 14 point 99, the cost of that content was fixed. And I'm still consuming the Fresh Prince of Bel Air on Netflix to this day. That was a fixed cost deal that he did to get that content and that's margin to Netflix. So, you know, the cost structure matters to this one as well. [00:17:33] Dan Runcie: Definitely. And you mentioned live music there, and I think there's a lot to think about from that perspective. I Feel like we're in this post pandemic. I mean, we're still not out of it, but we're in this post quarantine era, more artists than ever are trying to tour and get out there trying to capture what's there, but also from an economic perspective from that. Most people are only gonna go to a certain number of live events per year, and we have this 18 to 24 month run coming up where everyone wants to make up for what they couldn't do in the past two years. How will that shift, not just who then goes on tour together, and then how they may split those profits, what the availability looks like? And if they're not able to do what they may have done on tour in the late 2010s, how does that affect future touring? I think that's a piece of it that, you know, we still haven't necessarily seen the impact of, but it just feels inevitable based on where things are heading. You did it. [00:18:33] Will Page: Absolutely. Now on touring, I was lucky and I gotta do some great work on the UK live industry, and I can only speak for the UK here. I know a lot of your audience in the US but I think these points will carry. The first one was to work out how much is spent on concert tickets in Britain during the, the normal year of 2019, and the answer was 1.7 billion pounds. That's more than was spent on recorded music a lot more than was spent on recorded music, which makes sense, you know, you pay 120 pounds on the Spotify account, you're paying 240 pounds to go to Redding Festival. Two days in the muddy field in Redding, cost more than 365 days of all the wells. But what I noticed there was the industry is changing in its growth. I showed that between 2012, the year of the London Olympics and 2019, The live music industry in this country had exploded and grow, but it was lopsided. All the gro came from stadiums, festivals, and to lesser extent arenas. The theaters, the 2000, 3000 capacity theaters like the Philmore West over where you are, they were getting crushed. They were actually shrinking in size. So we have this lopsided live music industry, which is going right in the direction of the head as opposed to the long tail, the stadiums, the festivals, the arenas, as opposed to the theaters, the clubs, the university venues. And that's interesting cuz that's gonna change the dynamics of how you make money from live. Do you go from doing your tour of an album to doing a tour of your festivals for that record? And what does that mean? The cost structure for the insurance and all those things that bands have to consider when they're hitting the road. I mean, credit to capital. You've had some great podcasts recently on this topic, but as, a big rethink coming along in this live music market, it's not the same as we had back in 2019. It's changed fundamentally, and it is the breadwinner for most artists' income. I think it makes up about 70% of what an artist has to live for comes from the road that vanished. How do we get it back? [00:20:22] Dan Runcie: I feel like Cardi B has been a good. Case study on this specific point here, right? It's been four years now since she released an album, and she's yet to go on a true proper tour in that time. That said, she's done plenty of festivals where she's earned more on those festival guarantees that she likely would on tour. She's also done many private events where she's likely earned that save amount, if not more. So there's a whole economic argument to be made, and I think there's also some risk involved too, right? I think that festivals do give you the opportunity to. Get that major bag, you get the high number, the revenue that comes through, but maybe your fans will be a little bit more forgiving if your set piece at your festival isn't the most extravagant thing, especially if you're not the headliner at it. But on a tour, I think it changes. It's a little bit more pressure, everyone wants to see that Instagramable or talkable moment to then sell future tickets and just the production cost and everything with travel. It still is something that is very worthwhile, but I think we've just started to see some of that segmentation there. Especially for someone like her. I would add residencies too. I know she's done a few different things in Vegas here and there, but yeah. Still yet to do that 30 city worldwide tour. [00:21:44] Will Page: Yeah, I think you gotta think with your head and your heart. Your head says like you point out the economics favors festival. Your back line's there, your insurance is covered. Travel's already covered. I have numerous hip hop bands perform at festivals in Europe, and that's one of the big advantages. The costs are all taken care of by the festival, but your heart says, what does that do to intimate relationships with your fans? [00:22:05] Dan Runcie: Right? [00:22:05] Will Page: I mean, you're staring at 50,000 strangers in the muddy field. That's different from staring at 2000 friends in the Fillmore West. So the head and the heart's gotta come into play here. What I would add though is that there are rumors, I would say here in the UK at least, that the promoters are saying, I'll pay you a ton of money to perform at the festival to make sure that you don't go on tour. And that's an interesting situation. If you build one too many houses, you collapse a property market. If you have one too many tours or one too many festivals, you collapse live music industry. So there's ways in which people are trying to restrain the market to festival. At the expense of the theaters. That certainly is coming through in the data. We're seeing the theater business take a kick in while festivals go on a roll. [00:22:45] Dan Runcie: Yeah, because I think about, you look at the artists that are touring stadiums now, whether it's your Taylor Swift's or Beyonce's, they wouldn't be able to do that if they didn't have the individual tours at smaller venues when they were starting out. Being able to build that intimate fan base, like you said, like you get to that point, right? And I do think that as good as festivals can be, it is much more of a lucrative cash grab that is, I don't wanna say necessarily short-term thinking, but I think you ideally wanna have some type of balance there, right? Get the big bag that you can get from something else. It's almost no different. I think running a business, right? Okay, sure. You may be able to do a speaking fee or do some type of, you know, thing here or there, but hey, you can't do that all the time, especially if it's not an audience you're tapped into. You still need to do some of the things that could set you up for the long game. [00:23:37] Will Page: Yeah, and there's an infographic that I'll share with you to pass onto your audience here. I wrote an article in The Economist called Smells like Middle-Aged Spirit as opposed to Teen. Nice play on Words hat to Dave Gro and Kurt Cobain. But what I was looking at was the average age of festival headliners over time. This is a du pessimistic Scottish economist. This is what you do with your spare time. Okay, so in the nineties when radio head to Glastonbury, the average age of a festival headliner is 25, 26 years old. all these hot bands were coming through the Brit Pop era. You know, there was so much development of new talent. By 2012, I think it had got up to 58 and I got a lot of criticism for that article. But then Glastonbury that year had the WHO and Lionel Richie headlining, which I think was 17 and 73 years old apart. And then you can see the conveyor belt problem, which is okay, it's a quick cash grab. It makes sense. But that's not the conveyor belt of how we developed talent for tomorrow. That's just how we cash in our chips at the casino today. So it does raise questions, I'm not saying it's like the doomsday scenario here, but we just need a healthy balance of, you know, a seeded for future growth and then the big stage for exploiting that moment today, which could be the pyramid stage at Glastonbury, the headlights stage at Monterey over in the States. So I just think we're getting a little bit lopsided here. We're a bit short termist and how this business needs to develop. [00:24:57] Dan Runcie: Agreed on that. Switching gears a bit. One thing that you wrote recently that stuck out to me, you did this deep dive on music publishing, and I think this is another area that kind of has some of that short-term, long-term perspective on it, because you look at the people who get the share of the copyright pie, at least today, and from music streaming perspective, a lot of that has been much more in the favor of, the recorded side and then the people getting compensated on the recording side. But with that, the songwriters and the publishers, a lot of them necessarily in that timeframe, didn't get a lot of that. But I think in this wave now where we're seeing more catalog deals and we're seeing people understand the value of that, things may be starting to shift and there's likely other things as well. But what do you think about the way that the publishing side has been seen in what the future opportunities are for that side of the business? [00:25:54] Will Page: Well, the way that labels and publishing were taught to me in terms of what makes them distinct from one another goes back to my Aunt Dorian Loader, who worked in the music business from 1959 at Deca Records, right the way through to 2012. She ran Enzyme records with Nigel Grange, Lucian's Half-Brother. They were responsible for Shead O'Connor, who sold 11 million albums based on the Prince cover. And she once said to me, will, this is how the music industry works. The record label pays for your drugs and the publishing pays for your pension. I just kind of, that's a nice succinct way of summarizing how the business works. That was then, this is now clearly times have changed, I think, but it reminds us about, you know, what makes the business different. And then that piece of work that you cite is something called global value of copyright, where I'm really keen to educate this. Regardless of whether you're coming from a label perspective, a manager, an artist, a songwriter, there's a C with a circle on it called copyright. We get that, and it involves record labels. It involves sound exchange. It involves artists. It involves ascap, BMI, GMR, Czek. It involves publishers, David Israeli, and the great folks at the NNPA. It Put the whole thing together for me, all this spaghetti and strain it out. And what I was able to show was that in 2020, copyright was worth 32.5 billion, way bigger than what you've just heard from IFPI way bigger than what Czek would say. This is the entire thing. And the split was about 65% labels, 35% to the publishers. Now, if you go way back to 2001, when we used to sell CDs by weight of pate. In the cocaine capitalism days, you know, record labels back then. The split was much more in favor of labels, you know, more than three quarter labels, less than a quarter to the publishers. And what we've seen happen in the years in between is quite an interesting story. Labels went from boom time with CDs to bust with piracy, and now they're booming again with streaming. And the inverse, the opposite happened. Publishers as labels went bust. ASCAP, BMI kept on reporting record breaking collections, so you have a hair tore toys analogy here of labels going really fast and falling off a cliff. Publishers just trundled along with record breaking, not massive record breaking collections, but it kept on growing their bases. So, the questions these throw up is what type of industry are we moving towards? Are we going back to a business model which paid labels over three quarters of the pie and publishes less than a quarter, and is that a good or a bad thing? Or in this post Spotify economy where we're seeing companies like Peloton, Twitch, TikTok, come to the business, is that gonna have a completely different balance? Now why this matters to your audience is not just on the crater side, but also on the investment side. You pointed out catalog valuations. We can dig into that if you want, but just a high level point is, let's say that in a few years time, I go into my back cave again, calculate the global value of copyright, and instead of 32 and a half billion, it's 40 billion. I'll come on Trapital show, I'll make an exclusive announcement. Copyright today is worth 40 billion, seven and a half billion new dollars. Have come into this business, I want the audience to start thinking about who gets what share of that marginal new dollar. Is that gonna split publishing side or is that gonna split label side? And if you're investing in catalogs, be the master rights, be the author rights that really bears, there's a huge educational drive here to understand the balance of this business of copyright. [00:29:15] Dan Runcie: So there's a few things you've said there that I wanted to dig into. Of course, for streaming Spotify and its competitors around 75%. Is going to the recorded side a quarter to publishing. But from a breakdown, what does that look like for the TikToks, the Roblox and the Pelotons? What does that share of revenue from those plays look like? [00:29:38] Will Page: So, The best way I could do this is if I just talk about ratios. There's three Rs in this business. There's share of revenue, there's ratio in this rights pool. They mean different things. Most experts get confused. With these three Rs, I'm gonna stick to ratios. That is, if I give the label a dollar, how much do I give the publisher, the songwriter, this collective management organization. So we stick to the conventional streaming model Today, I would say that if you give the record label a dollar, you're giving the publishing side of the. 24 cents, you know, a decent chunk of change. But still the pure cousin of the record label on YouTube, I think it could be as high as 35 cents, 40 cents even. Because there's a sync right? Involved in those deals. And then when you take that observation of imposing the sync right into deal, and you expand it to Peloton or TikTok, potentially even more, and then you can flip it and say, well, what happens if the future of TikTok is karaoke? Not saying it's gonna happen, but it's not implausible if that was the case. That favors publishers even more. So there's all these weird ways that the business could develop, which could favor one side of the fence. The labels and the artists continue getting three quarters of the cash or the other side of the fence. Publishers and songwriters start enforcing their rights and getting. A more balanced share and that that's what we need to look out for when we're investing incorporates. That's what we need to look out for. If you're a singer and a songwriter and you're trying to understand your royalty statements [00:30:57] Dan Runcie: mm-hmm. Well, like how much higher do you think? I mean, if you had to put a percentage on it for the TOS or the Pelotons, and I guess as well, you made me think of sync deals, right? Like for the folks that are selling, or their song gets placed on one of these hulu series or one of these HBO Max series, like what does that ratio look like, you know, from a ballpark for those. [00:31:20] Will Page: So I think a 50 50 split would be the upper bend of the goal. If, if a song is placed in a Hulu TV show or you know, an artist I've worked with for many years, Yu Dito Brazilian composer, his songs now in this famous easy Jet commercial over here in Europe. The artists and the publisher would see around a 50 50 split of those revenues. Now, would that happen in the world of streaming? Unlikely. But I think if you can get to a stage where you're giving the record label a dollar and the publisher 50 cents as a ratio, and I've gotta repeat the word ratio here, you know, that's potentially achievable with this post Spotify economy. I don't think it's gonna happen with the business we're looking at today, but I think that's a potential scenario for the business developing tomorrow. That's the thing. If I can quote Ralph Simon, a, a longtime mentor to me, he always says, this industry is always about what's happening next. And then he goes on to say, it always has been. It's a great reminder of just, you know, we're restless souls in this business. We've achieved this amazing thing in the past 10 years with streaming. Got there. Banked there what's coming next, who would've thought Peloton would've had a music licensing department 18 months ago? Now they're like a top 10 account for major labels. [00:32:30] Dan Runcie: It's impressive. It really is. And I think it's a good reminder because anytime that you get a little bit too bullish and excited about what the current thing is, it's, we always gotta be thinking about what's next. And you mentioned a few times about a post Spotify economy. What does that look like from your perspective? I think there's likely a number of things that we've already talked about with more of these other B2B platforms or where these other platforms in general, having licensing deals. But when you say, or what do you think about post Spotify economy? What comes to mind for you? [00:33:02] Will Page: Let me throw my fist, your words, your jaw, and try and knock you out for a second. We talked about price for a minute, and we talked about streaming. We haven't talked about gaming, but you noticed the Epic Games. It's just acquired band. I learned a fascinating stat about bandcam, which relates to my book Tarzan Economics. There's a chapter in the book called, "Make or Buy", where I sat down with the management of the band radio head. We went through the entire in Rainbow Story for the first time ever, a real global exclusive. Explain how that deal worked out, what they were really achieving when they did their voluntary tip jar model. And by the way, can I just put a shout out to one of your listeners and live from the Ben Zion. Best remix of Radiohead I've ever heard in my life is Amplive, Weird Fishez hip hop version of the entire album. But Radiohead tested voluntary tip jar pricing. Now check this out. If you put your album out on Band Cap, could be a vinyl record. Remember, it's the people who are paying to stream who are also buying vinyl. So if you put a ban, an album, my own banquette, and you say name your own price, no minimum, and there's a guidance there of 10 bucks, the average paid is. People go above 40% asking, and that could be for a super rich blockbuster artist who tries something out in band camp. That could be for some band who's broken Brooklyn, Robin and coins together, trying to make them breed. People go 40% above asking when you say name your own price. And that's interesting for me. there's a great academic paper by Francesco Cornell from Duke University. She asked, how should you price a museum? An intuition says Top-down. Museum should set the price. Adults 10 bucks, kids, five bucks, pensioners, some type of discount arrangement. But she said, no, let the visitors set the price because that way rich people will give you even more and poor people can attend and you'll see more cash overall. And I would like to see a little bit more of that experimentation around pricing compared to the past 20 years where we've had a ceiling on price, where if you really love a band, all you can give a platform is $9.99 and not a penny more. I think that's, we're suffocating love. We're putting a ceiling on love and we need to take that ceiling and smash through it and let people express love through different means. But I love that ban camp story. Whatever you suggest, I'll give you 40% above cuz it's art. We're not dealing with commodity, we're dealing with culture and that's why we gotta remind ourselves. [00:35:13] Dan Runcie: It's like the Met model, right? Where at least the last time I went, it was like $20 was the recommendation. But to your point, it at least had some vary of a threshold. But the people, a lot of the people that go there that have a lot of money end up giving much more. So I hear you on that. That's a great note to end on. Will, thanks again. Thank you so much. [00:35:33] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

If you had a billion-dollar fund to buy the full rights, masters, and publishing of ANY music artists — who are you acquiring to maximize shareholder value? This question was top of mind for real-life portfolio managers the past three years as music catalog sales boomed. Now my guest on the episode, Denisha Kuhlor, and I are asking ourselves the same hypothetical question. In this episode, we’re doing a mock music rights draft. Akin to the NFL Draft, each of us getting seven picks. Any artists’ catalog, living or dead, is on the table for us to acquire. Our goal is to score the biggest ROI for investors on a 10-year timeline from purely catalog revenue — streaming, syncs, and partnerships, among other sources. Touring or merchandise revenue isn’t factored in, and neither are future catalog releases, only what’s already been released.  As you’ll see on this episode, Denisha and I took very different approaches to our portfolios. One was more “risk on”, while the other was filled with more “blue chips.” Here’s what to expect: [0:01] Draft parameters  [4:51] First-round picks [9:42] Second-round picks [14:21] Third-round picks [18:49] Fourth-round picks [21:55] Fifth-round picks [26:04] Sixth-round picks [29:20] Seventh-round picks [37:33] Honorable mentions  [52:21] Up-and-coming artists Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Denisha Kuhlor, @denishakuhlor Today’s episode was brought to you by feature.fm. Grow your fanbase  and music career with their marketing suite. Get 50% off your first three months by using code: TRAPITAL50 Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT Denisha Kuhlor: We've talked about Burna Boy on the podcast before, so don't necessarily have to go over all of his stats, but I think that in one thing I'm finding with people discovering, music from the continent. Is that when they like the artist or there's things they like about the artist or the genre, they go back and listen, to the past catalog. And so I feel like there's still a lot of untouched ground in terms of people discovering his music and listening to his whole catalog and given how timeless in a lot of ways some of his music feels, I think that we'll have new fans discovering him over and over for a long time and getting to also benefit from the upside of that catalog is great. I'll also say, he's pretty feature light as well. He's increased the amount of features that he's had in some of his more recent albums, but even like him, some of his breakout singles, whether Ye or Last Last, were Independence, or songs that he did independently and didn't have people featuring. So I think in terms of some of the big records, there's solo records, which is exciting and that his catalog has a lot of value for people to discover and wanna to. Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  Dan Runcie: Today's episode is one I am really excited for. This is a music rights draft. We are going to be breaking down the artists that we would most wanna have their music rights for. So today's guest friend of the podcast, Denisha Kuhlor, founder of Stan, her and I are both managers of billion dollar funds and we can acquire the full rights, Masters and publishing to any artist, living or dead. And our job is to maximize value for our investors for the next 10 years. We each get to pick 10 artists and their full rights of music, and we draft them one by one. Denisha, are you ready? How are you feeling? Denisha Kuhlor: I am, I'm super excited for this. like keep racking my head, I think till the last minute with each pick. but yeah, I'm ready to get  Dan Runcie: started. Right. It's funny because we're chatting about this yesterday and I almost wonder like if our chat yesterday like shifts anything, it's like, oh, okay. That's how you're thinking about this. Okay. That's how I'm thinking about this. Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly, in a funny way, I have some more compassion for venture investors because I can see how societal shift or even group think can shift your perspective even if just a bit.  Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's fascinating, and I mean with this, we did try to keep the parameters of it a bit clear because obviously in the real music rights acquisition world, there are many different strategies about how these firms are buying and acquiring these rights. Some of them are sitting and holding on them, but we are putting ourselves in a different bucket. We are assuming that we have the means to maximize this catalogs and this artist's value through multimedia, through sync, through other partnerships, and just the revenue that it naturally generates as sound recordings themselves. And we assume that we're only acquiring what that artist has released up to that point. Of course, what that artist continues to do in the future may shift the perception of the value of what they've done, but we are only looking at what they've done up to this point. So we're saying that just to lay the groundwork, because someone may be like, oh, what about so-and-so and so-and-so may be an artist that blew up in the past five years. They may not have Steve as a catalog, but who knows? Maybe we'll both have a few of those picks. Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Super exciting  Dan Runcie: All right, so we are gonna be so a few things to just keep in mind as well for listeners. So a few of the factors you both considered were expected longevity of the artist music themselves, which is a big piece of this. You're acquiring these rights, you're trying to get a sense for what is the music that people are still going to listen to, right? It's one thing if you dominate the charts, that you have a song that takes off, but there's a decay curve. So we're trying to find those artists that have the value, but have the much less steep decay curve as it goes down year over year. There's also a mix too. There's the stable picks, which a lot of the rights go after, which are attractive, but there's also some higher upside picks or some riskier bets. Where do those fit in? And then we're also taken into account the share of the song recordings that the artists actually have given that certain genres such as hip hop or r and b and pop music specifically, there's a lot more collaboration. There's a lot more hands being shared in that pot. So, how does that line up with another genre where that artist may have a higher percentage of those things? All those things get factored into how we pick this. So I'm ready to get started and I wanna give you the first pick so you can go and then I'll go after that. Denisha Kuhlor: Oh, thank you, so my first pick is Mariah Carey. for a few reasons. One, Mariah Carey has one of the most amazing songs in her collection, with Christmas, right? Like it's just being Christmas time, every Christmas, you know, you're going to get, a spike in revenue. Mariah Carey's also been very notable, about talking about that. She writes a lot of her own music, and I don't think how many people realize how much of a prolific songwriter that she is as well. And with the nature of R and B, much to what you talked about earlier with it being collaborative, Mariah Carey seems to be embraced by a lot of rappers for samples. So while I definitely think it will be pricey based off literally, all I want for Christmas, if anything, I think that it's. It's a bit of a safe, but also Sure. Fire and, and stable. expectation revenue.  Dan Runcie: That was my number two pick. So we're definitely aligned there. It makes perfect sense because even if you, all I want for Christmas is a big piece of the pie, I wanna say 300 million streams per year on Spotify was the stat that I heard, and I forget the exact revenue number that it generates. I don't wanna quote it, but it's huge. Almost 20 number one singles that she's had. So the longevity's there, and as we know we're talking about this a little yesterday, but there's a reason that catalog isn't one that's getting acquired because, A, the people that own it, and I know she may own maybe some of the more recent stuff. I don't know if, Columbia still owns, you know, the stuff from the nineties, especially given the nature of her deal and stuff like that. But I mean, it's up there, it's definitely one of the most valuable ones. So good. Yeah. Good for you on that one. So I'll take my number one pick here and the number one pick. For this, for me, so much of it was thinking about how millennials and this group are the dominant users of streaming. Streaming makes up a bulk of the revenue for these streaming services. And who is the biggest artist for millennials overall? Just you look at the sheer numbers and everything like that, it has to be Taylor Swift. Miss 1989 herself, I will take those albums, especially these rerecorded ones, Taylor's version, because they're Denisha Kuhlor: That's just what I was gonna ask. Dan Runcie: Yeah. I may not get Scooter bronze version, but I'll get Taylor's version and I'll keep that. I think that it's rare to find a star that has as much impact as she does that is as recent in this way, I mean, just the pure demand for this Eras tour. She could have done 10 x times the number of shows and been touring for the next five years in a in stadiums and still had plenty of demand left over. And of course, we're not counting touring revenue in this, but it just goes to show how big everything else is. The fact that midnights broke records, both in streaming and in hard sales, I think I saw 230 million dollars that album generated in its revenue. Of course. That her entire rights will likely be owned, you know, herself just given the Taylor's version of everything. Currently I'm licensed with Republican Universal Music Group. But if in a perfect world you could acquire that, I will take that. She's able to dominate in all of these multiple platforms and if we're really trying to say, okay, 10 years from now, each of her albums is still in the top 50 of the billboard, 200, just from like a rankings perspective. Well, not all of 'em, but a lot of them, and I think it's harder to come by. So yeah, I'll take T Swift. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think it's definitely a solid pick her music evokes so much nostalgia especially as her fans get older, that they'll be listening to it for life, right? Because it's not necessarily attached to a moment or even a recency of today, even though they can appreciate that. it's, yeah, it's music that's the soundtrack to their lives. So, it makes a ton of sense. And she's also another prolific songwriter, so I would assume, from an ownership perspective, it's quite attractive. Dan Runcie: Yeah. Not as attractive as Mariah though, because I feel like Taylor more recently, especially with the more pop albums, there was a lot of Max Martin production and a lot of other big name folks and you know, Kendrick Lamar, guest verses and stuff like that. And Mariah had some of that, but I still feel like she always had like her single, you know what I mean? It's like  Yeah. fantasy was, they had a remix with ODB or they had a honey remix with the lock, but there was still the core Mariah version that was just Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, that's a great point. The breakout has frequently remained just her. Yeah.  Dan Runcie: so we'll see. But yeah, who's your second pick? Denisha Kuhlor: So my second pick, I thought a lot too about, like world music as we say, or just music that's global. much to your point as well around streaming. I kind of think that it's exciting to pick, an artist that can dominate globally that's, not necessarily a pop artist. And so for that, I went back and forth. Probably two of the biggest artists. but landed on Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny to me is one just an amazing and exciting artist. He also has a great amount of volume, but much to the point we just made about Mariah Carey's, Taylor Swifts, I think he's really optimized a lot of his catalog, for music that he makes and that music that he solely makes. Additionally, and I know we're not counting touring, but the sheer amount of numbers he's done touring, I think has not only earned him new fans, but earned him kind of the same type of fan appetite that Taylor Swift has in which the music will evoke a certain nostalgia, whether they saw him perform it on top of a gas station or when he was driving through the Bronx, that leads them to want to continue to listen to this music for the rest of their lives, which hopefully will be financially lucrative. Dan Runcie: He was on my list as well. You can't ignore just the huge, massive success of this last album, UN Varano Centi. We saw that album dominate week after week after week, and it, the songs are still on Spotify's Top 50 and they're still having traction there. And in an era where there's just so much more music, if you can get a song like that that comes out in 2022 that's still coming out or just an album, it's rare and I know we talk a lot about how monoculture itself is just harder to come by from a artist that is in the US or UK just because those markets are so much more saturated. But the closest we get to anyone reaching Beatlemania is someone like Bad Bunny. So that's a great. Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly, exactly. I also think a lot both, Drake's wrapped about Bad Bunny numbers and Kanye's reference Bad Bunny's, success. And so I feel like even if his peers in the industry are kind of in some ways either looking at him aspirationally or like he's one that could potentially, hit my success, is also a great indicator. Dan Runcie: All right, so the next pick I have here is, you mentioned him a second ago, the streaming king himself, 70 million streams. Drake, it's hard to think about the streaming era and not think about him. Just the massive hits that he's had and every time that he releases an album, it still creates this moment that few have the ability to be able to reach moving forward. I know Birdman will never give up those rights, and Young Money extensively will never give up those rights, but if I had the choice, I would take it. I think the knock against Drake potentially though I will acknowledge is that one. Just the high number of features and samples with all that, there's a high, there's a less likelihood that he may own all or just have a higher percentage of the revenue coming in for this stuff. But just the sheer volume of whether it's the mixtapes, the playlist, the little two packs that he puts out, the albums, especially some of the ones from like, especially the cash money albums, honestly, from, when was that? So I guess you had 2010, it was official first album, but you had so far gone oh nine and then everything up to Scorpion. Yeah, those are the biggest albums of the last decade. So I'll take Drake Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. Yeah. super solid pick. As someone who has seen Drake in concert 10 times, there's a few things recently. Yeah. 10 times.  Yeah. So a few things that stuck out to me with Trigg specifically, The Serious Show. So the serious show was a lot of like deep cuts or songs that he hasn't recently performed on some of his tours. And you could just see that fans loved it, right? A lot of people wanted access to tickets and really loved the music. And then, lastly in part of, in going to these tours, there were so many times that I saw, that he would like go off of stage and to keep the crowd like engaged. They would do a whole set of his music that he wasn't going to perform, and the crowd literally went just as crazy as if he was on, if he was on stage so much to just like the emotional factor that his catalog has. I feel like Drake has provided the music of a generation. And so, regardless volume wise, they'll be continuing to listen for a long time. Dan Runcie: Who's your number two? Denisha Kuhlor: So next I'm going with Burna Boy. one, we've talked about Burna Boy on the podcast before, so don't necessarily have to go over all of his stats, but I think that in one thing I'm finding with people discovering, music from the continent. Is that when they like the artist or there's things they like about the artist or the genre, they go back and listen, to the past catalog. And so I feel like there's still a lot of untouched ground in terms of people discovering his music and listening to his whole catalog and given how timeless in a lot of ways some of his music feels, I think that we'll have new fans discovering him over and over for a long time and getting to also benefit from the upside of that catalog is great. I'll also say, he's pretty feature light as well. He's increased the amount of features that he's had in some of his more recent albums, but even like him, some of his breakout singles, whether Ye or Last Last, were Independence, or songs that he did independently and didn't have people featuring. So I think in terms of some of the big records, there's solo records, which is exciting and that his catalog has a lot of value for people to discover and wanna to.  Dan Runcie: Yeah, he was on the list as well, and I think the attractive thing with him is similar to the bad Bunny perspective where almost more so because if you are one of the signature artists that is on this entire continent, well, I think for him, obviously more West Africa, but if you're one of the signature artists that's on this entire continent, you have the closer thing to that Beattlemania effect. And as more people there have access to streaming as more of that just grows and develops, you're going to get that curve too that just grows naturally with what's already there. And you can't undersell that. And I think given an artist like that too, there's probably huge sync opportunities as multimedia and entertainment starts to grow from that, from, from those parts of the worlds too. So there's a lot of value there. Yeah. Denisha Kuhlor: exactly.  Who do you  have  Dan Runcie: pick, this is a pick with the mind and not necessarily with the heart, but I am a, in the role of a asset manager or not the role of a fan. And my pick here is Eminem and my pick for Eminem, and the reason I pick him is because his music is still some of the most streamed music across the board. And his Curtains Call album was the bestselling rap album in the UK in 2022. His greatest hits album from 2005 was the best selling rap album 17 years later. And I remember seeing that stat and I was just like, wow. And then you just think about the nature of his music. And even though he's someone that I feel, if you're someone that lives in the Twitter circles that you and I live in, Eminem is someone that I think has largely fallen out of popular discourse. And people do look at him a bit more, distinctly in a way that they did in 20 years ago. But if you don't live in those circles, which the majority of people don't, they still listen to his music and still revere him. And just on a sheer number perspective, there's probably more people that listen to hip hop that have an artist like Eminem and their top three and they're top two and not two. And you look at some of the numbers as well for songs like Till I Collapse and Lose Yourself, that just get played over and over for people working out and all of these things. Those songs have a timelessness to them. I mean, on stats, he was the bestselling like recorded artist of the two thousands. He was up there for the 2010s. He still tours massively, and even though a lot of his albums that probably generate the most revenue are songs that I'm no longer listening to, I can acknowledge that this has huge value. And as an asset manager, as a fund manager, I would do quite well with that, with his rights. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. No, I don't know if that's where I would have went, but after hearing your explanation, it makes a ton of sense. Eminem fans are, independent in the sense that they're fans regardless of whether he's the top of a pop culture, relevancy or not. yeah, I think, that's really, really interesting. And the Stan's side, he literally pioneered the word we all use today, so I think in some ways too, people forget just, how impactful culturally he's been. so yeah, that makes a  Dan Runcie: Nice. All right. who's your. Denisha Kuhlor: So for my next one, I kind of wanted to go in a direction of some newer artists that are still proving themselves out of it, but I think have a lot of potential. but keeping in mind to what they've done so far, I wanna go with Lizzo. I. think of Lizzo, you know, a lot of us were actually introduced, to her in because of a sync, in one of the, in a movie on Netflix. I'm blanking on the name of the movie, but that sync actually introduced me, to her. I think that Lizzo's music is just like the perfect type of music for a movie trailer, in the sense of some of her upbeat, more like pop, pop records. It's like the perfect songs to usher in like a romcom. So from a sing perspective, I think it has a lot of potential. She's also known as, pretty talented on the songwriting side, so I think the ownership would be, I think the ownership would be attractive. and in her last tours, she's done pretty well while also there were smaller venues, the fan base and her having an engaged fan base is definitely there as well. Obviously and from an asset manager perspective, definitely wouldn't be looking to pick it up. But the numbers I've picked up, some of my earlier bets, but I think it would be a fun bet to have and see how it does in the future. Dan Runcie: It's funny because she's someone that I think she has a very high diehard fan to fan ratio, if that makes sense. And I say that because she's someone who. Does quite well. She sells out arenas and she does multiple shows in some cities, in arenas, in an era where it's very hard to get artists that are topping the charts with their streaming to sell out the same venues. The knock against her though is that she doesn't stream necessarily as well. Like she hasn't had an album that's like top the charts. I don't think she's had, you know, a 100K in the first week necessarily. But those fans do show up. so there's something to be said there. I think the other thing too, when you're mentioning the sync, I was thinking about, you know, that car, I think it's Carnival Cruise, that commercial, and it has that song that's like Hands to the Sky. Show me that your mind, like, I didn't even realize that was a Lizzo song until I just looked it up because it was stuck in my head and I'm like, oh, that's a Lizzo song from like 2016, like Pret Truth. So I think you're right with the sync piece of it. I mean, a song like Truth Hurts Itself, juice, literally anything from whether it's special or the album before this, I think that there is strong potential there. So I think Lizzo is definitely a good multimedia play. Assuming like we are in this role, you have the ability to maximize the asset. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, exactly, exactly. It definitely comes down to maximization of the asset on her part, and in a way. I don't see streaming continuing to go up. I think her engage fans like her, they listen to her, and they keep it at, and they keep it at that. So without kind of very targeted, like a targeted approach to maximizing her syncs, the asset becomes less attractive. Dan Runcie: So the next pick, and this is a bit strategic because I wanna take this artist before you take them, is SZA and. picking SZA because she obviously doesn't have a huge catalog. We're talking two studio albums really, that have came out. But if I could get those studio albums for a good price, I'm getting an album in control that is literally stayed on the charts for five years. People are listening, streaming and buying the hell out of that thing, and it hasn't really stopped. And this album is setting all these records and every time you see what the 10, 11 weeks that SSA's SOS has been at the top of the charts, that's in the territory with like Adele, Beyonce and all these other artists because first here's breaking records for female R and B artists then is just, you know, female artists. Now it's artists in general, like how many people are at those levels. So sure. I don't think I'm necessarily gonna have to pay Taylor Swift, Drake or Eminem numbers to get SZA rights, but this is a hits game, and if I can get two of her hits, certified hits albums, that could be worth more than 10 of someone else's mediocre ones. Denisha Kuhlor: I completely agree. SZA is it makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. I'd also say what's so exciting about CSA when you think about it is two studio albums and being able to maintain that relevancy and the sheer amount of time that those albums have lived, is so exciting and you can continue to maximize those two albums even for years to come. Because for everyone, it still feels very relevant. Dan Runcie: All right. Who's your, you've picked five, right? Okay, so last two picks. who's your sixth pick? Denisha Kuhlor: Yes. So I'm gonna keep the S theme here with SZA. and this one was somewhat a big streaming play. but Summer Walker, summer Walker was one that initially when I first made this list, didn't come to mind to be honest. But as I thought about it, and I will probably mention this more in some of my honorable mentions, but I was going for Usher, and I thought about the record that they had together and thought about a lot of the records that Summer Walker has broken.  and shout out to the folks that love Renaissance, I think that people don't even realize or truly understand how big of an artist she's been, from a streaming perspective. she's had some really impressive numbers when she releases the album, she's done great numbers. and People continue to listen to her. I also think, you know, she's toyed around with retiring as well as not doing, as well as not doing tours, creating less opportunities for fans to be able to interact with her, which, fortunately or unfortunately leads them back to her music as that's one of the only sources of ways that they can interact with her. So, I don't know if I see as much sync potential with an artist like her as I would maybe a Lizzo, but I think she can continue to generate solid, solid streaming numbers, for years, for years.  Dan Runcie: a good pick. It's funny, she's someone that's not on my list, but when you mentioned her I was like, I can't believe I'd even think of the think of her. But you're absolutely right. She has, especially from a streaming perspective, she has numbers that rival some of the artists that we mentioned before when it comes to streaming and on average, streaming is making up 70 to 80% often of the revenue that comes in from these music rights. So, it makes sense to be able to have that. And I think that just given how much she's been able to speak to an audience that doesn't really have as many people speaking directly to them as well in this way of, okay, who is making music for black women, who is making like doing that? And I think when you think about it that way, that list does become slim. Especially when we're talking about artists at this level, obviously, you know, touring and some of the more personal things of just like being out there that isn't her style, that isn't her vibe or her personality necessarily. But we don't necessarily need that and I think that there's clearly value in over it, still over it. And, you know, the small features and things that she's done here and there since then.  Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah.  Dan Runcie: All right. So mine, I have two picks left. this is where it does get tough because, looking through some of these names and there's some ones that I like and, okay, so I am going to take Bruno Mars and I'm gonna take Mars because the fact that he has music that I think honestly can transcend in terms of the versatility of the music. Songs like 24K Magic or Uptown Funk, or. Denisha Kuhlor: Very intergenerational as well.  Dan Runcie: Yeah. You hear, could hear it in the supermarket, you could hear it being out, like you could hear it in syncs or different types of things, even the more recent stuff with Silk Sonic and getting his chair of that with with Anderson .Paak there, I think there's a huge potential there. I can't speak as much to the hard numbers, but I do think that the multimedia opportunities are there. He's a pit maker and I think it would be valuable to have his stuff in there. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, so from kind of a multimedia or even multidisciplinary perspective, my next one is Pharrell. Pharrell's been a part of a lot of really big records, records that feel intergenerational. I would say, and I don't know the numbers of this. I would say his streaming probably isn't in the highest percentile, but it's also not in the lowest percentile. Like it's somewhere probably in the media, in the middle, given all the records he's been a part of. That makes it kind just a steady asset and also transcends multiple decades in a way that if something does come back in style, You can benefit from that upside. He also has a few records, I think about a record like Happy, that sync wise I think will continue to be used for years and years to come, in a host of ways. So Pharrell is one that could be a really safe bet or maybe a really unsafe bet, just dependent on how, things go. But I think there's enough factors, in, which he falls kind of nicely in to justify the bet. But I will say I don't think it will be, I don't think it will be cheap  but I do think it can have a big upside. Dan Runcie: The upside smart thing about that pick, he's someone else I didn't think of, but I think it was a really good pick because you get the artist Pharrell and you get the producer Pharrell, so you get everything from, I forget that Sta but when was it? In 2002 or 2003, the Neptunes were responsible for 43% of the music that was on top 40 radio that was on, you know, pop So you get all those songs and then you get any of the stuff you did with NERD, you get any of like the Child Rebel Soldier stuff. I mean it makes a lot of sense. And then even songs like, Get Lucky was huge as well. I know that there's been a bunch of controversy around blurred lines, but I'm still sure that the revenue from that song continues to be massive. So I think that's a smart pick. Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. And I think in the future we'll see kind of that doubling, right? artists like a Pharrell will continue to be super valuable when it comes to being able to capture the peak of their rights because they just have them. Dan Runcie: Definitely, definitely. so then with the last pick, it's funny, I hesitated with this one a bit, but I'm gonna go ahead and pick it anyway. It's probably the catalog or the rights that would go for the most money if anyone's was on the table at all right now. And it's Michael Jackson and I'm going to take his, because the fact that Thriller is now over 40 years old and I think that the baseline for streams from that song and streams from everything else is quite high. It is strong and there's value there. This is another one where I think I'm separating a bit of the personal versus the, you know, actual like business asset aspect of it, because I do think that the multimedia aspect of it. Yeah. You know, that would be difficult, and even me as an asset manager would probably be finding ways to create multimedia opportunities for that asset continuing forward. But on the other hand, there's still Broadway musicals, there's still Vegas intimate shows that they are creating off of this person's music. I think Variety had released that report a couple of months ago that said that they were in talks of a 900 million sale for half of the rights. I forget like exactly what the terms would be and including a few things, but I felt like that was too big not to ignore from an asset management perspective. So it would be the Michael Jackson rights for the final pick. Denisha Kuhlor: Wow. That's a really strong, a really strong final pick and makes my last pick even harder.  Dan Runcie: You had seven though, right?  Denisha Kuhlor: Yes, I did. I did. My seventh one is just a different caliber Dan Runcie: Wait, wait. You, oh, oh, oh. With Pharrell you mean? Denisha Kuhlor: no, no, no, no. So my seventh one actually is,  Dan Runcie: Wait, wait. Did we miss one? Hold on. Let me just run through it real quick. You had Mariah, Bad Bunny, Burna Boy, Lizzo, Summer Walker, Pharrell  Denisha Kuhlor: Yes Dan Runcie: Oh, oh. We both have one more. Oh, okay. I missed up. Okay. You're right, you're right. Yeah. okay.  All one? Denisha Kuhlor: Yes. So my last pick is DMX. One, I think in a lot of ways DMX has a very unique style of music. It has a very unique style of rap. Talking to a lot of, or not talking to, but I guess watching their interviews. A lot of rappers are very inspired by DMX and he still gets credited, for, you know, rap styles or little lines that, artists borrow or throw in their music and he has a bit of a high sample potential. I think we'll see some of his music sampled more and oddly enough, whether it's like a movie, like a Creed or something like that, this sheer like BPM of some of his music, is definitely attractive from like a sync perspective. For, upbeat movies that wanna like, leverage a rap song or leverage hip hop. and I also think, and he's done very well in getting quite a few syncs when it comes to video games, I'm thinking about sings so often this podcast from a movie perspective, but gaming syncs are huge as well. and DMX's music is quite huge in the gaming community. So if anything, from an, optimizing the asset perspective, I would focus on optimizing his syncs for gaming, because of the BPM of his music. And I think I would get it at a favorable rate. Dan Runcie: Yeah, I couldn't imagine there might be some high ROI potential there, I would say and just given how dominant that run was, and I think some people forget. Yeah. Each of those first albums was just like, you know, topping the charts and everything. Especially from like 98 to 03'. it was, on, I mean, there were other rappers who may have had like, you know, bigger commercial success at that time from whether it was someone like Eminem or some others. But in terms of like relevance, that still matters to a lot of people and how that can continue. X is up there. Do you think we'll see an X movie at some point? Denisha Kuhlor: You know, I hope we do. and that's how I reference, how a lot of rappers like, feel about him because musicians appreciating another artist are probably our most likely way. You see obviously 50 cent, 50 cent in TV and film production, Drake with Euphoria, even Childish Gambino, right? So him being revered by other artists I think puts him on the best path for us to see that. which also would be  Dan Runcie: Yeah. That's a good pick. So I think so. I actually, but now my seventh pick, because I'm like re-looking at these. I had Taylor, Drake, Eminem, SZA, Bruno Mars, Michael, and then now the seventh pick. this is tough, but, I'm gonna take the Weeknd and I'm gonna take him because  Denisha Kuhlor: Oh, amazing.  Dan Runcie: I think it's really hard to have a song that's been released like in the pandemic era of music that still tops the charts, but everything from After Hours is still getting so much radio play. He just did a remix with Ariana Grande, Die For You, a song that came out now, what, seven years ago. And that song had topped the charts. He has this ability to just, I think it's him and a handful of other artists that just have this ability to make music that can continue to like pierce through. I mean, we didn't get as much of that from Don FM but I think even he himself, like that album didn't get as much, you know, focus the same way that everything from After Hours did. And  he has this way of just kind of capturing, a generation just with like the feel and the vibe, I think sync potential, especially as he's gonna be in more movies now himself and what that could look like. So, yeah definitely. Denisha Kuhlor: That's super strong. He makes hits. Dan Runcie: Another pop artist, so I know, you know, there's a bunch of Max Martin and other producers that'll get their share, but I'll take his, so, Yeah. No, super. Right. So yeah, so let's just round out the lists here. and then let's share. So with the first pick, and then in order you took Mariah Carey, then Bad Bunny, then Burna Boy, then Lizzo, Summer Walker, then Pharrell Williams and DMX. And then I took Taylor Swift, Drake, Eminem, SZA, Bruno Mars, Michael Jackson, and the Weeknd. So, yeah. How are you feeling about your picks? Did you feel like you got the artist that you wanted? Do you feel like you, you know, got the ones that you wanted to like, lighten everything up? Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I do. I think that some of those artists are bets that would hopefully, positively surprise me. but there's enough artists, within those picks that I know revenue will be generated and will have a positive upside regardless. If anything, we can continue to crown on Mariah Carey and some of Pharrell's records and even just the dominance Bad Bunny continues to have for a very long time while also seeing, how dominant, for decades to come an artist like a Summer Walker. Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think if we were to look at these catalogs like, or look at both of our portfolios, I think you would have like the Vanguard Growth Fund and I would have like the Vanguard Blue Chip Fund if that makes sense. Right? Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Exactly, exactly.  Dan Runcie: You know, you may generate some higher returns, but with that, you know, there's more risk that comes with it as well. but yeah, mine, think it's probably assumed that you would generate higher returns because I feel like SZA's probably the, not even like, oh, it's probably the pick of mine that is the least blue chip relative to the rest of them. And yeah. enough, even someone like Bruno Mars is probably more skewed towards less of that certified pick on mine just because of how much of a more, strong base the other artists do have. Denisha Kuhlor: Totally. If I had to, compare thinking about venture, I would say you definitely took like a series C, series D, growth fund, with a few, maybe more Series A, like a series A pick. I think maybe this is to my roots, I took more of a series B potentially with a good opportunity fund and skewed heavily ine and seed, with a few of those artists as well.  Dan Runcie: No, that makes sense. That makes sense. What were some of your honorable mentions? Yeah, maybe you can name like three, maybe first I wanna do honorable mentions, and then second, I wanna talk about some rising folks. Maybe some people that you would've picked, but maybe you didn't pick, because it's like, no, it's too early. It's too early, right? But yeah, Denisha Kuhlor: let yeah, no,  Dan Runcie: with the honorable mentions like who are one or two that you had considered? Denisha Kuhlor: For sure. So the biggest honorable mention for me is  Usher,  Dan Runcie: yep. He  Denisha Kuhlor: um  Dan Runcie: mine too. Denisha Kuhlor: usher,  the Vegas residency, the, tiny desk Usher's been having a phenomenal few last years. and I think people don't even realize the residency really brought it back for a lot of people. The breadth of his catalog's so talented, his music is intergenerational or continues to transcend generations. Usher was one that I thought a lot about. I was kind of going back and forth between Usher and Pharrell, and I picked Pharrell because of the exposure to so many other artists that he has. but Usher was a really, really big one. Dan Runcie: Yeah, he was on my list too, because I think similarly, this Vegas residency has created a moment and it's hard to be able to do that. I can't speak to, I haven't looked at his stream numbers and I mean, I really even like back when I feel like Usher's music was at like the top of pop culture and stuff. I don't, I wasn't tracking, oh, how high Confessions on the Billboard 200. That's just not something that I thought or cared about time, but I think that he's won. He was on my list as well. Someone else that was on my list too was, Kendrick Lamar was on my list too, because good kid, m.A.A.d city's been on the charts for a decade plus. People are still listening to that, and that's higher charts now than what the last album is. Mr. Morale, the big step was, I know that album was more controversial but the fact that Damn and, good kid, m.A.A.d city are still on the charts. You have still Pimp A Butterfly. You never know what type of multimedia opportunities that can turn into. I think if you're talking at least in my opinion, like pure like bar for bar, like the best like rapper lyricist of the past decade plus, I think it is him and there's something to be said for what value have. So yeah, he was who I was going back and forth with him and the Weeknd, for that seventh pick. But yeah, he was my honor, audible mention. Denisha Kuhlor: Kendrick pick is strong. my rap honorable mention is actually J. Cole  Dan Runcie: Yep. I had him on the list.  Denisha Kuhlor: As someone that gets mentioned in, a lot of the conversations with Kendrick and I think for Cole, a few reasons. one, the whispers of retiring are looming and we know that he has the desire to retire sometime in the near future. So I think people will cherish the records that he has even more, the fan base of the Dreamville built is super engaged. super active, and I think we'll be that way for a long time to come. And J. Cole, you know, picked up a lot of good features when he was coming up. Maybe it's the Rock Nation effect or whatever, but he has some amazing features, whether it's, party with Beyonce or just like, he has some really great features that he's gotten as well.  So yeah, that's one I would be super excited to have. Dan Runcie: Every time I look at hits, daily double stats, just seeing who's trending. No role models is always on that chart somewhere. and it's now been, eight and a half, nine years since that song came out. So it's a hits game. If I can get one of the biggest rap songs of the decade and one of the more popular rap albums of the decade too, then you take that obviously so many other hits as you mentioned Party, and a lot of the other ones that he's then. But that song, I think itself is worth at least bringing the conversation up. A few people that I didn't mention, but I'm curious if they came up for you. We can just keep these kind of rapid fire before we get to the Rising But did you consider Ed Sheeran? Denisha Kuhlor: You know, I did, I thought a lot about like having UK representation, . and he came up for me there. He's also done a lot of like features with, African artists, whether it's Stormzy, Burna Boy, but I ultimately shied away from him. I don't even know if I have the right things to point to it, but something didn't feel right. Dan Runcie: Okay. He was on the list I had as well. I just preferred the other ones more. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. Like it's not even fully like quantitative, like no. Yeah, It just, yeah, like he was compelling, but not compelling enough to make you wanna get excited.  Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's like I know that Divide was a huge album. I know that Shape of You is probably one of the biggest hits of the past 15 years if we're going back that far. But yeah, you know, it's just kind of tough cuts. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that al that catalog will probably generate more revenue overall, maybe then like scissors, like someone that I took. But I that Ed Sheeran's catalog isn't gonna come at, you know, a cheap cost, but who knows? So he's at least someone I thought about. Did you consider, this is going back a little bit further, but did you consider Celine Dion? Denisha Kuhlor: Oh, no, I didn't. But Celine Deion makes so much sense for so many reasons, but I didn't, you know, I'm thinking about my picks, probably Mariah Carey and DMX were as far back as went and that's because I was thinking about the streaming optimization as well, with the number you said. And IFPI's latest report streaming is just taking so much of the conversation. I would probably go for a lookalike audience to Celine Dion, so maybe more like an Adele, which also wouldn't come cheap. but audience that is a little more, well, didn't I take Adele? I think that Adele almost, in a way like Ed Sheeran, for all the right reasons. It's like, no, I wouldn't get pushback if I was thinking about my LPs comment saying, I don't get pushback in any way for picking Adele, but in a lot of ways Adele feels safe. And while her music is easily recognizable and does well, her type of music in a lot of ways, doesn't really feel like something that you play and stream over and over almost in the way that Taylor Swift's music does. and so while ballads are great, and I think people really, really love them from a replay value on streaming, I just didn't get as excited as I wanted to. Dan Runcie: I think you're right because I think that the reason that I didn't take her is because I thought that it could have easily been a catalog and rights that you would overpay for because of the name and everything that she's done. But when you look at the pure streaming numbers, yeah, I know that Easy on me had like broken records at the time, but still those records I believe got broken like a week later or a month later by BTS or whoever else, it was Bad Bunny and since then Taylor Swift, right? So yeah, I questioned the replay value and I do think that because, yeah, I thought that it would've been high compared to some of these other artists. Going back to the Celine point, I think you were right, because I also shifted a bit just thinking about how big the streaming error is and how that generates so much cattle revenue for this. And one of the big thesis that I've had overall with music rights sales and acquisition is that a lot of these deals have overvalued the artists from the seventies and eighties and undervalued the from the nineties and two thousands. Because if you thinking about the dominant we're streaming as and who are the dominant generation of those consumers, as great as you know, Celine and others were, the songs that are most likely to resonate are like Taylor Swift and Drake, you know, are gonna be more relevant to this generation than Madonna or Celine Dion or some of the others. And I did consider. Madonna as well, just thinking about it. I know this next tour she's gonna do on is gonna be big, but I held back then for the same Celine thing. It's like, yeah, maybe if this was 20 years ago when we were doing this draft in 2003, then maybe I would've taken Celine Dion or Madonna but I think that decay curve is definitely, you know, flattened a bit where maybe the upside, not just the upside potential, but the consistency just may not be, or not the consistency. Obviously it's consistent, but it just didn't seem to valuable as some of these other picks. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. No, I agree. And I think, you know, in like working the music or working the records, so you can optimize your catalog. You have to kind of think about who's making the decisions now or who's coming into power now. and some of those executives are younger. and so, thinking about how they might place value, even though they're familiar, obviously with the brand and the artists, on a premium for that music, I think it would be a much longer conversation much to what you said, which is probably why some of these artists were willing to sell, and kind of let the asset manager deal with the headache of justifying the value while they've extracted the value from the asset manager who's excited to go out and  Dan Runcie: Yeah. Did you consider Beyonce? Denisha Kuhlor: I did consider Beyonce. I just, it's expensive very, very, very expensive. it would be, I think, you know, Beyonce is an interesting one. She's actually one of my favorites in the sense that I think uses her catalog really well with all kind of the moments that she's had, whether it's the Super Bowl or, her Coachella performance. She reworks her music in a way that continues to feel new. Like as an artist, almost to the point of where I also had trepidation with Adele, how Adele navigates her artistry. while I respect, and obviously we want artists that set boundaries. I don't know if it's in my best interest as an artist, right? She kind of drops her music and waits long stretches before going back her choice to cancel her tour and do a Las Vegas residency, means there'll be a lot of places untouched unless she decides to, venture out. Whereas someone like Beyonce is exciting because her music is always being brought back, right? I did consider, interestingly enough, Destiny's child, because I feel like I, it would get the upside of every time a Beyonce performs or has a big, moment on the world stage, at a price point. And maybe Beyonce's part wouldn't be up for grabs, but other people's would at a price point that would be attractive. Dan Runcie: The other thing about Beyonce too is that she's kind of like Lizzo, but magnified in this sense that very high touring to streaming output, if that makes sense. But I don't get to collect tour revenue. I'm collecting the music rights and a lot of the songs from Renaissance. So if you compare the streaming of SZA's SOS to Beyonce's Renaissance, like it isn't even close. SZA's is much more popular there and the same way that I'm seeing good kid, m.A.A.d city and 2014 Forest Hill drives and Eminem's Greatest hits albums like still at the top of that charts. I'm not seeing the same thing for Lemonade or Beyonce in a way that's almost surprising because you feel like, okay, the generational impact, those records are huge. Everyone revered them, but this is a game and they just aren't at that And I know you'd have to pay a premium because of it's Beyonce. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. Beyonce is one of the biggest, and probably most vocal invisible fan bases in the world. but that doesn't also in some ways, show for the parts that we just talked about, right? Some of these younger fan bases or these fan bases for other artists, They care very much about streaming. They were a digital native or streaming first, and they're going to continue to optimize for that. whereas, like you said, I think because Beyonce's fan base is so engaged, so passionate, you see the power of the fan base come out really in touring, whether they listen to Beyonce every day for the past year, I think the conversion and amount probably of minutes listened, for a Beyonce to, in terms of needing to then feeling compelled to buy a ticket is much lower than the minutes needed to be listened for a SZA or some of these other artists to then lead to that conversion of buying, buying tickets and so she has a fan base that's gonna support, like regardless way. and like you said, that's not well great. Not in our best interest. Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. Because it's  like she's been making music for over 25 years now as a high profile public recording artist, and in that way, because of the touring and amount, amount times, you got to see her. It's almost like her touring business is closer to Elton John or Billy Joel than it is SZA in that way. Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Beyonce is a touring artist who has the ability to use that fan base to parlay into super financially lucrative deals. But as you mentioned in the beginning of this criteria, unfortunately we'd not be seeing a lot of that.  Dan Runcie: Right. And yeah, if you acquire the rights to Alien Superstar, you gotta split that with 24 different writers, so Denisha Kuhlor: Yes. Another great point. Beyonce's been highly collaborative,and very good about giving people opportunities and also giving them credit. but when it comes to the piece of the pie, which I'm sure she could do based off her ability to get extreme amounts of touring revenue, high leverage, brand partnerships, but when it comes to the part that we can control as asset managers, we'd definitely be paying a high premium, and hoping for the best in someone.  Dan Runcie: Got it. Yep. I agree. All right, so a few rising stars that I had had and considered, but didn't. So, I look at someone like, so it's funny, neither of us picked any country or rock artists, but I look at the popularity of someone like Luke Combs and even though I don't listen to that genre of music or as much, he's dominated the charts. He has continued to just, you know, put out and, you know, someone that's still pretty young, I wanna say, I don't know, he is like late twenties, early thirties, 10 years from now, could we look back  Denisha Kuhlor: and could  Dan Runcie: this person have like, you know, impact level of like your, whether it's your Garth Brooks or Blake Shelton or like one of these other artists that like people just come to time and time again and they put up strong numbers both in streaming and in pure album sales. Someone like that could be interesting. I feel like Morgan Wallen is someone else that fits in this category where he is also just high on the charts  Denisha Kuhlor: and  Dan Runcie: stuff. I mean, obviously his incidents and everything else that he's been notorious for would cast a shadow on that. And I don't know if I'd be willing that necessarily, but he's one that came to mind too. And I think there's other artists too, like whether it's like, you know, Billy Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo it must have been like, okay, I could see them continuing, but we'll see. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I thought like a Rosalia, on my end, for example. the other two that came to mind, and this one I don't know how to feel, but something in me was like considerate. NBA Youngboy, he has a fan base that's passionate right? And is digitally native and they stream and they don't really need, the opinions of the outside world when it comes to music. He was one probably not a category for Verizon stores and more honorable mentions, but I'll mention it. Anyway, Frank Ocean. I feel like there's value there, in Frank Ocean, for sure. And then, Rema, I feel like Rema is the next step, when it comes to music from the continent. The folks at Maven have continued to do an amazing job, and you look at Calm down, it's one of the biggest records in the world. And not only, within Africa or the United States, but also within India, which I thought was just super interesting. So definitely a really, really global artist. He's had records, calm Down, is doing well before this Selena Gomez remix. Dume B has been cited even on present Barack Obama's playlist. So I think he can hold his own, for sure. And feature wise he's very exciting as well. And he's still young enough, but with enough volume where I feel like I could get a competitive rate. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, those are good picks there. let's see, another group I thought of, or not group, but where were they on this list? Let's see. So I did consider some K-pop in the mix. I was like, okay, what would that BTS catalog look like, right? I mean, because I feel like in the same rationale that you had about Bad Bunny and Burna boy, I was considering them as well. I think what made me pause, I was. The fact that at least some of the group members now need to join the military, or at least on their like what does that look like? How does that impact the longevity of their music as opposed to them being able to kind of like ride the waves themselves? So it'll be interesting, right? It's because I think especially now, it's like, I feel like, I don't know, in, earlier days when it was more common for popular figures, whether it's in sports or entertainment to be drafted, there was less pop culture. Things saturating their mind. So when they came back, it's like, oh, okay. I don't know, this might be a bad analogy, but like, oh, Muhammad Ali's back still relevant. Okay. him, you know, he's doing opposed to a way where I hope by the time that BTS is like back in full effect again, that they still can command that same power that they once did. So, Dan Runcie: Yeah. So that dynamic is also why I kept them off. I thought a lot about like boy bands, interestingly enough. So when you look at the Jonas Brothers or even One Direction, and it's almost like the, at their peak like level of fandom, that their audience like gives them, I almost feel like it can't be topped again, for so many reasons, right? Like falls off in a way that you're really excited to embrace maybe when you're younger or them having a younger fan. Interestingly enough, the only person in, it's not a boy band, but that I feel like has captured that audience and has truly, really been able to maintain it, is the artist who did end up picking, which is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift was able to successfully, like, grow with her fan base from this like teen era. to now we see that the upside is there for her because her fans just have more disposable income that they can spend on something that was so important to them for so long in their. Did you consider Harry Styles? Denisha Kuhlor: I did. but interestingly enough, I just go back and forth so much with, it feels still like a moment. I don't, I would like to see more catalog growth or more catalog volume before fully wanting to, before fully wanting to commit. It's one that I'd have on my radar, but I don't think, I'd be ready to start negotiating just yet. Dan Runcie: That's fair. Even if you got the one direction stuff, his chair of the One Direction stuff. Denisha Kuhlor: Now if I did that, that would make it, that would make it more attractive because it gives a bit of both worlds, the nostalgia from one direction as well as the bet on him as a solo artist but one kind of at least makes, whatever amount you spend, it gives a justification for it being stable to some some extent. Dan Runcie: Yeah, I don't know. That might not have been the best hypothetical to pose at you though, because like when Justin Timberlake sold his catalog, that was just him as a solo artist that had nothing to do with NSYNC or Yeah. like that. Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. Yeah.  and I think it's harder than we realize. And looking at a sync perspective, we would still need, even if we brought really valuable syncs sync opportunities, with their music, we would still need the permission of so many other people. So the sheer, operational output that would be required to truly maximize it, or at least that part of it, couldn't be taken lightly as well. Especially when you have so many other artists in your catalog in which the sign off to get a sync could be much Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's a good point. All right, well I know you and I could talk for hours about this topic and could probably draft seven more if we wanted to. I feel like we almost kind of did the, last part of the conversation.  Denisha Kuhlor: We might need to have few more maybe pre-seed edition opportunity fund  edition.  Dan Runcie: Yeah, I feel like there's a few ways we could like set parameters around it where it's like, okay, only, you know, people under 30 years old. And then how does that change the or over 50 or people that longer with us or in a particular genre. I think there's so many others like that we didn't even mention. But yeah. any last words before we wrap this up? Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I mean, if anything, I have a lot of respect for the people that are doing this every day. I know, and you've interviewed some of the amazing firms that have really set out to, to do this work. but this is a fun one and I'm curious to hear everyone else's pick. So definitely tweet Dan and I. Dan Runcie: Yeah. Please respond with the ones you like, the ones you didn't like, and let's, let's keep the conversation going. Denisha, it's pleasure as always. Awesome. Thanks for having me.  Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, Go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Short-form video has exploded in popularity the past three years, buoyed by TikTok. Copycat apps and features are now the norm across social media sites — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Instagram. MIDiA analyst Tati Cirisano joins me on this episode to break down the ongoing war between short-form video’s main players.  The music industry is certainly keeping a close eye on the battle. Short-form video has been a boon for music discovery. Though, many music execs would also argue music has played a big factor in the rise of these platforms, and the industry wants to better monetize that. Tati and I covered all this and more on the show. Here’s everything we hit on: [02:59] Vine paved the way for short-form video [05:56] TikTok filled void in social media [06:53] Factors behind TikTok’s success [10:19] TikTok is an entertainment platform, not social  [13:20] Potential pitfalls for TikTok  [23:10] YouTube’s biggest advantages  [25:53] Overlap between YouTube’s short-form and long-form audiences [29:37] Facebook and Instagram Reels are picking up steam [35:19] Instagram Reels more natural to the platform than YT Shorts [35:35] Meta’s advertising is both a pro and a con [36:39] Active creator vs. passive watcher user bases [38:35] In what scenario does TikTok lose top spot in short-form video war? [41:50] Best platform for artists? [43:08] Best platform for record labels? [44:05] Best monetized platform? [47:11] Will there be a new form of content consumption in the next five years? Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Tati Cirisano, @tatianacirisano This episode was brought to you by trac. Learn more about how artists can bring web2 and web3 together for their fans at trac.co  Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Tatiana Cirisano: One of my pros to talk about something that I've just, I don't know if this is still true, but something that I've heard from marketers, music marketers in the past is that, Instagram just has more trust with brands than TikTok and other platforms that are new because they've been using it for so long. [00:00:13] They know what the deal is like. It just has, better relationships in that respect. but if that's also leading to more ads on the platform, then it's kind of a pro and a con. [00:00:42] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have a jam packed episode that is about the short form video wars, which platform will come out on top. And I'm joined by none other than Tati Cirisano from Video Research. Welcome. [00:00:55] Tatiana Cirisano: Thanks Dan. Good to be back. Thanks for entertaining another rant of mine, [00:01:00] Dan Runcie: No, this is good. And with what you write about what you cover, you're the perfect person to have this conversation with. There has been so much focus as anyone listening to this podcast, who knows about the influence of short form video, what it does for discovery, for music, for artists, how record labels and all these companies are tackling it. [00:01:19] Now we have several companies that are vying for that spot with similar but different products. But before we jump into TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, I feel like we gotta give props where it is and give a shout out to Vine because I don't know if we were to be here if it weren't for Vine paving the way, so, oh, gone too soon. [00:01:41] Tatiana Cirisano: you're giving me flashbacks to the Water Malone guy. I don't know if anyone else is gonna remember that, but the specific things that went viral on that platform. Oh God,yeah. We have to give the shout out to Vine. [00:01:53] Dan Runcie: It was the perfect example of constraints, breeding, creativity, six, seven, second videos, and people had whole narratives of storytelling there. It was so unique to see what people were able to do. I feel like at its peak I saw it was 200 million monthly active users, which obviously is a drop in the bucket compared to the services we're about to talk about. [00:02:17] But at that moment, that felt huge. It really was the platform. And obviously I know that Twitter had other objectives and things there, but. It's almost like a little too early as well. I just don't know if culture was like right there. And even music itself with artists, I feel like there was a lot of influencers, but there's a few artists, but not as many that really tapped in where it was really a huge discovery platform. [00:02:41] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, and I think also like people weren't so comfortable with creating content at that time, or it wasn't something that was like so readily available. Like now I feel like every teenager just kind of create, thinks of creating content as, you know, just part of the social toolbox. Or maybe they want to be a content creator and that's, you know, that's like a sort of a new aspiration. [00:03:02] But I think at the time of Vine, maybe that's another reason it didn't pop off, is it wasn't like the consumer behavior wasn't there. There were some people that loved to make videos, but I think most people were just watching. [00:03:11] Dan Runcie: Right, and I feel like too, the people that really popped off on that platform, They never quite got as big as some of the people that are on the platforms. We're gonna talk about, thinking about whether, you know, you mentioned someone where thinking about Alphacat or like King Bach, some of the others that were big there, and I know they had moments, but again, it was almost a little bit ahead of its time in terms of them being able to really take off the way things did in the late 2010s and ever. [00:03:39] Tatiana Cirisano: Mm. I'm also trying to remember now because one of the major things that usually comes up for me talking about like why TikTok was so impactful is how it's such, it was such a big deal that it opened to the for you page instead of like a feed of people, content from people you already know. But in my mind, it was kind of like the first major social media platform to do that. [00:03:59] But was Vine actually the first, I don't remember how the feed worked. Was it people you followed or was it just random? [00:04:05] Dan Runcie: I forget. That's a good point. I forget someone listening probably will ping back and say that, oh, it was this way. But yeah, I completely forget. I feel like I remember there are videos I knew from people that I would go back and follow cause they easily wanted to go watch it. But yeah, I completely forget. And even if it was there, I don't think the algorithm had quite enough content to be able to make that happen. [00:04:27] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, that's true. But yeah, the history is really interesting cuz you had Vine and then Twitter shut it down and there was kind of this void for people that loved the platform not having something similar. And then musically came around, but it wasn't really the same. It was kind of all focused on lip syncing. [00:04:44] It wasn't, you know, people just making random videos. and I feel like it also had kind of a younger audience, like it was more like middle schoolers than high schoolers. And it just kind of didn't have that same, it didn't reach like the critical mass of, no offense to middle schoolers, but like it didn't have that cool factor [00:05:02] so it's interesting like that happened. And then the timing is so important because I feel like we can't ignore the fact that TikTok launched in the US a few years before the pandemic and kind of reached that critical mass of users right when Lockdowns began. so yeah, I'm glad that you started with Vine cause I think the history is really important to look at. [00:05:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think the TikTok piece is unique because before TikTok ends up launching in the US, Instagram and Snapchat have stories, which obviously isn't the same as what we're gonna talk about with Instagram having reels. But that vertical video, and I believe that when Instagram first came out, it was 15 seconds, I believe was the limit. [00:05:44] So there was a bit of that trying to copy what Vine was doing to that extent. But then TikTok comes up with, you know, an entirely new platform. And I feel like the concept of a TikTok post is what then brings you to it's, For You page, and just [00:06:00] having that endless content role. Which a reel is, but a Instagram story or even a Snapchat story I tried to do at points, but never quite got there, which is why Instagram and Facebook more broadly has tried to make a pivot into that. [00:06:15] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. And it was more about like from music's perspective, it was about users engaging with the music that they're fans of like when TikTok first started to blow up in 2020, it was all dance challenges. It was all people kind of putting their own spin on the songs that they loved, and I feel like that's also different from stories and like the other sort of video, sort of short form video, tools that we had before where it was maybe about [00:06:40] sharing music, but it wasn't about actually engaging with it and putting your own spin on it. And I think that was the other thing that TikTok did that was really powerful from the music discovery standpoint, is inviting people to actually put their own spin on the things that they love. [00:06:54] Dan Runcie: Right. There was a culture that was created around the music and around the content [00:07:00] generation that did not exist in those platforms, right? Like to your point, yeah, you could have had music playing while you're sharing some video that you naturally wouldn't have wanted to share on your Instagram feed, but that wasn't the same as trying to do your own rendition of Old Town Road, right? [00:07:17] Tatiana Cirisano: And there weren't trends like TikTok is so trends focused, which is a key reason why songs tend to go viral on the platform. So, yeah. [00:07:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And on that note, we should dive into it. So for everyone listening, there's three companies that will do our breakdown on, so TikTok Meta. and YouTube and what they're doing respectively in short form video. And on that note, let's start with TikTok and just highlight some of the pros and cons there. [00:07:43] And I think we talked about a few of them, the cultureyou also talked about just the likelihood of users themselves wanting to engage and create in a way that they wouldn't on others before that, what are some other things that stand out about, like why TikTok has been able to have a strong position here.[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Tatiana Cirisano: I mean, definitely their algorithm, their algorithm is scary good.I know a lot of people will say like, oh, TikTok knows me better than I know myself. And it's true, I get recommendations that are so hyper-specific. and if, you know, it's such a major tool for discovery for that reason. [00:08:16] It's not just showing you things, it's showing you things that you will probably like. So I think, TikTok's algorithm is a huge pro for them. but I also think. at this point, aside from the algorithms, all of these platforms pretty much look the same or have the same user experience. I don't know as much from the creation standpoint in terms of like video editing tools, but from the consumer standpoint, they're all pretty similar. [00:08:40] So I think at that point, the thing that will differentiate you is the culture, and I think TikTok just has a lot more cultural capital than shorts and reels do, maybe because it was first, like so many trends tend to start on TikTok and then trickle down to the other platforms, to the point where I remember like a year ago [00:09:00] or months ago, there were so many reels, users posting TikTok videos that still had the TikTok watermark that reels actually deprioritize them in the algorithm to like try to get people to not do that. [00:09:11] So I think it's something that's hard to measure and can change very quickly, but right now I think the cultural capital is with TikTok and that's a huge pro for them. [00:09:22] Dan Runcie: Right when you're the dominant player, when people are watching videos on other platforms and they're repurposed for yours, that's when you know, we rarely see the opposite of that happen with TikTok and that speaks to it, right? I feel like the other part of where TikTok, I think just stands strong and further proof of that cultural piece is, I think back to the analogy I know that I've said, and others have said about how TikTok is the new MTV and just in terms of its cultural influence on where people find things, and even though it's not the only place that is that artists or, [00:10:00] creators can post short from videos, it's similar in that even back in the MTV days, MTV wasn't the only place that posted and released music videos. You could watch them on VH1, you could watch them on BET. [00:10:13] There were other channels that had it. And while I do think that, at least with BET specifically, there was a culture around there specifically for the black audience and a lot of the people that were interested in those artists themselves. The MTV itself was able to have a bit of this more like mainstream pop rock aspect that also they were able to reach into. [00:10:35] And I think even if you look at VH1, I think that trended a bit older. So even though I think there was still success to be had with some of those other areas, you still saw that MTV ended up still being seen as the dominant player, clearly not to everyone. I think that, as I mentioned, you know, BET still was more relevant to some audiences than others, and I feel like. [00:10:55] There may be some of that. could be true with the short form video aspect too, where I feel [00:11:00] like TikTok is still the dominant player, but are there certain types of users that may be more likely to find success on YouTube shorts or Instagram reels? I don't know if that's necessarily true yet, just because and we can talk about this. [00:11:13] I don't know if we see the same breakdowns there, but that's one thing that I was thinking about as well. Even if you are the main cultural place, are the other areas finding their own folks. [00:11:23] Tatiana Cirisano: Totally. No, and I wanna, think about that question of what platforms benefit, which artists. But you also just reminded me of something else cuz of your comparison to MTV, which is that TikTok considers itself an entertainment platform, not a social platform. And that's so key to me. [00:11:39] And so interesting, like you'll see even in, in news articles and interviews, people will call it social platform and you know, the CEO or whoever's being interviewed will say, no, no, no, no, no, back up because we are an entertainment platform. And that's really different. I think, you know, YouTube shorts is a bit similar because most people don't go to YouTube or social. [00:11:58] They go there to again, like be [00:12:00] entertained. But that's something that pits it sort of, or puts it in a different playing field, I guess, than something like reels because people have usually gone to Instagram to see content from people that they know, to the point where when Instagram like introduced a, you know, a TikTok like feed, a lot of people are like, I don't want this. [00:12:15] I wanna see what my friends are doing. and I think that's changed over time with like influencer culture like I definitely follow a lot of people that I don't know at all. But in general, you know, these other spaces that might try and launch short formm video like Instagram are social platforms that people use for social reasons, and TikTok kind of puts itself in a different playing field by labeling itself as an entertainment platform, which also kind of, I think one of the benefits to that for them is, you know, I think it's part of the reason that people spend so much time on TikTok like there are stats for the average amount of time people spend on the app is ridiculous. It's something like an hour, like nobody does that in one sitting on Instagram, and it's probably because you run out of content. [00:12:57] If you're following a certain number of people, [00:13:00] I run out of, you know, stories to watch or people's content to view. There's only so much you can get out of a social platform like that. But with TikTok, if you're there for entertainment, you can scroll forever. I've done it . So, you know, I think that's a key distinction. [00:13:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's a great pro and I think we can talk a little bit more about that when we talk about like who wins out, whether it's, you know, platform versus artist versus company. But, cause I feel like there's a tie in with that too. But that's a great point. What do you think some of the cons are about TikTok? [00:13:28] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. I mean, I think the kind of obvious one is the threat of it being banned. but I don't know that's an interesting one because I feel like it's not talked about that much. It's always kind of an aside, and a potential, but it's unclear whether that could actually happen. what might end up being a bigger inhibitor is just the attitudes that that inspires like if parents are like, oh, the government might is trying to ban TikTok, it must be bad, let me tell my kid they're not allowed to [00:14:00] use it like I think the perceptions that people have about the app and their safety on it, they might be influenced enough by the threat of a band to be scared of using it. [00:14:08] Like I know some people that kind of feel freaked out by it. so I think that could be a real threat or it could be an imagined one, but it could have impact either way. [00:14:17] Dan Runcie: I thought a lot about the threat piece. I think the most likely scenario would be that it's similar to the discussions that we saw three years ago, where is there a US company that would potentially take over TikTok us and could that be the outcome? I know that a lot of that had pretty much died down with the US presidency transfer of power, and those discussions stopped. [00:14:40] But I do feel like if anything I could see that, likely happening as opposed to a full on ban. We'll see though. I mean, because I feel like that could address some of the concerns. Hopefully if that happens, we'll see how whatever company that runs it would go about managing it. But that's how I see that piece of it, particularly playing out.[00:15:00] [00:15:00] The other con that I've thought a lot about is, it's something Lyor Cohen, who runs YouTube, or at least he runs YouTube music, has talked about, he did an interview in, music business worldwide a couple months back, and he has, and I quote, he says, "Short form video that doesn't lead anywhere is the most dangerous thing I've seen in the music business in a long time." [00:15:23] A lot of people are very familiar because it was one of those quotes where he didn't say the company, but everyone knew he was talking about TikTok. And the thing is, many of us know that TikTok is avidly trying to build up has its distribution service, but it's trying to build up its own streaming service so that traffic can go somewhere and that it can do that. [00:15:42] It already has RESO in other countries, but it's actively trying to do that in the us but it still hasn't been able to do that. We know it. These are very cost intensive things to be able to do and do, right? I think it's worth talking about whether or not we think that is as big of a threat as positioned, but I do know that [00:16:00] that is one of the conceptions out there that you have this top of funnel that doesn't directly lead anywhere. [00:16:05] So if you are obviously, record labels and others are tracking the pipeline of TikTok data that then leads to streams and things like that. But is the fact that that is a non-connected platform, at least the way it lives today, is that a risk in your eyes or a con? [00:16:24] Tatiana Cirisano: I think it is a risk. I mean, I think that issue is getting worse. I feel like I brought this up maybe on another podcast we did too, but the fact that the same things that made TikTok so powerful, like having this for you page and having such a good algorithm also means that it's a completely lean back experience. [00:16:42] I don't have to follow anyone on the app. I don't have to take any actions at all. All I have to do is open it and keep scrolling. So there's very little motivation to follow anyone. So that goes for content creators, but it also goes for artists who are trying to, you know, actually build and retain long-term fans, rather [00:17:00] than just having a hit go viral on the platform, maybe it translates to a streaming bump and that's the end of it. [00:17:05] so I think that that is a bit of a threat. there's something else I was gonna say about that too. oh, that I think another point in all of this is, these platforms are no longer just competing for users. They're competing for creators because that's who's actually supplying the content, especially if you're an entertainment platform. [00:17:22] TikTok is kind of like, if Netflix was like, we're not gonna actually create any movies, we're just gonna have users upload their own, you know, like the users are supplying the content, the creators are who they need, and they need to appeal to them. So I think if enough creators get frustrated with feeling like they can't build a following on TikTok, musicians include, they might try migrating to a different service, and maybe if other services can do that better, they'll stay there. [00:17:46] So I think for that reason, it is a risk yeah, it's clear. I think it is something that TikTok is thinking about. [00:17:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, It does need to be acknowledged. I think as I've thought about this a few ways, I think that the challenge that was presented by [00:18:00] Lyor would imply that there is a higher conversion rate from YouTube shorts to YouTube, and that they have the data to be able to prove that. Theoretically, I do think that that makes sense in terms of absolute numbers though, it would be very interesting to see how many streams absolute it actually leads to, just given how much more massive TikTok is relative to YouTube shorts in terms of just the amount of people actually watching videos on that platform on a regular basis. [00:18:29] And I think the other cod with YouTube, just to underscore something you had said was that, if artists themselves, or whether it's more broadly creators do start to feel like they're being more marginalized on the entertainment platform, where their name gets smaller and smaller and it's less important about who they are, and it's more important that they are just someone that is providing content on this platform, then they may be more likely to go some. [00:18:56] Like a YouTube, which we could transition into now, but go more sort like a [00:19:00] YouTube, which has tried a position itself as more friendly to its business partners as opposed to primarily itself. [00:19:07] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. And I mean, TikTok is, presumably trying to prove right now that it doesn't need music as much, the music industry believes with the kind of experiment they're doing in Australia. So I think that, relationship aspect is really important to all of this. [00:19:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And then one last thought on TikTok too that this just made me think of. I know a couple weeks ago, Snoop Dogg had re-released the Death Row Records catalog, at least the album he owns. Exclusively on TikTok. it was a window wink thing one week before he released it more broadly elsewhere. [00:19:40] While I do think that's probably more likely to be a one-off thing, just because it's a unique scenario where he is an artist, non-major record label that owns his content exclusively, he can choose to do with it what he wants. I'd be interested to see if that changes things and if TikTok does get more involved with exclusivity, especially if it builds out its [00:20:00] own music streaming service. [00:20:03] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, a hundred percent. [00:20:04] Dan Runcie: So we'll see how that one goes. But let's transition over to YouTube now, and I think we talked a little bit about this, but I think some of the pros that it has is that it clearly is YouTube short specifically is clearly a top of the funnel for YouTube. And YouTube already has this algorithm and everything built in there that makes it very easy for creators to be able. [00:20:28] Actually monetize and we've seen many artists be sustainable success stories with how they've tailored their music releases to working on YouTube and be a young boy is one artist that comes to mind there, there are several others and the fact that this can essentially be a way for them to just spread more awareness to others on the platform to then capture more eyeballs and at least of what we've seen, it feels like there is growth, at least of what YouTube has publicly shared. [00:20:54] I believe I saw the most recent number was 30 billion views per day for videos that were being [00:21:00] posted there. So there are a few things that seem to be working in its favor on. [00:21:05] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, and I think the sort of, what Lyor Cohen was talking about, like that ecosystem play that YouTube shorts has, is, it's a major pro for them whereas on TikTok, an artist is kind of posting an isolation on YouTube, maybe their shorts. [00:21:21] It's all on the same platform, and shorts can lead to their music videos or their vlogs on YouTube. And that could, in turn, you know, lead to their music on YouTube music. And I think that ecosystem is really powerful and that's what TikTok would be going after if and when they do launch a Western streaming service. [00:21:39] So for right now, I think that's probably YouTube Short's biggest advantage. And it's biggest sort of, way to like convince creators of its value, convince artists of its value and get them on board. and I think they're clearly trying to do that. [00:21:53] Dan Runcie: Great point. Another one too that that made me think of is another of YouTube's strengths is [00:22:00] they clearly are as I mentioned before, they are artist friendly in that it is a place where you can grow, monetize, you have the people that you're trying to reach there. But I do think that the fact that they're just stronger relationships that they have with the industry overall. [00:22:18] Does tend to play in, I mean, YouTube is very vocal about how much, or YouTube music specifically is very vocal about how much money it pays out to the music industry. It's made it a clear goal that it wants to surpass Spotify to be the platform that generates the most for that. And I think a lot of that transfers as well to on the artist side, whereas you mentioned a platform like TikTok, trying to be less reliant on music. [00:22:40] YouTube is actually trying to double down more than that, and the fact that there's just more stability in general. Obviously TikTok is the opposite of this, where we're still not sure will there be a band, will there be another company owning it? But with YouTube, it's the rare platform that 18 years into its [00:23:00] existence, people are still discovered it, people are still finding ways to be able to tap in. It competes with so many other entertainment platforms in so many ways that whether it's for attention, for content, for revenue, at least from a revenue perspective, it's not too far behind Netflix, if not in the same category, and it's all free content and the international reach, there's a lot there, and I feel like that's stability and that longevity, there's something to be said there. [00:23:29] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, that is something that I was gonna bring up too, is just how massive and far reaching YouTube's audiences. it's, you know, one of the most global platforms and one of the top like, the platforms that have the most penetration, I guess is how we put it in the data terms of, you know, weekly active users, globally. [00:23:48] And a question that kind of comes out of that for me though is like, how much overlap there is, I guess between the YouTube audience and the YouTube shorts audience. and I don't really know the answer to that. I mean, you would think that [00:24:00] a lot of habitual YouTube users trickle down to using shorts, but I'm not sure. [00:24:06] I think YouTube is, a lot of people use, YouTube on a desktop or on a smart tv, not necessarily on the app, on their phones, which is kind of the main place for using shorts. I think Shorts has, I know actually that Shorts has, a younger user base than YouTube as a whole, which also makes sense cuz YouTube just has more users in general. [00:24:24] But that's like an open question that I have too is how much overlap there is there, because that would impact this ecosystem strategy that they have. [00:24:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's a good con to highlight and I feel like. ties into with just user behavior on the platform too. TikTok, there already is this mind thought of this is the place where I can just scroll and get lost for hours. And on YouTube, if you're using the app on the phone, it's a separate tab that you have to click into to get to shorts because they're all at the bottom, whether it's shorts or regular videos. [00:24:55] You click into shorts and then you hope that it's a similar type of experience. The [00:25:00] difference though, is that YouTube's algorithm is very YouTube overall, that algorithm is very much based, a bit more on YouTube itself is now the second largest search engine we have, and at least from a YouTube itself standpoint, there's a bit more of a likelihood of it giving you repetitive content and repetitive information of, if you've seen one thing, you've probably seen all the things from this type of niche that you're interested in. Almost in the same way that Spotify can do that, because I know that's a very streaming thing to give you so much of what you already know to keep you sticky. But sure, from video it's different especially if you're trying to optimize from an entertainment perspective. You're trying to keep up with the new trends. You're trying to see what's there. This is your opportunity to just scroll and do that. So can YouTube shorts optimized for that as well, because optimizing for that type of algorithm is different than optimizing for the destination music streaming service, especially from a consumer [00:26:00] behavior perspective. [00:26:01] Tatiana Cirisano: No, and, as you mentioned before with Vine, if you have a smaller user base, you also just don't have as much content to continue serving so that the user can scroll forever. You don't have as many niches to go into like, I think part of the reason TikTok works so well is because since it has. [00:26:16] like what does it have? Like a billion users more. since it has so many users, every possible niche is on there. So whatever hyper-specific thing you're into, TikTok can serve you the content for that. But I don't know if that's something that these other platforms maybe reels more than shorts, but I don't know if these other platforms really have access to that level of niche. [00:26:36] Dan Runcie: That's a good point. And on that note, let's talk about Facebook and Meta and everything that they're doing, both with reels on the Instagram side and reels on the Facebook side. I feel like one of the pros there that works out for them is that, it is so well monetized just from an overall business perspective, what they're able to do from ads and how they're able to generate that a bit more so on Facebook than [00:27:00] Instagram, but still they're able to monetize that quite well, and I think that that does work into their favor because at the end of the date, this is obviously less about the artist and the industry perspective, but more from the company perspective. [00:27:14] Your ability to make that have a high ROI is strong. And at least from recent reports we've heard from Mark Zuckerberg, whether it's at earnings calls or some of the Meta town Hall meetings, it does seem like reels both on Facebook and Instagram are a growing source of eyeballs. And even though that is less money now relative to the more established streams that would only naturally grow over. [00:27:37] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. you know, you're reminding me too that Facebook did roll out that ad revenue sharing program for creators. and for the music industry for rights holders, which I don't think that that's available on reels yet. I've seen some reports that it could be in the future, but, you know, that is what it seems like the music industry is trying to get TikTok to agree to. [00:27:58] so, you know, I would imagine that's a better [00:28:00] deal, you know, from the music side of things, and that's definitely important to all of us. [00:28:03] Dan Runcie: For sure. Any other pros from Instagram or Facebook? [00:28:08] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, I think, they already have huge built-in user bases, which is, useful. They're kind of, they don't have to ask users to download a new app or like open a new tab the way, or I guess it's the same as YouTube shorts, but it feels a bit more built into what users already doing on the platform. [00:28:28] But that kind of also leads me to another point that I've been thinking about with this is, it's so interesting how like TikTok is an app, but on these other platforms it's a feature. Like TikTok is a standalone app for short form video, but when you go on Instagram reels, it's just another feature in the toolbox. [00:28:43] Kind of similar to how, you know, when Snapchat had stories, originally had stories, Instagram just added that as a feature and kind of stole the concept away. And it was, it worked because it was just another tool in the toolbox for its users. I don't know if that's a pro or a con, but it's an interesting [00:29:00] differentiator to me. [00:29:00] they're positioning this as just another tool. I don't know. [00:29:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think you maybe think of two things there, so I think that new features like that do work best when there is a audience that is either searching for this answer or searching for this type of solution that's already tapped in with how they consume and how they naturally engage with the platform. And I think that's been one of the differentiating factors between the copycat attempts from Facebook that work and the ones that don't work. [00:29:31] Like why I think that Instagram stories took off in a ways is because, In a way, even more so than it did for a Snapchat, is that you had this core group of people, influencers, who were already using Instagram, but there's just so much pressure to post these perfect photos on the main feed. So stories helped, co helped solve that, and it helped solve that in a way that. [00:29:54] even more so for that target audience on Instagram, because Snapchat didn't really have as many [00:30:00] influencers, at least to the same extent. Instagram still had a much larger group. So it's like that group that our, the group stole the feature bin, that feature was even more relevant cuz they had more of the target audience than you ever did. [00:30:11] That was already relevant to like, how they were going about it in a way where I feel like some of Facebook's other things like facebook dating for instance, that they've like started and I don't even know if it's still going on. But sure, you have all the active users that naturally would want to, like most of the people using Match or Tinder probably already have Facebook accounts, but that isn't like tapped into like how they naturally use the platform. [00:30:34] And I bring that up in this case because I think that reels is a behavior that is more closely aligned to the Instagram experience than shorts is to the YouTube experience because there was already a mindless nature to some extent of how Instagram was being used. Sure, I know there's differences based on to the point you mentioned earlier of people saying, Hey, I wanna see [00:31:00] my friends. [00:31:00] Not necessarily all this to other stuff, but there's still a mindlessness to seeing your friends or just scrolling through the [00:31:07] feed and. [00:31:08] Tatiana Cirisano: that's a really point. [00:31:09] Dan Runcie: And YouTube didn't really have that scrolling through the feed dynamic. Sure, the algorithm could suggest things, but the algorithm suggested things in a way that was almost closer to Spotify's algorithm suggesting things than it was to Instagram. [00:31:21] suggest you the next thing. [00:31:23] Tatiana Cirisano: That's such a good point. And it reminds me about how I was saying before, like people on Instagram will run out of stuff from their friends to look at. So maybe reels is the solution, maybe it's like going back to what you're saying about like solving a user need. Maybe it's you run out of things from your friends. [00:31:40] Here's reels where you can scroll mindlessly forever and see content from people you don't know. I don't know. That's a great point. [00:31:48] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, thank you. It's something I've thought about too, because I feel like, yeah, running outta content is clearly a thing, cuz I feel like we've all had those moments on Instagram where, we're taping this now, it's almost March. You'll see posts [00:32:00] from the end of December that come through on something and you're like, wait, what? [00:32:03] Why am I getting this now? Like this isn't even timely anymore, but it's something that went viral then. And that obviously isn't something that happens on TikTok in that same way. [00:32:11] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, you you don't get a thing on TikTok that says you're up to date. When I get that on Instagram, like , when I get that on Instagram, I'm like, that's how I know I've spent too much time on this app. It's the equivalent of Netflix going, are you still [00:32:23] Dan Runcie: Right. You still there? [00:32:25] Tatiana Cirisano: you don't get that on TikTok if you got that on TikTok, like I need, someone needs to help you. [00:32:32] That's such a good point. That's such a good point. So yeah, [00:32:35] Dan Runcie: Some of the cons, I will say just with reels, both from Facebook and with Instagram, though a lot of ads and a lot of ads, and this is part of the double-edged sword about how well it's monetized, right? But a lot of ads that I don't hear people complaining as much about ads on the other platforms. [00:32:53] Tatiana Cirisano: Mm-hmm. , that's something, I hadn't even thought about here, and you're totally right. many more ads on those platforms for sure.[00:33:00] [00:33:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think too, just given that point I mentioned about influencers being a core demographic for Instagram overall because that's been the core audience there. How does that translate necessarily as much to artists? And I know that there's some overlap there with some artists who very much position themselves as influencers. [00:33:18] But if you're an artist who really isn't about influencing in that way, is ls going to be as effective, relatively speaking, compared to some of the other short form video platforms. [00:33:29] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, and I think that also gets to the, cultures that are different on these platforms like I think similar to what you were saying about how Instagram influencers like stories because they could be more off the cuff. I think reels still has a feeling of being a bit more professional and less casual than TikTok. [00:33:47] TikTok feels a bit more casual, off the cuff weird. You don't get as much weird content on Instagram reels. It's a lot more curated and, professionalized. and it's interesting because I actually had, as one of my [00:34:00] pros to talk about something that I've just, I don't know if this is still true, but something that I've heard from marketers, music marketers in the past is that, Instagram just has more trust with brands than TikTok and other platforms that are new because they've been using it for so long. [00:34:12] they know what the deal is like. It just has, better relationships in that respect. but if that's also leading to more ads on the platform, then it's kind of a pro and a con. [00:34:21] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. That's a great point. The brand piece too, and I know that TikTok is clearly trying to do it with some of the reports they've put out some of the positioning trying to get itself to be seen as a home for brands to be able to tap in. But Instagram has owned that space for quite some time. [00:34:37] Tatiana Cirisano: Exactly. [00:34:38] Dan Runcie: Yeah, any other pros and cons on reels before we move? [00:34:42] Tatiana Cirisano: Well, I guess one other thing I'll say, this kind of applies to everything, but you've made me think during this conversation. I would love to know what percentage of people on each of these platforms are lurking versus also posting content. cuz I think that would impact our idea of like how deep the trove of content can go and how that impacts the [00:35:00] algorithm and the niches you can get into likeI sort of have a theory that because TikTok is a bit more casual and off the cuff, it might have more of a, percentage of its users are posting content. Like I've never, I don't think I would ever make a reel. It feels very influencer to me, but I would post a TikTok cuz whatever, like, it just feels a little bit more casual. [00:35:17] So I think that's an interesting question to me is what percentage are creators and what percentage are just like passive users? [00:35:25] Dan Runcie: That is a really good question. Yeah, it would be good to see that, right? Because I feel like TikTok kind of has two things going forward one, it does seem less formal from a content release perspective of just being able to share it. But on the other hand too, anytime you get into the absolute numbers of over 1 billion, approaching 2 billion monthly active users specifically on this feature of the short form, you know, For You page, it does lend itself to likelihood. [00:35:56] Each time you go outside of that like concentric circle, I feel like it's a higher [00:36:00] likelihood of attracting more lurkers than hardcore users. But it'll be great data to be able to see. That's a really good point. [00:36:06] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. We'll have to put that in a survey. [00:36:09] Dan Runcie: I know, I know. We'll have to get those answers somewhere, but so now that we've talked about each of these, TikTok is the company that is clearly in the lead, both from a reach perspective, how long it's been established with this particular platform itself, and outside of the potential government sanctions or anything there, is there anything that you could see that could change the likelihood of that continuing relative to these other two services? [00:36:34] YouTube shorts and Instagram and Facebook reels. [00:36:37] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, the thing that immediate. Comes to mind for me is it's licenses with music and its relationships with music knowing that those are negotiations that are happening as we speak. I think if TikTok were to suddenly, I guess this is the thing that they're kind of trying to test in Australia, but if TikTok were to suddenly lose a lot of popular music, what would that do to the platform? [00:36:59] [00:37:00] so I think that's the first question that comes to mind for me, just from, you know, music industry stand [00:37:06] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I hear that. I could see that I thought about this too, and I had a tough time thinking about something that could really shift things. I do wonder about, If monetization itself and revenue generation does become an issue for TikTok moving forward, how that can shape the nature of the experience of the platform, right? Because meta and Google being YouTube's parent company are both so much more established. They've been around for years generating revenue at a pretty steady clip. And while at least the way TikTok is right now, it does have the advantage of being under bite dance, which has several, you know, has a lot of money coming in as well. [00:37:49] I do wonder how profitable that will be. And obviously we saw how meta adapted to try to make money, where we're complaining about how [00:38:00] many ads there would be on the platform, could any potential changes there from the need to get more money, change that user experience in a way that could decline the user experience for this core demographic. [00:38:12] So that's definitely a risk for TikTok. [00:38:14] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. And also kind of going off that, if any of these platforms were to provide a much better way somehow for the creators on the platform to earn money from it, and then the creators were to go to that platform, that's where the audiences would be. So I think that creators actually have a lot of leverage right now, with that, because I think you can tell that all of these platforms are kind of competing to be the most sort of creator friendly, TikTok is updating, its fund, its creator fund. after getting a lot of complaints about how it was working, YouTube shorts, I think announced an ad revenue share program. So I think that could shake things up is I, I don't know what it would be, but if one of these platforms had ways superior monetization tools for the [00:39:00] creators, I could see the creators migrating there and their audience is following. [00:39:03] Dan Runcie: Right. Yep. Good point. They all have funds to some extent, but you clearly need more than money if everyone else has it too, right? Like how is it gonna be used in an effective way? So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. [00:39:16] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. But at the same time, it's like, even if another, say that another platform say that YouTube Shorts had way better monetization for creators, but it still has a smaller audience. Will creators migrate there and hope that their audiences follow them? Or do they feel like they, it's better to have the larger audience for, you know, leveraging brand deals and things that are outside of the app like. [00:39:36] Dan Runcie: True. Yeah. [00:39:37] Tatiana Cirisano: I don't know what would be the better deal. [00:39:41] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, that's a good point because I think as we saw in the Spotify era, it was very easy for artists that didn't care about streaming and Spotify to ignore it and be very proud about them ignoring streaming back [00:39:52] Tatiana Cirisano: Exactly. Yeah. [00:39:53] Dan Runcie: 16. But all those artists are now on Spotify because they were like, can't beat 'em join them pretty much. [00:39:59] Tatiana Cirisano: [00:40:00] Right. Like will TikTok always be the place where you can't afford not to be? [00:40:04] Dan Runcie: Yep, exactly. [00:40:06] Tatiana Cirisano: I mean, not forever. that's the thing about social media. nothing stays. It's popular, I don't think forever, but you know, how long can it last? I don't know. [00:40:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No, we'll see. We'll see. All right, so a few, quicker questions here as we're getting to the tail line butwanna break this down for which of these platform do you think is in the strongest position for each of these groups? Artists, record labels, and, the parent company, the company itself overall. [00:40:30] So let's start with artists. Which of these companies do you think creates the most value for artists? And let me not just say companies be clear. Let me talk which short form video platform. [00:40:41] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. Well, it depends how you define value, I guess. Because if you were saying for having a hit or influencing streaming numbers? I would say TikTok getting discovered, I would say TikTok, but if you're saying for developing a [00:41:00] sustaining long-term fan base, no matter what the size is, I might say YouTube shorts because of that ecosystem that it has. [00:41:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:41:09] Tatiana Cirisano: yeah. [00:41:09] Dan Runcie: I think that's a good way to frame it cuz I TikTok down as well, just because of the absolute numbers part of the algorithm, how many people you could reach. But I think that your per user approach or even the ability to do conversion of actual fandom. YouTube probably has a bit more tight in there. [00:41:27] It's kind of like a short term versus long term [00:41:29] Yeah, definitely. And it's like, okay, do you want this absolute number or do you want who you're most actually able to have as a real super fan down the road? [00:41:39] Yeah.What about record labels? [00:41:40] Tatiana Cirisano: That's a good one. Because I mean, we know that by far, YouTube as a whole is generating more for the music industry for record labels than any of these platforms. But when it comes to shorts, I'm not so sure it might be TikTok [00:41:56] Dan Runcie: Yeah, [00:41:56] Tatiana Cirisano: in terms of the bottom, [00:41:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's tough. I was stuck [00:42:00] on that one too. I think my answer still leaned YouTube, but that's probably thinking about, A the overall tie in and the clear [00:42:07] connection to have it feed into the broader video platform, but then also what it seems like Leo's goals to make that be a clear thing. [00:42:16] So that was the thought there. And then most value it created for its parent company. Which one would I be saying. [00:42:24] Tatiana Cirisano: okay, so we have TikTok bite Dance, YouTube, Google, Instagram, Facebook. that's a really good, that's a tough one. [00:42:32] Dan Runcie: I went with meta for this one because I [00:42:34] Tatiana Cirisano: That's where I was leaning. That's where I was [00:42:36] Dan Runcie: it's. , I think it's the most well monetized, at least from what a social media user is able to do and what they're able to generate from a sole Facebook user on average is so much higher than any of these other platforms. And the fact that this could potentially be a funnel into that is strong. [00:42:55] And I know a lot of people may roll their eyes, if you're a certain generation the thought of a [00:43:00] Facebook reel even as opposed to an Instagram reel. But there's an audience for it and there's a reason why it's there. And that may not line up with contemporary artists, but that may line up with some, you know, other established artists that are clearly trying to reach that base. [00:43:12] So I feel like there's something there. [00:43:14] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, I think that makes sense. That's where I was leaning to. These are good questions. [00:43:18] Dan Runcie: And then I just to close things out, we talked a little bit about this earlier. Well, you touched on this a little bit earlier, but will there be a new form of consumption, content consumption that could take over as the place for music discovery and its top of funnel in the next five years? [00:43:35] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, that's a great question. What did I touch on earlier that related to. [00:43:39] Dan Runcie: You were mentioning that there's a new social media platform like every few years that like comes through. So even though TikTok is in like a [00:43:46] Tatiana Cirisano: yeah. [00:43:46] Dan Runcie: today, we don't know what it's gonna look like in the future. [00:43:49] Tatiana Cirisano: So I have a couple answers to this. One thing that I've been really, it's so funny, every time we do this, I always have a timely report coming out on the topic. I don't know how you have like [00:44:00] this somehow, this telepathy to know this, but I was wor I'm working on this report right now that's very related, which is about how potentially the next step for all of this, for music and social media could be, not only are you opening TikTok and adding, you know, a Taylor Swift song to your post, but you're also remixing the song, or you're adding your own vocals or you're actually changing it. So going a step further in what I was saying about, users engaging, creating their own spin on the music that they're fans of, they would be actually changing the song as well. [00:44:33] Dan Runcie: you wrote about this recently, right? About like [00:44:35] Tatiana Cirisano: yeah. [00:44:36] Dan Runcie: and like, and music having its Instagram moment. [00:44:38] Tatiana Cirisano: Yes, exactly. So the same way that Instagram brought kind of mainstream photography tools to the average consumer, and TikTok did the same thing with videography. when will music be part of that? When will music making and recreation tools actually be part of these platforms? And when I've talked to people who know way more about this than I do, and said, you know, why hasn't [00:45:00] this happened? [00:45:00] A lot of it is about how hard it is to simplify music making into a mobile screen, let alone like, put it on top of a social app. and that's why, you know, I had the AI tie into my blog post is because, there are companies that are using AI to simplify that process and make this possible. So like Snapchat is a company that is like semi-related to short form video that we haven't talked about, and they have an integration right now with a company called Mini Beats, where you can remix the song that you're putting on your post. so I think that's not necessarily like, it's not a new platform, but it's a new way of consuming like I think creation as a form of consumption is like probably the next step. [00:45:44] Dan Runcie: And that ends up being the catalyst for how so many of these platforms grow. We talked about TikTok and just how it was able to attract this group of music in some way was the backbone for user generated content. And then it just attracted so much, and everyone's talked about what AI looks [00:46:00] like, I was watching some video the other day about some guy that looked and sounded nothing like Kendrick Lamar had this voice alteration thing that made him sound just like him. [00:46:09] And while it's not quite AI, I think there's a lot of elements there. So whoever taps that and then that can then be the launchpad for the next thing. Something like that could easily overtake and become the next dominant social media player. But we'll see. It'll take a couple years to get to 1.5 billion [00:46:26] Tatiana Cirisano: Probably more than five. [00:46:28] Dan Runcie: probably five. [00:46:29] Tatiana Cirisano: probably more than five just because of licensing really. But, I mean, I think the interesting thing to note there is this type of behavior is kind of already happening like I notice a lot of with sped up songs and how the music industry actually adopted that after sped up clips were going viral on TikTok, like users are already modifying the songs and then uploading those modified versions. [00:46:49] So imagine if that capability was actually part of the platform itself. [00:46:52] Dan Runcie: Right, right. It's like everyone saw DJ Screw make a, you know, huge influence with this for this chopped and screwed music. [00:47:00] So it's only about time that you make it easy to make that accessible for users. [00:47:04] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. So we'll see. [00:47:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So we'll see. But Tati, pleasure as always. Thanks for coming on and yeah, we'll definitely have to stay tapped in with what you have coming up next on this topic. [00:47:14] So relevant to this discussion. [00:47:15] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, thanks for having me again. Always a pleasure. [00:47:18]

In today’s entertainment landscape, with more platforms and formats than ever, do true moguls still exist? If we’re being honest, they may have more power today than ever before. From Lew Wasserman’s Hollywood dominance, to Ted Turner’s cable news empire, to today’s tech titans, we explore how these power players shaped the industry, and who might be next in line. Join me and Web Barr, Founder and CEO of Hi Barr Media. Web recently launched Media Moguls, where he dives deep into Ted Turner’s journey. 02:38 Ted Turner’s Rise 05:45 The Classic Definition of Media Mogul 11:16 Two Types of Moguls Today 18:46 The Future of Media Moguls This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week. If you enjoy Trapital, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform!

The artist-entrepreneur-investor Mr Eazi has no on-off switch. Who he is in the recording studio, on stage, and on the boardroom are the same. With business and music, Mr Eazi has found parallel industries that allow him to be the same person. He’s founded both emPawa Africa and Zagadat Capital to feed his business appetite. The former invests into African artists and helps them scale. Meanwhile, Zagadat Capital invests into tech startups, most of which are inside the continent.  Then there’s Mr Eazi, the Afrobeats artist. He’s collaborated with the likes of Beyonce and J Balvin, and also taken center stage at Coachella. After taking time away from music amid the pandemic, Mr Eazi is back in album mode now. Holed up in Cape Town currently, Mr Eazi has plans for two new albums this year. I caught up with Mr Eazi to cover his never-ending pursuits in music and business. Here’s everything we chatted about: [0:22] How Mr Eazi is balancing artistry and entrepreneurship [1:40] Similarities between music and startups [6:19] Taking equity stakes in artists and what an “exit” looks like [10:50] How Eazi measures success for Empawa artists  [13:00] Eazi’s investment thesis for startups [18:10] Startup success trends in Africa  [21:30] Lack of capital is biggest challenge to Africa’s startup scene  [29:45] Raising awareness within the continent [32:20] Biggest obstacle that African artists face  [36:52] Uncleared sample on a Bad Bunny song [40:45] Impact of Western companies investing into Africa [47:35] Mr Eazi is in album mode Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Mr Eazi, @mreazi This episode's sponsor is Symphony. Put your fanbase growth on autopilot with the first AI-powered platform that brings all your artist marketing workflows in one place. Learn more at symphony.to/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Mr. Eazi: part of me deciding to be an artist was reading the book, the Jay-Z book, Empire State of Mind. And that was when I saw it clearly and I was like, oh, wait a minute like this music is a business and the music gives you access, it gives you access to capital, access to the network it puts you, gives you a seat at the table [00:00:20] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital Dan Runcie, this podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more. Who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:48] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have the one and only Mr. Eazi, the artist, entrepreneur. How you doing man? Welcome to the pod. [00:00:56] Mr. Eazi: I'm good. I'm good. I'm chilling. What's, going on [00:00:59] Dan Runcie: Me. I'm good, man. Trying to keep up with you. Trying to keep up with you, man. [00:01:03] Mr. Eazi: I'm trying to keep up with me, bro. [00:01:06] Dan Runcie: Well, let's talk about that because you are someone who sits at this intersection of artist, investor, entrepreneur, and you are doing all of those three jobs and more. And it's also happening at this moment where the entire continent of Africa is booming from an entrepreneurship perspective, booming from a music perspective. [00:01:29] How does it feel right now? How are you operating being at the center of that? [00:01:34] Mr. Eazi: To be honest, I just feel like it's a blessing to be born or to be existing in this time. where like you said, everything is just like taking shape and, you know, yeah, it's exciting and it is for me. It's like every day I'm seeing opportunity left and right and just figuring out what is fun and what is doable and just, you know, going from thinking, oh, I'm an entrepreneur, to oh, I make music. And, it's similar cause it's products at the end of the day, on the bottom line, it's like you're selling music or you're selling some other product. And I thought they were two different things, but you know, I'm seeing how it's one and the same. [00:02:17] It's just exciting to realize that I don't need to be two different people like I still be the same me and operating both walls. [00:02:27] Dan Runcie: So how are they similar for you approaching both music and startups? [00:02:32] Mr. Eazi: So I feel like every artist is like a. because the artist has a brand, has a feel, it's like a service product, it's an emotional product, right? And every artist, you know, that IP, there's an IP with every artist, and the artist usually needs investment to scale. And like coming from, like when I went outta school straight into an incubator program called 440NG and I kind of, there I learned how, you know your idea and your business, you know, you have the idea, you put it together, you iterate as the business keeps on going. So what you thought was the business at the beginning, you know, your customers could give you feedback and then you realize it evolves, it accelerate and you are trying to be as lean as possible and grow to the point where you have that critical volume to sort of like ask, what's the word as, proof that this is a valid idea either via customers or via revenue. And then you try and get to, you know, you try and scale, and you figure out what's your, unique value proposition is, and that's like where the startup, what's your unique value proposition? [00:03:46] Who are your customers? What's the idea? You take it to market, you test it, you go get investment. And it's the same thing with every artist so at the time where I decided to do music full-time, I was in an incubator program, and so I just started to see the similarities with the music. I'm like, okay, let me test it, put it out, people listen to it, you know, gimme the feedback, you know, and the point where I decided I was gonna take the music as a business was when like I got the first person reach out to me and say, Hey, I want to pay you for a verse. So that was the first signifier to let me know that, okay, maybe I'm onto something. [00:04:22] Then I started to have my early fans then Lauryn Hill reached out and said she wanted me to come play at her show. And I thought it was a fluke until I found myself in America performing in Lauryn Hill, coming out to say, I love you, thank you so much for coming. And like all of that is like with a business, with a traditional startup, it could be different things, but for me, the revenue, the number of users, aka the fans, all of that were signifiers. [00:04:51] And then I just needed, you know, the capital to take it to the next level, right? So I think those are the similarities, and I've tried it when I started emPawa it was at the beginning, it was to test if they were one and the same. So I was like, okay, Y Combinator send, you know, picks a few, start a couple of startups, you know, does incubator program put funding and whatnot to them? [00:05:18] And then maybe 20% of them you know, end up working on, and I did that with 100 artists across 11 African countries, over 30,000 entries then picked 100, then gave them the same amount of money, created the emPawa YouTube channel to host their videos, service it the same way, and in the end, start to see the ones that organically started picking up. [00:05:41] And we had success with that. So for me it was like, oh, wait a minute it's one and the same. I've proved this. And that's when emPawa then turn from, you know, the, program I was doing to actually full service music company, because I had proved that it was the same and in the same way you invest in a song. [00:06:01] I remember the first Joeboy song, the visualizer cost me $500, and then the song ended up having like 30 million views in like a year. And you know, Joeboy just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So, I start to say, okay, there is a process here and perhaps we could do it with other artists, you know? So to answer your question, that's how I see both as, you know, one and the same in a way. [00:06:28] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I wanna talk about emPawa specifically because this is you bringing so many of those startup concepts to music like you said, you saw Y Combinator is doing. How could you apply that here? The difference though is that with Y Combinator, the promises of course, an exit, so they're hoping this companies get acquired. [00:06:47] They're hoping that they go public in music though. What does that look like for you as someone that is taking equity stakes in the artist? What does your return look like? What does your exit look like? [00:06:59] Mr. Eazi: So, I mean, first off, the return is like when you invest, you know, you invest to create the content, you put it out, put some marketing, and you start to see, you know, the streams coming, the revenue coming, the artist is now doing live shows, getting endorsement deals, you know, you could get four, 5x, 10x multiples, you know, and time. [00:07:24] so that's, one. But secondly, like on a developmental standpoint, you could develop the artist and then a big label comes and says, oh, we wanna upstream. So upstreaming is like a sale. It's like an exit, and you could still have passive rights to get passive income, on the artist. So those are like the kind of like returns and the kind of like exits. [00:07:48] Plus you could just invest in the IP, buy it up, and next thing somebody wants to sample it and then they have to write you a big check. And it could happen now, it could happen in like 10 years, in 15 years time, you know, you could have a record just lined. I'll give you an example, recently the Joeboy record that didn't make it to the Joeboy is one of my artists. [00:08:09] The song didn't make it to his album, and so we then licensed the song to a guy called Lakizon, you know, he puts out the record, you know, there's not so much thought to that. I wake up one day, Bad Bunny has put out, an album and I'm just listening to the album cause I'm a fan and I hear a record there and I'm like, basically what I was trying to say is, so you have that record that didn't make it to the album, Right? And it's just there and we license it to this guy and the next thing the record appears on a Bad Bunny album. [00:08:43] And that's like the biggest artist in the world last year by a lot of metrics. And so that's like an example, you know, an exit because you make this record and then boom, and the upsides are like, you know, so high. And right now on the market, even if you wanted, you are seeing, you know, my mentor, one of my mentors, Merck Mekadalas, you see how many multiples from 10 to 23, 24xlast year's revenue on, you know, buying rights for music. So I think there's multiple exits and even just the music and music IP as an asset class has been proven to be a valid asset class by Merck and the likes. For instance, I was, I was part of the deal, the KKR deal that bought, I don't know if you saw that some time ago, that bought a law of the rights, including the Weeknd et cetera. [00:09:36] I was part of that deal, via one of the companies, and you could see how you could see what an exit looks like. So there's multiple exits for music, whether it's an upstreaming deal from the label or it's a straight up acquisition of the catalog, or it's just multiples of revenue, the artist is now beginning to earn or if your label, you could get your entire label could become upstreams or you could go into a JV type situation. [00:10:06] Dan Runcie: So that speaks more to the flexibility that's offered with being able to invest in music. It isn't just this one time event that you're hoping for as a startup investor. [00:10:17] Mr. Eazi: Yeah. 100 percent. [00:10:19] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Yeah And with that too, you mentioned that you have a hundred artists that at least came through the first cohort, over 30,000 had applied and when you are measuring your success for them, I'm sure that each of the things you mentioned are the things that you hope for, but along the way, what are some of those key performance indicators or what are some of those things that you're looking for to hope that traction can be gained to hopefully get to the point where you do have, positive financial event that comes. [00:10:51] Mr. Eazi: I mean, it starts with like hyper local recognition. So, you know, I give example, there was this like I think she was 18 or 17 at the time, Nik, her name is Nikita and she's from Kenya. She had joined the program, she didn't make it to the top 10, but we put out the video and you know, that song started to gain local traction in Kenya even though she didn't make it to the Final 10. [00:11:17] And by local traction, I mean like number of downloads, it made it to radio, you know, it made it to press picking it up. And even though she wasn't part of the software and I didn't give her full on funding, she got signed to Universal. So for me that's a testament of like the success and those are like KPIs like, okay, does it get to radio in your local country? [00:11:40] Does it get, you know, that local, you know, appreciation from the fans in your country? And then when does it start to transcend, and there's nothing wrong with you having a popular song in Kenya or in Tanzania, but by the time it starts to go from Tanzania, you know, to rest of East Africa and then comes to the west, you know, those are the things you look out for and, you know, next level is by the time you start getting booked for shows based on the 1, 2, 3 singles you put out, [00:12:11] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. That makes sense. Let's shift gears a bit to startups, because I know that's the other space that you're actively in. What is your thesis for investing in startups? [00:12:22] Mr. Eazi: Right now, what I do is like, you know, I can bring some form of value to. So when I look at like the idea, or like when my team, you know, sends me some deal flow and we kind of walk through it, it's like, okay, aside the money, what else can we bring to this business? You know? And if I'm able to spot some extra form of value I can bring to help the business kill. [00:12:53] Then I want to invest, you know, it could be marketing. Can I add some marketing? Can I add some of my experience here? Can I leverage on my network in this other side? Aside the money, and most of the investments I've been making haven't been personal. They've been via my collectives, Zagadat Capital, and Zagadat Capital is basically, for now, it's 12 people like myself, young, successful African boys or girls who usually, you know, find it boring to speak to the financial guys and you know, have some form of liquidity. And so when we get the deal flow, and I just look at who's in the collective and who can add value, then we bring it to, the collective and then we invest. [00:13:45] So it's majorly been, it's like 90% being Africa focused because I feel like there's so much opportunity, on the continent and also on the sentimental level. The amount of impact the investment does when it's, on the continent makes, is something that's bigger than just the money. [00:14:07] And the money is great like, you know, we've seen a lot of African companies hit and cross a billion dollar evaluations to become unicorns. so you know that, can happen. But at the same time, the impact, and it's always fun when I go to an office that I'm an investor in of the like employees, they're excited that Mr. Eazi is in our office and Mr. Eazi is a shareholder like, you can't buy that. And I think that's what I always wanted because like part of me deciding to be an artist was reading the book, the Jay-Z book, Empire State of Mind. And that was when I saw it clearly and I was like, oh, wait a minute like this music is a business and the music gives you access, it gives you access to capital, access to the network it puts you, gives you a seat at the table and you know your merch, merchandising could be like the three cap that chance the rapper does, or it could be Uber or it could be, you know, Power Pay, which I've invested in that, you know, is the number one mobile money focused payments aggregate on Africa doing over 1 million transactions a day, you know, and so it's, different things and I know how I can bring value beyond my, cash it and just watch it grow. And it's exciting [00:15:28] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. So that collective, that operates a lot like a syndicate. You all are sharing deal soon where you can add value. What stage do you normally invest in and how much money are you normally putting into startups? [00:15:41] Mr. Eazi: You know, it's different like we've done like some seed stage. we did a company that was looking at listing last year on the LSE. We've done growth stage as well, so it really depends, it depends on where it comes to us, and it could be as low as, you know, 25K check, which just gets maybe if it's a 25 K check, I might just take 50% of it and just say, Hey guys, do the rest, and I just put it on the platform we use and boom, boom, boom, everybody just clicks and it's, done. Once it's done, it's done like I just invested in a platform called Ruka Hair, and it is a startup that, you know, provides hair for, people of African descent based out of London. [00:16:30] And that was a small check for, and it is growth stage, you know, so it really varies. and there's no rule. Yeah. [00:16:41] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Yeah, keeping it flexible and gives you the opportunity to see everything that's coming through. What are some common trends that you're seeing? What are some things that you're seeing from the founders or from the startups that are coming through, especially the ones that are getting markups and getting closer to exits? [00:16:59] Mr. Eazi: I'm seeing like, you know, companies that solve fundamental, problems. You know, and I know there's so much bars on FinTech, it's like everybody just gets a hardon for African FinTech. But like, for instance is, if this products are solving specific, like there's a company called Eden Life, which I invested in. [00:17:26] And what this company does is like, you know, there are a lot of people like myself who, we don't in town enough, like enough for us to like have a chef and all of that. And we have very busy schedules, so we want like meal preps delivered to us and we want like our laundry picked up, you know, that's a very middle class, sort of like early into the job market, like pre family kind of types. And so that kind of product is a product that's like valid because like you're solving a particular need, you know, or PISA for instance, that are invested in. So PISA gives remittance based lending. [00:18:13] to, people in Mexico. So you know, the love Mexicans in the US sending money back to, Mexico to their family and their loved ones. And PISA uses that data of how much you get your current every month like my mom and dad, I put them on allowance. Like I pay them an allowance every month, Right? So we use like, by the way, for clarity they don't need it like they're good, but it's just something I do. And the other people in cultures like African culture, like in Africa, it's a pride for you, even if your dad is a billionaire, like being able to do something for your dad is like, it's like a pride. [00:18:53] It's like you've achieved, right? So you have people sending money back home, you know, either to Mexico or to different parts of Africa to either family that need it or to do stuff with it, like build a house back home or to help the family school fees or whatever, or just out of sentiment, like, it's like paying your tithes. [00:19:15] I don't know if you're Christian, it's like when you pay 10% of your income to the church. It's something like that. and then there's all that data, all that data because it's like salary, right? it comes every month, usually on a certain day. So PISA uses that information to provide loans to people. [00:19:34] And that's like a need, that's a specific need. So that's what we are seeing, Yeah. [00:19:40] Dan Runcie: What are some of the bigger challenges right now for startups in Africa? [00:19:45] Mr. Eazi: I think one of the biggest challenges is, you know, getting funding and you see a lot of, like African startups, YC has been doing a great job, but there are, you know, and like, future Africa, which I'm part of and I'm an advisor, you know, investing in these projects. But raising fund is like so hard. [00:20:07] There's still a hesitance when it comes to African startup raising funds, especially at seed stage. And usually this is not a lot of money. It's like from 20K checks to like even hundred is a lot of money, you know, but that 50 k to, get you into flight mode. So I think that's the biggest issue is not lack of ideas, it's, you know, getting funding, especially local funding that's not a lot of local funding sources. There's few options like the YC's and it's hard to get in generating that local funding is still a problem as a lot of the, you know, organizations and a lot of investors are still trying to understand this whole tech investment and valuation. [00:20:55] I have my uncles ask me, you said this company is, is what, $20 million? Do they have 20 million cash in their account or do they have, buildings? Where's the building? Where's the physical asset, you know, it's that culture going from brick and mortar to technology and understanding evaluation and all of that. [00:21:15] And, then you have sectors that are now like so hot that valuations are going crazy you know, And you have, like, depending on what sector you are, a lot of the countries are just catching up to technology. And in some places there are no laws written for the kind of products you are creating. [00:21:38] So if you're not in sync with the regulators, the regulators might pass a law that is detrimental to your business and all of a sudden you wake up one morning and your successful business is now killed just like the motorbike railing company. I forgotten the name in Lagos. That was really growing and then with one day regulations like no motorbike, transportation in Lagos, boom, dead. [00:22:04] So, I think it's not just in Africa-peculiar problem. It's like, for instance, with crypto and, you know, a lot of, you know, countries trying to understand what is going on. So you're having innovation outpacing regulation and you know, if there's no proper interaction you are having like regulations could just like be the end of use. [00:22:28] So I think access to capital, and in some sectors, depending on your sector, regulation as well could be a major setback. [00:22:38] Dan Runcie: The access to capital piece, I could see that, especially since the friends and family round is such a key piece, or having the angels outta there, such a key piece to help make that happen. But if the people that have the financial means are fewer and far between, you know, whether it's folks like you or others that are in your syndicate or maybe some of the other co-investors you have, that means that the deal flow that you all get is heightened even more so because there's just so fewer other places, which makes you all needing to be even more selective, I can imagine, than you maybe otherwise prefer to be. I mean, how do you feel in that perspective as someone that wants to see the space grow, but you know that you can't back everybody even though you know, I'm sure inherently you wish you would, but you still have your own rubrics. You still have your way that you evaluate things, and that likely has to be even heightened given the number of deals that you're seeing. [00:23:32] Mr. Eazi: Yeah, I mean like, well one of the things I pray, I have some days, fuck you money. Do you understand? To just like, because like 1.2 billion people in Africa on the continent. And it's like, if you think of the amount of money that comes back to Africa from the African Diaspora, it's like, I think it's like over a trillion dollars a year. [00:23:54] So there's so much opportunity. And, but like you said, what this does is it makes things a little bit harder for people, you know, entrepreneurs who need the money and the proof is in the pudding. Like I always say, like although it takes time and things are changing, don't get me wrong, things are changing. [00:24:15] They are more local, VCs, funding, but like I probably know like five people with networks over a hundred million, right? But now, for me to get to the point where, and these are people who've, amass all this wealth with brick and mortar businesses. So now you know, there's a job to do to sort of like show proof, show validity that, hey, I invested at this point, it's not for Gen Z it's not a pyramid scheme. [00:24:50] And like show people and then you get more people, coming in. And I have seen like some of my friends who are like billionaires now start to set up separate funds to say, okay, you know what? I don't really know what this tech thing is about for, but you know, put the money in future Africa or put it in some other fund and try to learn. [00:25:11] So it's more sort of like publicity and sometimes the drop, the setbacks are when there's a big startup out of the continent that then runs into all sorts of scandals and then, you know, it causes five steps backward. And that's not peculiar to Africa like, I mean, you seen what happened to ftx, right? So that happens everywhere. [00:25:35] The only differences, you know, because it's still kind of new. It causes more negative effects, you know, so I think there needs to be more education, more pr to the successes of these companies. Every success is a success and should be, you know, communicated and things would get better because there is capital on the continent. [00:26:00] There is like lose capital on, the continent looking for where to invest, you know? So I mean, things are changing like Future Africa. I always keep mentioning Future Africa, like they've been able to show that, you know, they know what they're doing. There is a method to the madness. They could deliver results in terms of like revenue, you know, they invested in Move, which is a company that provides, you know, the cars for Uber drivers and it's, you know, I think it's now a unicorn and that's like a very particular need because, you know, drivers need cars, but they don't have the capital to purchase the cars, right? And going through the banking routes, you are gonna have to bring collateral, your mom's name, your grandmother's house, plus the high interest, you know, so they've identified, and this has been a problem, it's still a problem to today that they've been able to solve. [00:26:54] So I think the more people know about this, the more education, the more things will open up. [00:27:01] Dan Runcie: The PR piece you mentioned is interesting because from my side, living in the states, I'll see the articles about a company like Carry1st, which I do think has had a fair amount of PR, I feel like one of their announcements got an got an article in the Hollywood Reporter, so I remember seeing things like that, but I feel like it does become fewer and farther between, at least from what you are seeing, from the awareness of some of these [00:27:27] Mr. Eazi: Yeah, you're correct and it's not so much I understand why like there's a lot of PR outside looking PR like you said, you know, New York Times, you know, LA blah, blah, blah, because that's where the money's coming from, right? But like, I'm talking more intra-Africa PR like for the money on the continent, you know, because that's like easily, like it's right there in your face, you know, there's enough money in Lagos for them not to be any need to raise capital from outside . You get what I'm saying? There's so much capital in Lagos, like from Lagos, you feel me? Or from Rwanda, you know, and, Rwanda is trying to position itself as startup, you know, pro-startup investing, you know, so there's money on the continent and it's like [00:28:22] that's what I mean by PR and publicity and awareness. if I wasn't friends with, like, I met in, was co-founder of, Flutterwave with and then Andela, you know, and then Move. So three unicorns, right? And, you know, we've been friends and we've been investing together. if there was not that proximity to him or to Shola the founder of Paystack that got bought by Stripe, I wouldn't know that this was going on. [00:28:50] You feel me? Maybe, you know, I wouldn't have known. So that's what I mean, you know, because like every A-list, Afro-B artist can be you know, can be invested, you know, so that's exactly what I mean. [00:29:08] Dan Runcie: It is interesting you bring up the music piece because I'd be curious to hear how you feel some of these challenges that African startups may face. How do the African artists themselves fare in that regard? Do you think that they have similar challenges with funding or with regulations in that way? [00:29:26] Mr. Eazi: There's regulation issues, like for instance, collecting, publishing revenue on the continent. It's a joke, right? [00:29:34] Dan Runcie: Why is that? [00:29:34] Mr. Eazi: Or collecting streaming revenue because like for you to be able to collect publishing revenue, you need the government to enforce the laws for the radio stations to pay you, you know, publishing royalties on the music they place for the bars to be able to pay for what they play, like for the use of your music. So you need strong in a lot of African countries, these laws are there, but there's no enforcement because I would say it's worse for creatives because people still look at the creative sector as a joke. [00:30:08] The orange economy is like, ah, that's not really business like that's just young people with dreadlocks, just singing and dancing and jumping across the world. Yes, they hear the music everywhere. Yes, now things are getting better because they're seeing teams at the Grammys, they're seeing Burna Boy, you know, and whiskey doing Madison Square Garden, but there's not a lot of education for them to really understand the business of music or creativity. [00:30:36] So even, I remember like two years ago I spoke to almost all the bank MDs, or three years ago, almost all the bank MDs in Nigeria trying to convince them on why music is a business is a valid business, but I couldn't get funding. And that's me being a successful African artist showing the revenue, showing all of that, like I once got on a panel with, you know, a financial institution that was meant that. they have a fund, they have like a 500 million dollar fund for investing in creatives. And I was on a panel with somebody there and the person said, oh, it is impossible to protect music IP, it is difficult to protect music IP, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, What? And like, are you kidding me? Like, there's Shazam technology, there's like, every song has an ISRC code and like if you upload the song in Kenya or in in Afghanistan, like on YouTube, like it will pick it up instantly. So when you have a situation where you have an institution that has up to a billion to invest in creatives. But you are having the key stakeholders who decide who gets what telling you or speaking out confidently and saying is hard to protect the IP, you know, then that just shows you where it sucks. So there's still a lot, but I feel like that's why there needs to be more education, you know, just like for startups to music, to let people realize that this is a business, like there's revenue to be earned. Not just live revenue, like streaming revenue, publishing revenue, especially now that the world is looking to Africa. Like you're seeing early starters jumping on Afro Beats records, like, what's that song? [00:32:31] Essence, Essence was a hit song before Justin Bieber jumped on it. It was already a global smash. Peru was a, global smash before, Ed Sheeran jumped on it. So you are having like pure Afro Beats records in our local language produced locally in some hotel room in Lagos, you know, going on to be big songs globally without any major support from without necessarily, you know, I know A and R like support, like his producers locally. And you're seeing this, so you do know that this is the time, or you know, like the example I gave, you know, Bad Bunny, you know, sampling a Joeboy record and putting it on his album, putting an Afro Beats record on his album, you know, that's an ex example. [00:33:18] Dan Runcie: And by the way, that was declared properly and like I'm about to go, you know, go crazy with the lawyers to make sure I get my bread. And more importantly, the writers and the producers get, their due credit and revenue and, you know, Did Bad Bunny's team reach out before this? [00:33:39] Mr. Eazi: No, no, no, I literally just listened to Bad Bunny's album and I just heard Joe Boy's voice at the end of the record, and I was like, I've heard this record before. And then I realized is a record, I didn't make it to his album. And I'm like, wait a minute. And then my team start speaking to them since May of, last year. [00:33:55] And it's just back and forth to the point where I'm like, okay, you know what, you guys have had fun with this. Like, I'm just going brazen on this, let's get lawyers. Let's make it like a proper lawsuit. But what I'm trying to, or you have, you know, Beyonce, you know, doing the Lion King, the gift and having created from all of Africa put it so like, you know, you are having Drake, you know, with Whiskey on one dance you're having Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber jump on multiple Afro Beats records that are Afro Beats records. You're having people more and more people sampling Afro Beats records, you know, and maybe not giving proper credit or do, or you are having, like I once produce. and was on co-produced and wrote and featured on a record involving Bad Bunny on the Joint album and Afro Beats record. [00:34:45] So you're seeing is becoming more global and global. So we need to be able to tell these stories to the funding sources back home to establish that this is indeed a business. So it's education the same way education for the startups, but even more for music because music was never, and creatives, you know, was never looked at as a valid business. [00:35:09] It was looked at as things, people who don't graduate from school or people who just wanna be jokers do. But right now people are sitting, wait a minute, wow, that artist bought car that artist's bought a house. that artist did this, did that or Grammys or this, that, that. So, but there still needs to be more information back home to the business side of the music to know that behind that sold out. [00:35:36] MSG is a check, and behind that billboard is a check, you know, and even the TikTokers, like I was speaking to someone at the bank and explaining to my bank MD friend that, you know, I showed him a lot of payments, like TikTokers in Nigeria are getting paid as much as $10,000 to put up a post on their TikTok. [00:35:59] 17 year old, 18 year old, you know, and I had to show this and he was like, what? Are you serious? And then he went back to ask his kids. And find out that, oh wow, this is a thing, you know? So it's that education, I mean, because there is the capital on the continent, it's just like, how do you get it? [00:36:17] And it is a lot of work to do to basically explain and explain and explain. And one needs to have the patience. And it's hard to do that while still running my label, doing everything I'm doing, putting out music for myself, you know, so, you know, but thankfully I'm not the only one doing it, Don Jazzy is doing it. [00:36:39] Olamide is doing it. They're more examples. So one way or the other people are saying it. [00:36:44] Dan Runcie: How do you feel about the investment in African music that has come from the West? So thinking about Universal Music group opening up record label in Africa and some of the other majors having different concentration in Nigeria or elsewhere, how has that been and what type of impact has that had, if any, on your end? [00:37:07] Mr. Eazi: I mean, I think it's good. It's a good signifier because all these labels were in Africa from the years before Fella, right? You had all these labels in Nigeria before, you know, the nationalization where, you know, the government had passed that all the companies should be nationalized and the labels got sold to local owners. [00:37:26] So you are just having, you have Majek Fashek that was on the late, late show, the late night show in 1991, bro. So when people say, oh, African music is then becoming popular. It's been popular. And it's coming back again with technology and everything. So I think it's good. I think the more, you know, major labels coming to Africa, but not just as, or let's test to see what happens. [00:37:52] But the more investment that comes, the more structure there will be for the business and the more signifiers, you know, to show people who wanna invest, you know, so yeah, I welcome it. And I think there should be more funding and there should be more, like the local companies should be autonomous, you know, I think that's been the only drawback with the majors, pardon of me, I might be wrong. Don't quote me where you are seeing the local, you know, Universal Nigeria or Sony or whatever, you know, that lookout team not having a lot of, autonomy in the checks they're writing to the artists or taking those risks they have to get approval from maybe South Africa or, you know, London or LA. [00:38:43] Meanwhile, everything is happening on the ground in Lagos, so you are having distributors. So I think a lot of the most recent successes have been by more distributors than record label in breaking artists. So more like Empire or ONErpm or the Orchid or emPawa or, you know, Believe, because these distributors are more flexible and have been able to give a lot more autonomy to the local guys who are running, these local companies to write those checks because like, what is somebody in London like with all due respect, like I always say this as a joke. There's no songwriter in the world that would've written, I don't care how many Grammys you've, gotten, you cannot write Soco, Soco, Soco, Soco, Soco, baby. [00:39:42] You. That's the Wizkid song, you can't write that song or, one of my favorite artists Wande Coal, there's a part of his song where he just spits jibberish, like he don't mean anything, like it's a vibe. So like without due respect to your A and R ears, you don't know the music like even me, I'm from Nigeria, but I always have to be updated. [00:40:09] So there needs to be more investment and more autonomy. But I love it like the more labels come in and the more distribution companies come in and there's this competition, the more money is invest invested. And when you invest money, then you start to structure it then you start to say, Hey, why are we not making as much money locally? [00:40:29] Okay, let's invest in touring, you know, in Nigeria, in on the continent. let's go lobby for enforcement of collection of royalties. So, yeah. [00:40:40] Dan Runcie: Have you seen any success stories from the major record label side in Africa yet? [00:40:48] Mr. Eazi: There's none that comes to mind in terms of breaking an artist. So you have Wizkid signed, you have Diplo signed, you have Burna Boy signed. you know, and this is like A-list, A-list, right? But if you look at all the artists that have broken Buju for instance, initially signed to Burna Boy and then Empire, broke him, you know, that's Buju, Fire Boy via Empire and Olamide's YBNteams, you know, independently broke with, her record. I think she's been upstreamed now. So in terms of sort of like carrying that conversation, you know, outside to the rest of the world, yes, I'm sure there's been a lot of success like the Wizkid record, you know, Burna Boy, entire Renaissance. [00:41:44] And you could go on and on, but in terms of actually finding an artist and breaking the artist, there's not a lot of successes. And I think that's down to autonomy because, you know, you have some executives moves from the label to the distributors and do well, you know, we just understanding you know, how to a and r and how to put our music, on the continent, and you can't just bring like somebody who's of Nigerian descent and just expect that they don't understand. Like, I am Nigerian, but every time I go back to Lagos, I'm like, whoa, the sound has changed, you know? So that underground on the ground, you know, and there's a lot of work. [00:42:31] Dan Runcie: Definitely, and yeah, I know that there's so much interest, but like you said, if they don't have the control or the ability to really make decisions on their own, I can easily see why an Empire or some of the other distributors have been able to have success there. But Mr. Eazi, man, this was great. I feel like you gave us a snapshot of where everything is right now on music and investing side. [00:42:53] But before we let you go, for you, what's big on the road for you still beginning of the year? What's big on the deck for you? What do you got coming up? [00:43:02] Mr. Eazi: I mean, I kind of like needed a break from putting out music and touring and when COVID happened I was like, oh, thank God, like because I was battling with, oh, if I should, I pause, like it was just routine doing the same thing and it was like too much for me. So I was able to have that pause, and put some of the attention towards like growing emPawa with my co-founder. [00:43:27] And then leaving it to him to sort of like, you know, and come back to iterate, iterate change the model, blah, blah, blah, build the team. And I just went off and started doing like investment and putting more time in the startups I was investing in. And now, I'm in Cape Town recording. I'm putting out two albums this year, one in September and one in, I think April or May. [00:43:55] So I'm just recording that now and I feel like, and now I want to go back on the road, but not first as my usual live band touring, but first as sort of like a curator, where I bring like, you know, the way Major Lazer tour where they have the sound system with Walshy and Diplo and Ape Drums. But instead of Diplo and Ape Drums, I select like the DJs, maybe one playing Afro Pop, one playing Ama one playing something else. [00:44:27] And I am the Walshy Fire, sort of like putting it together, hype man MC. So that's what I want to tour. The first part of the year once I put out the Chop Life album, so that's called Chop Life. To chop life means to enjoy life. So I'm making an sort of Afro dance album that I'll put out first and then I will talk as Chop Life sound system with doing these parties. [00:44:53] you know, of majorly Afro Beat parties, sound system across the world. And then I dropped the album, the second album, and I taught as, okay, this is my album tour. So that's the plan. Hopefully I'm able to complete the first album. The second album is done, it is just in mixing a mastering, that's the September one. [00:45:13] It's done just in mix. And my string phase and then this first one, I'm recording. That's what I'm recording right now. Recording downstairs. [00:45:21] Dan Runcie: Nice. Nice. Well, looking forward to all of that, man, and thank you. No, this has been a pleasure. And yeah, so people that wanna follow along and keep up with all that, where should they go to follow you? [00:45:30] Mr. Eazi: Follow me everywhere on social media @mreazi, M R E A Z I, Mr. Eazi. Yeah, everywhere, everywhere on social media. [00:45:44] And I wanna see you at one of my shows. You have to come maybe when I do the parties, where are you right now? [00:45:49] Dan Runcie: Me, I'm in San Francisco [00:45:51] Mr. Eazi: Cool. I'm, sure I'll be coming around LA, San Fran, at some point [00:45:55] Dan Runcie: Yeah, come through. [00:45:57] Mr. Eazi: I'd send you an invite, [00:45:58] Dan Runcie: Definitely, definitely. All right, man. We'll talk soon. [00:46:01] Mr. Eazi: All right. Have a good one. Thank you. [00:46:03] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. [00:46:24] Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week. 

The gaming industry is larger than music and film combined. We’ve seen big music collabs in Fortnite, Roblox, and more, but there’s room to leverage music even more.   That’s been a big focus for Vickie Nauman, who works at the intersection of music and gaming. She consults for major record labels, game developers, and more through her company, CrossBorderWorks. She’s also worked on big virtual concerts, like David Guerra and Saweetie in Roblox, and VR games like Beat Saber.    But there are plenty of friction points between music and gaming. As Vickie said, the music industry likes to get money upfront, whereas gaming is fine getting it on the back-end. Then there’s the long process of clearing music from rights holders to even use in games. It makes it tough to move quickly   It’s even more challenging because of how fast technology is changing. New virtual experiences are being created daily, which adds pressure on the music industry to sort this out.   Vickie and I covered all this and more. Here’s everything we discussed:   [1:40] What attracted Vickie to gaming [2:40] The gaming moment that finally struck a chord with the music industry [4:33] Similarities and differences between gaming and music industries [10:09] Why Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert clicked but others haven’t [9:53] Can gaming have its Kate Bush - Stranger Things moment  [15:47] Why the music industry plays catch up to technology [21:33] Clearing 143 writer’s share for David Guetta’s Roblox concert [28:45] Dot-com bubble era of web3 [30:45] Music will evolve differently in web3 experiences [36:17] What’s slowing down virtual reality adoption? [41:26] AI is coming at the music industry like a freight train   Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS   Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Vickie Nauman, @vnvnvnvn This episode was brought to you by trac. Learn more about how artists can bring web2 and web3 together for their fans at trac.co Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Vickie Nauman: There are not an enormous number of opportunities for music and games. It's gaming is similar to the music industry where there are a handful of huge, huge, huge gaming studios, and then there's an inordinate long tail of small to mid-size gaming companies and, you know, very, very similar to music. [00:00:19] So the few big studios, a lot of them are doing, you know, licensing and they get music in. But it's been much more common over the years to gaming studios just hire a composer and they just create a song that is right for the mood and the moment in the game, the gaming studio owns it and they're just done. [00:00:40] You know, they don't have to worry about licensing or business models to incorporate music into the games. But I think for the most part, the music industry always likes to get their money up front, and the gaming industry likes to get all the money on the back end [00:00:55] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more. Who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:01:22] Dan Runcie: This episode is all about the future of gaming, and today we'll be breaking it down with someone who understands this space in and out. Vickie Nauman. She is the founder and CEO of CrossBorderWorks, which is her consulting and advisory firm, which works with some of the biggest major record labels, streaming services, and more on the intersections of word music meets technology, gaming, and several other emerging tech platforms. [00:01:47] We talk about what music and gaming's challenges and opportunities are in the future, how games are monetized versus music, some of the opportunities there. We also talk about the music industry itself and why the music industry often sometimes plays catch up with regards to emerging technology, how that impacts her work. [00:02:07] And what it can look like for gaming, to have that huge sync moment that Kate Bush running up that hill moment like we saw on Stranger Things. What could that look like for music in a video game? I think we've seen several successful examples over the past couple of decades, but we'll continue to see more as gaming in the Metaverse, Web three, and AI continue to intersect and influence this space. [00:02:29] Really great episode. It was great to have her share her insights here, and I hope you enjoy it. Here's our chat. [00:02:36] All right. Today we're here to talk about gaming music and so many of the intersections it has, and wanted to talk with someone who understands this space better than almost anyone that I could reach out to Vickie Nauman, who has consulted and worked with many of these companies in music and gaming. [00:02:53] Vickie, welcome to the pod. [00:02:54] Vickie Nauman: I am so happy to be here. I'm a huge admirer of your writing and your work and it's an honor. [00:02:59] Dan Runcie: Thank you. Appreciate that. So what is it for you that attracted you to this space? It's been an emerging space for some time, and it feels like the music industry is now starting to put more emphasis in, but you had been focusing even before the current wave has been there. What attracted you to it? [00:03:16] Vickie Nauman: Well, I've always looked at gaming and I'm one of these people who for years was telling the industry. Gaming is bigger than music and film combined, you know, it is a massive, massive industry and they're, you know, and almost all the monetization is built on low friction, high engagement in-app purchasing. [00:03:37] And so companies are releasing games that are free and they're making billions of dollars. There's, you know, there's lessons for the music industry. I feel like it all fell on deaf ears. People are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, companies come to us and. We wanna license them our whole catalog, and they don't want it. [00:03:53] And so there's nothing for us to do. And then, Marshmello did a set in Fortnite and got 10 million people to listen to his music, and that struck a chord in the, you know, in the industry. you know, and importantly, it didn't necessarily resonate with the digital business people who were always, you know, under an onslaught of new companies coming to try to get rights. [00:04:19] But it was in marketing and a and. and then there was like, it was a moment where I think everyone started to realize the power of gaming and the hundreds of millions and billions of people who are playing games as a new platform in a new way for artists to reach, fans and to break artists. [00:04:37] And it was interesting too because at that time I was working with Beat Saber. and they were this was in 2019 that all of this happened. And, Beat Saber was still an independent studio out of Prague, brand new game. And we were trying to get some of first songs in to that game. [00:04:55] Vickie Nauman: We had worked with Monstercat before and we had these original soundtracks in there, but we didn't have any, huge major label acts and we were trying to license Imagine Dragons. And so I heard firsthand from labels and publishers all throughout that process of like, wow, you know, we really want to do more with gaming. [00:05:16] And I credit a lot of that to Marshmello. [00:05:20] Dan Runcie: And you talked a little bit about how gaming is just so much bigger than music, and part of it is because they're not necessarily selling the content itself. They are selling what you can do on top of it from things you can buy or other things that are less friction. The frictionless, as you mentioned. [00:05:38] Had any of that come up, especially after the marshmallow event? Did any of that come up in any discussions about like, Hey, could this be an opportunity to rethink monetization a bit more broadly? Or maybe think about the bigger picture? What have some of those discussions been like? [00:05:54] Vickie Nauman: Yeah, it's been really interesting actually because they're really in aggregate. There are not an enormous number of opportunities for music and games. It's gaming is similar to the music industry where there are a handful of huge, huge, huge gaming studios, and then there's an inordinate long tail of small to mid-size gaming companies and, you know, very, very similar to music. [00:06:18] So the few big studios, a lot of them are doing, you know, licensing and they get music in. But it's been much more common over the years to gaming studios just hire a composer and they just create a song that is right for the mood and the moment in the game, the gaming studio owns it and they're just done. [00:06:39] You know, they don't have to worry about licensing or business models to incorporate music into the games. But I think for the most part, the music industry always likes to get their money up front, and the gaming industry likes to get all the money on the back end. And so you know, there are these friction points that, you know, marrying a business model into a game is kind of an art because if you've already got an existing model and it's free, or there's, you know, in-game purchases, then how do, you know, do you try to incorporate music into that? Do you just pay the rights holders and get a deal for a certain period of time, or can you create a revenue share and some way to participate in the upside and, a lot of gaming companies are even huge companies are still new to this. And so they're kind of what I would call, like dipping their toes into the pool, you know, testing the waters and trying some small things. And then trying to figure out does this work for us? [00:07:44] Do we need to, you know, do we need to create a big stack of technology to manage the rights? Most of them do not have an appetite to do. They certainly have the skills, which is part of what's so fun working with gaming companies is they have amazing engineers and really great minds about problem solving and coming up with these ways to engage users. [00:08:06] But nobody really wants to dedicate engineers to building a rights management system. And so I think everyone is, you know, all the companies that I work with, they're trying to kind of simplify things with music, try it out, find out what their users want, what their gamers want, because that's another big thing is, you know, you have to ask, you know, gaming is such a culture and such a subculture and each game has kind of a different community in it and a different vibe, and so you really wanna make sure you're getting that. Your assumptions of what kind of music is going to work are in line with your user's expectations. [00:08:45] There was one company that I worked with that was like, had a lot of underground, you know, all, their users thought of themselves as very underground and they did a music thing that their users thought was too commercial, the gamers rebelled . So, so, the best thing is to ask the people who are gaming, ,you know, and your products. [00:09:02] Ask them what they want. [00:09:04] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that customer base, especially with gaming, I think is huge cuz it makes me think a lot back to that Travis Scott Fortnite integration, which was almost three years ago at this point, but it was the perfect combination of so many things. At the beginning of quarantines with the pandemic, but also there's such alignment between the type of person that's on Fortnite with the Travis Scott fan as well, which is why I think that one worked much better than some of the other A-list artist superstar artists collaborating in a digital gaming environment. [00:09:37] Vickie Nauman: Yeah, I think that's a great, I think that's a really great point, and you know, because of the dynamic of gaming and the kinds of things that we're seeing, you know, it's not like a service that has, it's just music and it's going to put out hundreds of thousands or millions and millions of songs and just saying, You know, something for everyone, you know, let the end users find the music that resonates with them with, when you're picking and choosing a couple of artists or a couple of songs, you know, you kind of have one shot. And it reminds me of, you know, I used to work in radio before I started doing all of this, and. there was so much science to the choices that we made in radio because we knew that you know, we had one signal and we had to choose artists. [00:10:24] You know, if we said our demographic is, you know, 18th to 34, urban men and women who are professional and make a hundred thousand dollars a year and above, if that's your demographic, then you have to say, what kind of music and what kind of programming and what kind of announcers and events. Gotta get it. [00:10:45] And that's very similar to the way things are when you're doing things in the metaverse or gaming where you're like, well, we're just doing, we're picking a few things and we really wanna light them up, but we need to get them right. We need to get the user experience, we need to get the right artist to fit with the right user base. [00:11:04] And then how we present it, how we monetize it has to also be something that fits within the gaming community. [00:11:14] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I feel like that lines up with something else you had said in recent interviews talking about gaming syncs and the potential there and how there may not be as much because a lot of the game developers are doing in-house music now, but it can grow in the future. And I'm thinking about, especially this past year, we saw the Stranger Things moment with Kate Bush running up that hill and I assume like it's only gonna be a matter of time until we see a gaming moment that is at that level or something like that, or maybe there already has been ones that have been at that level. [00:11:45] Vickie Nauman: No, I think it is a really good point there as well that, that I think with the Kate Bush moment or Fleetwood Mac with the skateboarder and the, you know, cranberry juice that we've had these cultural moments in social that have, Absolutely lit up music for a new generation, which I love. [00:12:05] I mean like kids bought tickets to see Fleetwood Mac in concert after listening to 20 seconds of one song. And that's so exciting and I think, it will get there with gaming. and I think when you think about the limited number of opportunities and then then the limited number of artists or songs that can be integrated into every game, I think that we are really, really at the early end of the early part of that spectrum. [00:12:34] I don't think we've even begun to really let the music industry and the gaming industry come up you know, with that Kate Bush moment or the Fleetwood Mac moment. and I think that, what I love about gaming as well as you know, other kinds of audio visual is that when you hear it, you know, you hear the music differently when you're gaming and you know, like Beat Saber, I've worked with them for many years. [00:12:58] Vickie Nauman: I also work with Niantic on, they have a new NBA game and you know, with Ubisoft and some early stage gaming companies but with Beat Saber there are certain songs. that I've always loved. Like there's a, you know, a bunch of Green Day songs that are some of my favorites that I've listened to for 20 years, but now I've, played them in Beat Saber, and now whenever I hear the songs, I hear them differently because of the experience of having this immersive gaming and this gaming experience. [00:13:30] So I think there's, I think there's just so much potential that we haven't yet been able to tap into. Some of it is also because there's been so much friction around licensing, and for the most part, I think sync licensing is the best way to do things in gaming because you want something specific and then you know, the artist and their team want to know how their music is being used and you know, you, take something to rights holders and if they're like, you know, we need more money or we don't like that rev share, or that artist has a conflict. And then you're like, okay, well, you know, we'll move on to something else. And then you know, ideally you get an artist and a label and a publisher and a writer and those teams that all say, wow, this is great. I would love to have my music in this game. [00:14:21] And that's really where I think that, you know, if we can get those, all of those things right. that's the start of it. [00:14:28] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and this conversation too is making me reflect on a few things. Cause I feel like music and gaming have gone through ebbs and waves like for instance, I know that there's always been music in games like Madden or like the NBA 2K series, for instance. But I think back to like Grand Theft Auto. [00:14:43] I know one of the things there, they always had music. So they had this Vice City game that came out 20 years ago and that was all eighties. So I feel like for a lot of people of a certain generation, that was like their thing to go to. And then a couple years later, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, huge. Right? [00:14:58] And then I think even those songs reintroduce, especially some of those classic rock song rock songs there. And you also had some of those Def Jam vendetta. video games as well. So now I think what's different of course is that these are more so, okay, how do we integrate them into these digital environments, the metaverse and things like that. [00:15:15] So I'm excited to see, I still think that there is huge potential to see one of those moments happen, and who knows? I mean, I feel like the Kate Bush moment was largely, I don't wanna say unplanned, cuz obviously people expected it, but no one would've anticipated that it would've taken off that way. [00:15:32] But that's how these things. [00:15:34] Vickie Nauman: Exactly. I know, I know. I love it. like a lightning in the bottle, you know, where you're just like, wow, you know, we didn't, we really couldn't quite anticipate that things would resonate like that and, and especially reaching a gen, a new generation that probably otherwise would've never heard of Kate Bush. [00:15:50] but I also think that with. you know, with music and gaming, what's, what's also so fun for me personally, is I've been doing music licensing and write based things for like 20 years now, you know? So I feel like an old lady when I say that, but I'm always the one chasing everyone, you know, I'm chasing labels and publishers and trying to put things in front of them, you know, what do you think of this? What about that? Have you thought about it? Is this approved? Is it not approved? Can we move forward? No, we can't. gotta start over. And this is the first time in my entire professional life where I. artists, publishers, labels, and songwriters coming to me now and saying, I wanna get my music in games, you know, and I wanna get my music in the metaverse. [00:16:36] Vickie Nauman: how can we get band in the Metaverse? And I love that because, you know, for me, like self selection in the industry is huge. It's really frustrating when you have to drag people kicking and screaming into the future and into experiences. So I love it when people contact me and let me know which of their artists on their roster are really interested or even better, which, artists are gamers themselves and then they are already part of the community but then they want to take it a step further with their music. [00:17:08] Dan Runcie: That's good to hear because I often feel like the music industry is playing catch up when it comes to emerging a new technology. In so many ways, dating back 20 plus years at this point. So the fact that people are coming to you now is good. Do you feel like that is true overall? Do you feel like the industry is at the moment, like right in step with where things are going? [00:17:29] Or do you still feel like there's a bit of catch up? [00:17:32] Vickie Nauman: I think there's always a bit of catch up, just simply because, you know, technology moves at such a pace. None of us can really quite keep pace with it. And then there's always these very similar dynamics where there will be some new technology that comes around, whether it's, you know, on demand streaming or live streaming or gaming or virtual reality, and now metaverse and NFTs and fractionalizing rights and all of those things in web three, and there's a very common pattern where these technologists, they look at music and they say, oh my gosh, this would be fantastic for my platform, you know, it will help me with adoption and relevance and get in, get some artists and some music in there, and fans will come and it'll all be great. And then they start talking to the industry and they learn about how music writes work, and that you usually can't just go to an artist and get what you need. They're usually signed or they have some management and they publishing is probably administered by someone and they all have their ways of doing business. And there's a moment where everybody then, you know, they have to decide, do we have an appetite to do this? Or should we just move on to something that isn't as complicated? Because music is great when you get it right, but not all companies really wanna do things right.,You know, and so, you know, we kind of go through this every time when there's new, you know, new user experiences that are emerging. [00:19:06] And I think that the music industry is always, you know, takes all these things in. and then they start thinking, number one, is this a fad or is this something that's going to last? Is it worth us spending time and cycles to really engage with the companies on this particular kind of experience? And then how can we extract value? [00:19:30] How can we make money? How are they making money? Is our deal going to outlive the the survival time of any given platform or company? There's a lot of people, I mean, it's very frustrating sometimes to do licensing, but I have empathy with all of the, with all of the rights holders, because I'm in the same boat where companies come to me and I have to just like, oh gosh, you know, it's a great idea, but you guys have never done anything before and, you know, can you build this? Can you execute you? Can you take it from a PowerPoint or a demo into a fully functioning product? And it's hard. And so I think that, you know, the labels and publishers they have assets to protect and they're, you know, and now increasingly artist management companies are also in the mix because a lot of things require artist name, image, and likeness rights. [00:20:26] And sometimes that can come from the label, but sometimes it. So they're all in a mode where they have something to protect, they want to exploit and, you know, make money, but they have a lot to lose if they do things wrong. And so there's this inherent mismatch between how quickly things move in technology and how slow and methodical the music industry is about deciding. [00:20:52] Whether they wanna move forward. And then there's the other issue, which we're faced with right now, which is all of these emerging use cases and people being kind of afraid of agreeing to the wrong terms and setting a precedent that they're later going to regret. And so, . when technologists complain about the music industry and they're like, they're so slow, they're so backwards, they don't understand our vision. [00:21:20] It's like, well, they have a lot to lose. You don't have a lot to lose cuz you're a startup and you have a big idea. But these guys have, you know, they've been, you know, 20 years of companies just like you that have come before. And so I always try to encourage, I always try to encourage people not to just, you know, get so frustrated with music that you know that they abandon it because a lot of great Id great ideas die on the vine because of these mismatches. But to be patient and to also, you know, maybe you think you need Jay-Z. But I would challenge most early stage companies, you're probably not ready for Jay-Z. [00:22:00] You know, like let's, you know, maybe find some earlier stage artists that might be more appropriate to your size and budget and a little bit more forgiving. And then you get product market fit and then start expanding and, you know, might end up with Jay-Z, but maybe you might find you don't need, you know, you don't need that to resonate with users. [00:22:24] Dan Runcie: Right. The break thing things fast mentality of startups just doesn't always line up. And that's a good point too. You get approached by so many companies, you don't know who's gonna be there. And obviously that probably requires some level of evaluating these startups to see what makes sense. That's just one side of it. [00:22:42] The other side of it is the patience to be able to see these things through. And I know you've seen this yourself with David Guetta and making sure his music can be cleared. Can you talk a little bit about that process? [00:22:54] Vickie Nauman: Yeah, it was really crazy. I mean this was a project I did with Warner Music Group and I love what they're doing cause they're really trying to create a pipeline to get their artists into metaverse and new web three based experiences. And so, this was a year ago, David Guetta was doing a DJ set as an avatar in Roblox, and he originally had chosen 26 songs and then we narrowed it down to 20 songs. [00:23:23] but you know, what I found was that those 20 songs represented 143 shares on the publishing Plus, almost all of them had shared masters. And what many people don't realize is when you're listening to music and you see, you know, here's a song featuring, you know, Shakira or somebody else, that featuring usually means that artist is probably on a different label. [00:23:50] Vickie Nauman: And so even the sound recording can end up having multiple owners. and there was a certain point in the process where I start looking at these songs and I quickly saw like, wow, there are, you know, 10 of the songs that had, you know, all these writers who are not on a PRO, so they're non society, they don't have a publishing administrator. [00:24:18] They may own one or 2%, which if you're in streaming and on-demand audio streaming, it doesn't really matter, the services can still use the music, even if you can't find the person who has one or 2% but if you're doing sync licensing, you need to have a hundred percent of the publishing at a hundred percent of the master recordings or the sound recordings cleared in advance. [00:24:42] So I chased down. All of these people, these writers and people who had small shares, you know, they weren't registered anywhere. I found them on social media and got everything, got everything in there and approved. But for me, it was kind of an exercise in how well prepared or how poorly prepared are we for the world that's coming, which is all of these metaverse, web three-immersive platforms that are building creator tools directly into the platform, assuming that artists can just be nimble. And then you look at this, it's like David chose these songs, he wanted to mix these songs. And that's so unsustainable to think of, you know, being able to harness innovation. [00:25:38] When you have 143 different rights owners that all have to be harmonized around the same deal, and then a third of them are people who are not even, you know, technically in the ecosystem of music, but they still have shares. And that's true for hip hop and electronic music. Pop music also has an enormous number of writers, but they tend to mostly be with pros and have publishing administrators. But in hip hop and electronic music, there's just a ton of people who are contributing to big songs, but they're completely outside of our ecosystem. [00:26:16] Dan Runcie: That point reminds me of the news that had came out when Beyonce released her album, The Alien Superstar song had 24 songwriters on, and people were like, oh, well how does this happen? And I think for some people it became a bit of an eye-opening. Well, this is how a lot of this music gets created, and these are the people that either had a hand or they helped sample. [00:26:35] There's so many things. And then if someone goes and samples, they only have superstar in the song that's gonna have all those same 24 writers, plus whoever helped them with that new song. [00:26:44] Vickie Nauman: Exactly. I know, and like when you watch the Grammys and they go through the , the awards for composers, you know, and there's a paragraph, all these names that have contributed to each of these songs. and I think about it a lot though, like, you know, we've kind of, if you go back in history to the olden days, you know, fifties, sixties, seventies, you know, like in the fifties and sixties, most artists, it was very common to have a songwriting group and then an artist, someone performed someone else's songs. [00:27:20] And then when the rock music came around, we had bands that it was like a big deal. Like we write our own songs. And so in that era, like if you're licensing rock music from the seventies, eighties, or nineties, it's great because there's like one or two writers on every song and it's usually the band and they've written every single thing. [00:27:43] So you, you know, you wanna license one Green Day song, you're pretty much going to have the same mix across all of their music. And then you fast forward to the way people create now, and we have this incredible fragmentation where we have on average seven writers per song, but it's outsized in electronic music and hip hop. [00:28:05] And so we have 10, 15, 20 writers on every song with these tiny shares and that just a trend of how people collaborate and how they create and samples and you know, people in the studio and people all, you know, collaborating all over the world. But I think a lot about where the industry is going. And Metaverse and NFTs and Web three and, you know, where you know, again, all of these platforms are assuming that you as an artist can come in and bring all the rights you need to be able to do something interesting with your fans and whether or not this is going to drive a different kind of creation because, it will definitely the artists who have just a one writer or a couple of writers. [00:28:55] And who really have tight control over everything are at a much bigger advantage to be able to be nimble in the, in this next iteration of music experiences than writers, than artists who have 20 writers. And some of them they don't even know. And so, you know, I'm going to watch this because like, there's a producer, Poo Bear, you know, contributed to a lot of big songs, but he's doing an NFT project and he's just made a decision. I'm gonna write, perform, do everything on these songs that I'm doing in the NFTs. Cause I don't want to, you know, have to pull in an entire army of people to get them to approve. [00:29:36] So I feel like, you know, thinking creatively about how you can take advantage of things without having all of this, administrative burden. It might drive and change some of how we see music being created. [00:29:50] Dan Runcie: That's a really interesting point because I think broadly, everyone's been trying to figure out specifically with Web three and what's ahead, how do we best make this work? How do we make this into a real business vertical that can drive real revenue. It isn't just a fad. And I know you've spoken about this in the past, how felt like we were at this .com bubble era of Web three and where things are now more proof of concept, but not actual businesses, like more features, not necessarily companies, but where do you feel like we are now and if any of the things that have been good examples, does anything stick out to you to be like, okay, like that's generally how this could be done and how we could approach Web three. [00:30:33] Vickie Nauman: Yeah, This does really remind me of the early two thousands, because. There are so many things that, like in back then, we would do things like order a pint of ice cream to be delivered by someone and no markup. And it's like, that's ridiculous. That's not a real business. But it was a proof of concept that you put your name in, put a credit card in, you order something and they promise to deliver it and it, comes to you. [00:31:02] And so, I feel like, you know, and then out of the ashes of all the companies that burn through venture capital, you know, inflamed out or had some great idea, but there was no business model to it. And somebody else then saw it and said, if we do what they did, but we do it this way, you know, we're in the midst of that process. [00:31:25] And back then out of the ashes of everything grew, companies like Amazon you know, and there were certainly lots of casualties, but I think we're kind of in that phase right now with Web three, and I'm still really bullish about it, but I think that we've, I think that we have now because of crypto and what people saw with FTX, you know, their eyes have been open a bit. [00:31:51] and a lot of the companies that have been doing things with music and NFTs and, you know, some of them have been really lucrative and successful, others haven't, but it's all part of the process. but I think that some of the things that I see I think that music is going to evolve slightly differently in all of these web three experiences than maybe, non-musical, activities. [00:32:14] Like, especially in NFTs. I think the dynamic of, you know, of buying and collecting. Visual art is going to have its own trajectory. But I think, music in token based communities, I mean, I think there will be a point where we'll probably look back and be like, damn, remember when we talked about NFTs, non fungible tokens? [00:32:35] Sounds this ridiculous name. But I think that what we will see is these artist communities that are artist centric, that are token based, and it's like fan clubs 2.0, you know, interactive fan clubs with different ways to, you know, limit membership. Maybe you can co-create with the artist. Maybe you are getting a access to ticketing or the artist in some way. [00:33:04] that there's benefits and ways to pull a small community of people around an artist together. And then We've had a lot of these artists direct to fan initiatives for many, many years that most have failed because they required the artists to do too much. The artists are artists, you know, they wanna be artists. [00:33:23] They don't want to spend all their time, you know, on 20 different platforms. But I think these are different because I think there's something inherent about, you know, artists and fans that is the most golden connection that you can possibly have in music. And we currently have artists and fans and then, all the different platforms and labels and publishers and, algorithms and transaction engines and, you know, followers and all of these things that are keeping many, many, levels separate of separation. [00:33:58] And now I think we can bring them much closer together. So I think that's one experience that I think is going to have an enormous and outsized, positive effect for music. And I think some of these will have music in them and some of them won't. And, some of them will be more about the artist's brand and their likeness and you know, their personality, their identity.And then I think another, use case in web three is, this fractionalizing rights and allowing users to invest in music. because this requires, you know, SEC, you know, this is like full investment, you know, you have to really, really get that right. I think there will be very few companies that end up in that space. [00:34:44] I think it's  [00:34:45] Vickie Nauman: just you know, the lift is too much for the average, but I think there will be a really viable marketplace. And I've talked to writers and performers who are also even signed, cuz if you're signed to a label or a publisher, you know, you're not gonna fractionize their share. [00:35:01] Dan Runcie: Right. [00:35:02] Vickie Nauman: And that's also something I always have to tell the companies that want to do this. [00:35:05] Like I'm going to now tell you some really disappointing news. but they're interested in doing some fractionalization of maybe just their writer's share or their performers share. And that's super interesting. And so, you know, how can we make that another income stream. [00:35:22] And then I think the third area that I'm really bullish about is the experiential side of, you know, we, we've seen during the pandemic, you know, and starting with starting with these things in Roblox and you know, Fortnite and you know, having these kind of pop-up experiences. Again, that's a proof of concept that if you put an artist in as an avatar and create some sort of activation, that people will come and they will buy virtual goods and they will have a great time. [00:35:56] So I think you know, that's, again, we're just barely scratching the surface of where these more experiential things will go with AR VR. Just, you know, web-based and mobile-based and, you know, avatars, you know, live streams I think fit in there as well. And I also think that the way the internet and even websites, the way that they work now, where you are, kind of view, go to a menu and you click on things and you get a flat page that tells you this is, you know, who the people are, this is what the products are, you know, like even the most basic things about how we engage online I think are going to change. And so I think there's going to be much more, you know, immersion and interactivity and real, you know, real time engagement. And to me that's just feels like that's just so perfect for. You know, small artist, activations where you don't need 20 million songs. [00:36:52] You just need a couple of artists who really want to do it. And I think that we will have just a really, really wide range of ways for people to enact more meaningfully with artists performing online. [00:37:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think the collectible piece was a key point, and I also think that artists just being able to have communities around this too. I think we probably overestimated the investing piece just because I don't think that the average fan is going to be as interested in that piece, and I think that was a big selling point. [00:37:21] It's almost in the same way that like we all may have Apple devices, but how many of us are owning stock in Apple as a result of us wanting to see the thing right. But I do think that the collectible piece is huge. Obviously you see it in people wanting to have physical media, whether it's cassettes or vinyls going up. [00:37:37] So there's an aspect there that I think will continue to be tapped into, but it'll be fascinating to see how that plays outthe other emerging technology space that I know you've done some work into is VR itself. And I know that one of the companies that you worked with extensively was acquired by Meta and although you know, from my purview, they seem to be one of the more successful companies in a landscape that I think has been a bit slower to have that mainstream adoption than a lot of people thought with VR more broadly. So where do you see with that space right now? [00:38:10] Vickie Nauman: Yeah, it, you know, VR at the beginning, you know, it had so much promise of, you know, being, you know, being transported to, other worlds and having, you know, having this 3D environment around you. But I always felt like it's going to be gaming, that would be the catalyst to this because I think there's also, you know, there's also something like how much time does anyone want to sit in a headset? [00:38:39] And you know, you generally, it's kind of like, you know, remember when 3D TVs, we're huge, and everyone's like, no, we're not gonna sit around our house with these funny glasses on for hours at a time. It's just not going to happen. But I think that gaming has really been an enormous entry point in, and, you know, Beat Saber is the VR game that was acquired by Meta and continues to do extremely well with this customized gaming rhythm But I think that, you know, part of it is we need the headsets and things to shrink and we need them to be, a little bit more, you know, a little bit more comfortable. We need to be able to spend more time in them, and we need to have more experiences than we have right now. [00:39:28] And I think that there are things, you know, there are lots of companies that are starting to build even like, you know, meetings and,you know, are we going to have meetings with people in the metaverse and in virtual reality? There are companies that are doing enterprise-based training for employees that are using VR you know, and using these technologies in ways that I think is not gimmicky, but it will actually lend, it will actually lend to human emotion and feeling close. [00:40:00] but I think with everything with web three, we're going to have a blend of, these things, you know, AR is generally considered to be more accessible than VR because you know, you don't need as much equipment. But I think as, all of these things grow and we start to get more platforms and you know, more variety of use cases that we'll probably see a blurring between AR and VR and lighter weight. [00:40:28] hardware and more cost effective hardware, and that will just help to grow. That'll help to grow the market. [00:40:36] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think for a while VR kind of had a bit of that sharper image vibe, I would say where, Yeah, you know, you go in the store, there's these cool forward technology things, but not necessarily something that I would wanna have in my house, right? And I think over time, to your point, the headsets get smaller, gets a bit more accessible. [00:40:54] We'll eventually get there. It's just a matter of the use case said, Yeah, to your point, I think gamers, if anyone, you think about the people that are gonna be wearing a headset while they are playing Call of Duty or whatever it is, they're probably the audience that's more likely to have another device over their head as they are interacting with game. [00:41:13] Vickie Nauman: Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, fitness is another area that, with VR originally was like, oh yes, you know, are there ways to simulate, you know, downhill skiing and hiking and cycling and, you know, being in this expansive different world than being in your house. but you know, you don't really wanna just be sweating, you know, sweating in your, headset either. And so I think the only, like, there probably needs to be some evolution, if that's a big enough market to support specific hardware of fitness, you know, then there probably are people who really want to do that. but you know, we're still kind of trying to figure out what this entire next iteration of the internet is going to be, and I can't imagine that VR won't be a part of it. [00:42:05] Dan Runcie: And I think the other emerging platform that'll likely or emerging medium, that might likely be a part of it somehow is AI and that's the one thing we haven't talked about deeply yet today, but where are you at right now with AI and let's fast forward five years from now, 2028. What role does AI have with music, and specifically with what the major record labels and their artists are doing? [00:42:28] Vickie Nauman: I know. I mean, it's just like, I feel like web three is, we kind of have some time because I feel like you know, companies are building infrastructure, there's lack of, you know, horizontal integration and interoperability. We have time to kind of keep experimenting and figuring it out. AI is coming at us like a freight train right now, and I think maybe five or six years ago when. [00:42:54] AI and music first came on, the first came on the horizon. A lot of people were freaked out by it. Then they listened to the music and said, that's pretty bad, you know, now, we're not worried anymore. But now music's getting way better. and I think that, I kind of look at it in a couple of different, you know, avenues because I feel like the first thing that I see is artists. And artists are always the first to embrace any kinds of creator tools. You know, they're not afraid of technology, they're not afraid of tools, you know, you think back to drum machines, you know, my God, the drum machine's gonna eliminate drummers, you know, we don't need drummers anymore. Well, we didn't, you know, we still need drummers. [00:43:41] But it did serve a purpose. Practicing and, you know, don't need to have you know, a drummer there to practice your songs. Don't need to always take a drummer on tour if you're doing some sort of small, intimate shows, but we still need great drumm. so I think that artists are probably going to be the first ones to embrace and use technologies that are like, think of plugins to DaaS and, you know, and that you've got a writer's block and you want to have something kind of help pull some things out of your head and break through that. [00:44:13] So I think like that is going to be a really, really robust market. And those are still very much human creations. They're just tools that are now a little bit more advanced. [00:44:25] you know, the opposite end of it is text to music,  [00:44:29] and that's where I think like, we have no idea how that is going to play out and who owns it either. [00:44:37] I think that electronic music is kind of the first use case because it's easiest to replicate and come up with, you know, a new electronic mix that's AI generated as opposed to something that is, you know, got, you know, 12 instruments in it. But, I still feel like there's a line there around what are the areas where it's, music is still kind of human created and you can never get it away. [00:45:03] Vickie Nauman: And live music for sure, you know, there's nothing that replaces being in a room and you're waiting for your favorite band to come on stage. And we're all human and we're all there in this shared experience. and I also think that there are things about human creativity and music that surprise you and that, you know, kind of, you know, a human can take you down an emotional path or a musical path that you never, ever would've anticipated. [00:45:32] And that's something that, that seems inherently human. But I think there's a lot of things, like a lot of background music. A lot of music that's kind of music for sleeping, music for concentration, you know, non-descript, you know, unknown artists production. I think that area is probably ripe for disruption by AI. [00:45:57] , you know, but it just still doesn't answer some of these fundamental questions about the copyrights of, if you fed an AI engine, millions of songs and it can now reproduce music based on a text command, you know, who owns that? You shouldn't t he music that was fed into the AI participate in that. [00:46:20] Dan Runcie: right. Because right now there's nothing that's necessarily pulling them, that they're pulling these from whatever, lyrics, websites that are there, but the lyrics, websites aren't, you know, pulling from those. So a lot of issues to sort through. [00:46:32] Vickie Nauman: Yeah. what do you think about? [00:46:34] Dan Runcie: I mean, I'm excited for the potential because I do think that if the industry is able to get it right in some way, if there's a way to fairly compensate people, like let's say that whether it's open AI or one of these companies has some way that they have a licensing agreement, no different than the record labels have licensing agreements with the streaming services or the dsbs. If you have something there that attributes some level of, okay, how much was pulled from here, and even if it ends up being some fractional aspect or whatever it is, obviously it would most likely all be some fraction, some way to attribute that back, especially if that becomes the next viral TikTok hit. [00:47:14] If that then spawns the journey for the next person to release the next big song, and you think about, whether it's the next Billy Eilish or whoever is creating music in their bedroom that's gonna release the biggest album of the year, like that's likely where this is gonna come from. I do think that's some of the things that we discussed in this conversation about how. [00:47:32] because the industry is more likely to not be in this break things fast mentality, to make sure that things are right. It's more likely to play catch up on some of those things, which I think, you know, could be frustrating to see it play out, but it's completely understandable just given how these things play out. [00:47:49] So maybe we'll see some more, of this happen from independent artists or those that are doing more things where they own everything themselves, kind of to your point with whether it's Poo Bear or other people like that, experimenting. Okay, what could that look like? So I think we'll probably see some type of innovation there. [00:48:06] Or maybe there's even a solution where some company has more rights to more of the royalty free or independent artist owned music where that can then be used as something derivative from where the OpenAI or chatGPT three or some of these companies can pull from. But I think we're a little ways away from that. [00:48:27] Vickie Nauman: But there's clearly no stopping it. [00:48:29] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, this is a train that is gonna continue to go on for sure. But Vicki, this is great. I feel like we covered a bunch of stuff, especially with gaming and so many of its intersections. And if people wanna follow along with you and the work that you're doing, where's the best place that they should follow Thank you so much. [00:48:47] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast, that helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Burna Boy will be the first African artist to headline a UK stadium show when he performs at the 60,000-capacity London Stadium this summer. It’s the latest sign of Burna’s starpower and Afrobeats exploding popularity. The Nigeria-born artist is one of the genre’s biggest stars. Burna has reached this level because of consistency (six albums in nine years), savvy performing strategies, and a headliner mentality.  To break down Burna’s rise, I talked to Denisha Kuhlor, founder of Stan, which helps artists identify and grow their fanbase. Stan has used Burna show giveaways to develop insight into his wide-spreading fanbase. Here’s what we discussed: [3:05] What sets Burna Boy apart from other African artists [6:26] Burna’s show at London Stadium [7:26] The Burna fanbase [7:52] Streaming era impact on African music [11:56] Returning to Coachella after 2019 drama [17:05] How Ye incidentally helped Burna break out [19:16] How fame is perceived in Africa vs US [20:45] Fans of Africa’s “Big Three” artists battling each other [21:50] Burna’s “contested” Madison Square Garden sellout [24:11] Possible missteps in Burna’s career [27:54] Projecting Burna’s future shows [32:20] His best career move [38:03] Building record label infrastructure in Africa [44:06] Five-year prediction for Burna’s career Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Denisha Kuhlor, @denishakuhlor This episode was brought to you by trac. Learn more about how artists can bring web2 and web3 together for their fans at trac.co Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Denisha Kuhlor: I think it was interesting, him being so vocal in the approach he took, I think a lot of, Ayra Starr did a documentary for Spotify and she's quite big, especially within West Africa. And she talked about touring in the United States for the first time, and she basically said that she viewed it as an opportunity to make someone her fan, right? [00:00:19] Like, just by someone attending her show, her goal was to convert them into a fan. Whereas, Burna definitely takes the approach of, "you should either already be one or recognize my fan base for what they are." I think in his case he's lucky cuz he's been able to back it up. especially when you look at Coachella to now. [00:00:40] but definitely a, an approach that's consistent with his brand.  [00:01:11] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is a case study style breakdown on the one and only Burna Boy. I was joined by someone who is a near expert when it comes to the world of Burna Boy, and that is Denisha Kuhlor, who has been on the pod several times, and she is the founder of Stan, where not only does she focus on how artists can engage their fan bases, she's actually been involved with ticket giveaways for Burna Boy's upcoming stadium show in London. So she has insights into what these fans are like, what are some of their preferences? And we talked about all that and more. We broke down, Burna Boy's rise. What are some of the key things to his success? What are some of the challenges? Talked about some of the other moments that he's had that we wanted to talk about. [00:01:57] Where does that stand with him? What is his standout moment and where things could really go for him from here on out? Really great conversation. If you enjoyed the one we did on Cash Money a couple weeks ago. This is something similar, but about an artist who is really having this moment right now, and we broke it all down. [00:02:12] Here's our breakdown on Burna Boy. [00:02:14] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have our case study style breakdown on the one and only Burna Boy, and who else is gonna join me then? Someone that understands him and the work that he's done in and out over the past few years. Denisha Kuhlor Welcome back to the pod. [00:02:29] Denisha Kuhlor: Thanks so much for having me.  [00:02:30] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I wanted to talk to you because you wrote that piece in Trapital several months ago, talking about how artists who have relied on music festivals, maybe there's something that they may regret down the road in terms of actually getting in there and building the true fanboy fan base. And you used Burna Boy as an example of someone that went through this and obviously he's blowing up. He's had a huge year and we've now seen so much growth, especially in the past few years of just how so many African artists have been able to rise and grow platform. [00:03:05] But Burna Boy has clearly been able to hit levels that many others haven't. What do you think it is that has set him apart? [00:03:13] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think one, just Bruno boy is very compelling, as an artist. I've seen him perform, last year twice. his Madison Square Garden show. Then I got to see him at, Afrochella now, Afro Future, in Ghana. And one, he is a live band, as crazy as that sounds, I feel like that's rare and rarer these days. as consumers, it kind of feels like we've gotten used to maybe a DJ or kind of that accompany accompaniment. So the live band aspect is a huge one for me, and I think he's very compelling on stage and has great, charisma. and then lastly, I kind of feel like he was everywhere this year. [00:03:53] You couldn't really. Escape him, whether it was last, last, as a hit or, him touring so much of the United States. I feel like if you didn't know about Burna boy, maybe a year or two ago, last year was definitely just a true breakout year for him on the global stage.  [00:04:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think there was a couple other things that stuck out to me too. So he has been able to position himself as a leading man. I am the person that's headlining. I'm not just gonna be the person opening for the artist. gonna be the person that is doing the guest first. [00:04:27] And I do think that's some of the other artists who rose up from Africa, they have done a bit more of the, "okay, let me jump on the Drake verse. And then that becomes Drake's or things like that." although I know that Burna has done several guest appearances and feature shares, it hasn't been in that same way. [00:04:45] And I think he's still just been so focused on himself in that way. And of course it could take a little bit longer to develop, but it's almost like how in Hollywood you may see someone that is always positioning themselves as supporting acting roles. If that's where you're taken to blow up, it could be hard for the industry to see you. [00:05:04] The lead actor, but if you're willing to do the lead actor roles for the smaller things and you get the right thing, then you become seen as the lead actor on the big I feel like that's  [00:05:14] been his experience.  [00:05:15] Denisha Kuhlor: I'm totally aligned with you when, just based off you talking about that makes me think about some of his features on the continent. And he's largely broken those artists, right? You look at Bnxn,formerly known as Buju, right?  [00:05:27] And the Lenu remix who was signed a Burna. I first heard about Amapiano,because Burna Boy got on the Spoon, No No remix, and one of the biggest breakout stars of the continent, Asake, the Zumba remix, this year. So I agree, I think he's positioned his features as more as like, let me lend a helping hand and let me get your distribution and your visibility. But if I was. In African artists or emerging artists from the continent vying for a feature in some ways, I'd probably wanna Burna feature over potentially a big artist from the west.  [00:06:04] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think a lot of that is with his. And his persona, and we can get into that in a minute, but I that played into a lot of this. And as you said, he's been every run the past year and we're setting stage for an even bigger 2023 where he will do his stadium tour at London Stadium, the first African artist, a headline and do that. [00:06:26] What does that mean for his career? [00:06:28] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. One, I think it's just huge and a testament to how far music from the continent has grown. I think, you know, you look at the story or how people paint the narrative of how music from the continent has grown. And so often it's kind of like, oh, there's a population of people here or there's little, you know, subsets of people that are interested in the music. [00:06:51] Whereas now, it's makes it very clear that this is world music, right? This is pop music in a lot of ways in that people have embraced this music in the same way you look at, Latin music, right? And people are singing whether they know Spanish or not. I think it's really a testament to the ability to do that. So it's very exciting.  [00:07:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think you've also had a front row seat to this as well, because with your work at Stan, you've been doing ticket giveaways and things like that to really tap into who the Burna Boy super fans are. [00:07:26] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, so we've found two things working with Burna Boy fans or Burna Boy fan pages. Is that, or maybe even three. I find that one you have the fan that maybe, it reminds them of home. So typically a fan with roots or ties back to West Africa or Africa more broadly, who's now living abroad or first generation, but there's a sense of nostalgia or home as a result. [00:07:52] I think you also have fans that are like learning or being introduced to, Africa. Through his music, which has been really fascinating and really cool to see us talking to a fan, based in France, right? That like taught herself pidgin and like wants to visit Nigeria because she's such a big Burna boy fan. [00:08:11] and that's also really, really cool to see. And then third, I think you just have like hometown pride, right? Like you look at people in Lagos or even other African cities and people are just really, really proud of what he's been able to do. So it's interesting seeing all the subsets of fans together. [00:08:29] Denisha Kuhlor: But as someone who's attended his shows, I think it's exhilarating when you watch it all come together.  [00:08:36] Dan Runcie: And just for some context for the listeners, what does your giveaway entail and what does that process look like? [00:08:43] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. So, we run live interactive trivia games that allow us to test a fan's knowledge and how much they actually know about the artists. So everything from lyrics to questions that fans would only know if they watch music videos to general information about Burna boy that you probably would only get if you read his interviews  [00:09:04] or you just deeply know about him. Every time we're crafting these games, I actually learn so much more about, these artists that we work with. And so I say that to say, I'm continuously surprised not only by his fans' knowledge of his music and his lyrics, but also how intentional they've been about truly learning about him and what they feel he represents. And so I feel like he's done a really good job of being consistent in that narrative. [00:09:32] Dan Runcie: I think too, one of the other things that really works in his favor is that in the rise of the streaming era, we're seeing the rise of local repertoire and local language artists being able to rise and not just have to rely on Western cultures. And I think that the music industry has shifted a bit, or at least from a mentality perspective, and you could see this on the Spotify daily charts. [00:09:56] You can see there's so many places where there were so many artists who were used to being able to have that global footprint of essentially exporting their music elsewhere than making so much money they're now seeing less and they're seeing less because a lot of these artists are being able to do it themselves, and it's not just. [00:10:16] Burna Boy's being able to do this in West Africa, but he's being able to do this in France, which has, you know, a large West African population and some of these other corners of the world that do, and I'm curious to see how that will continue to develop, because you know how the diaspora and certain regions that. [00:10:34] You see more fans of West African artists than just West Africans in general, and how that will align with where someone like Burna Boy continues to tour and where some of the bigger concentrations of his fandom end up being. [00:10:49] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. I think, you know, interestingly enough, like he also probably benefited from the rise of like macro things that maybe couldn't plan, but like one black panther, right? Black Panther, like reignited people's curiosity about Africa and maybe in a way in which, they hadn't thought of before you look at things like the year of return in Ghana in 2019 and this bridge or this desire to have a bridge between black Americans in the United States and you know, people in Ghana. [00:11:18] And I think all those like, factors made people, got people excited and got excited in a way that his music just set the stage. If you came to Ghana in 2019, you were gonna hear br boy and people were gonna take it back, right?  [00:11:33] Denisha Kuhlor: Davido said it best. He said, you know, Afrobeats will succeed because in America, everybody has one African friendand whether you realize it or not, like, you are exposed in some way, and I think as people's proximity changed and curiosity about each other and where people are from grew, especially as it relates to Africa, he really benefited from that.  [00:11:56] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. That makes sense. And I think the other thing too, that I think about for him this year, he of course has the huge stadium show in London, but he's also coming back to Coachella and very famously back to Coachella after being quite upset in 2019 about the size of his name on that Coachella poster. And this day, this year, this time around, his name is much bigger. Still not a but I'd be curious know what you think, like how he must have felt about that process. Was there some level of buy-in? Because I could see at his level him thinking that, okay, I'm a superstar. I should be a headliner. But if they're now putting him on that second line right under the headliner, then how that may affect him. Obviously it's still great placement, but. Yeah. [00:12:45] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. You know, it's interesting and I remember when that happened and in some ways I think it probably helped his brand and really showed like it was a testament to the type of artist that he desired to be. I do, you know, think it's interesting because you do see within Africa stars that are huge, right? [00:13:04] And maybe they're numbers, quantitatively don't show up on the Spotify charts, they're on YouTube or they're on other platforms. there's still quite of downloading, that exists within just Africa as a whole. So sometimes we don't necessarily see an artist as set the way we would, maybe with an artist in the States or with a huge listenership in the States, from a charts perspective or immediately. [00:13:27] But I will say is I think it was interesting, him being so vocal in the approach he took, I think a lot of, Ayra Starr did a documentary for Spotify and she's quite big, especially within West Africa. And she talked about touring in the United States for the first time, and she basically said that she viewed it as an opportunity to make someone her fan, right? [00:13:48] Like, just by someone attending her show, her goal was to convert them into a fan. Whereas, Burna definitely takes the approach of, "you should either already be one or recognize my fan base for what they are." I think in his case he's lucky cuz he's been able to back it up. especially when you look at Coachella to now. [00:14:09] but definitely a, an approach that's consistent with his brand.  [00:14:14] Dan Runcie: Right? Because I think that part of it too is there's clearly a western skew for a festival like Coachella. I know that when Burna had complained back in 2019 about where he was, people had shown where Kendrick Lamar was, I think it was 2012, and how small his name was compared to him being a headliner several years later. [00:14:35] Denisha Kuhlor: The difference there though is that Kendrick Lamar is from Compton, which is which is driving distance to Indio, California where Coachella is, versus Burna boy may have numbers, may have the base, it's is that base, if they're not a strong contention of them in the in Southern California, are they going to be able to get there? [00:14:58] And I do think that the fact that he is, you know, second because this year you're headliners, unless someone pulls out, you never know what happens. But, right now your headliners are Frank Ocean, Bad Bunny, and Black Pink. So he's, you know, just under there. So you never know what could happen. Things shift all the time, but I assume if based on his placement, it must be a pretty decent size bag as well. [00:15:21] At least I know for the headliners, the last I checked a few years ago, they were getting paid 4 million per weekend, which totaled 8 million total. so that's what I would assume the payday would be for, Bunny, Black Pink and Frank Ocean, but then that next row down probably isn't too far below that. [00:15:40] I mean, I'm sure it is less money, but I don't know how much less. [00:15:43] Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And when you look at like negotiating from just a hard tickets perspective, in terms of what he's been able to drive from last year alone, he definitely had some strong leverage from a negotiating standpoint. [00:15:57] Dan Runcie: definitely. And with someone like him too. I know that we've talked a lot about artists and how they're able to develop true fandom, and I think true fandom is the people that are showing up at your. Concerts and they know the words of everything and not just singing the TikTok part that goes viral that we've seen from whether it's many artists that have experienced that, that have had TikTok hits that have blown up. [00:16:24] How do you think that impacts someone like Burna boy, I don't necessarily feel like he is making music, quote unquote for TikTok. I know a lot of the stuff that blows up their artists don't have any control over, but how do you think that skews, like how do you think that soc or short form video has played a factor, if at all, in his career and his rise? [00:16:44] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think a few ways, one, touring, right? I think people want to go to a Bea boy show even if they haven't seen him before or only know a few songs. So I think it's definitely been really, really helpful there. I don't know how many, people know, like the story behind Ye, one of his breakout hits, but like SEO just like really helped him. [00:17:05] So he had the song, Ye. It was already uploaded to streaming platforms, and then Kanye came out with his album. . And so a lot of folks search for Kanye's album, but his, was still like ranking pretty high on Spotify. They actually released a video that that day or around that time thinking, thinking Kanye, for, for the album name. [00:17:25] So I do think in, this is what's so interesting. He's very true to himself in the sense that he's definitely not an artist that like hopped on those trends, right? Like TikTok is not really potentially his thing. he's not gonna be doing any TikTok dances, so he's still been authentic to himself. While I think galvanizing his fans or letting his fans know, he appreciates their effort and I believe his fans look at it more so it as like, let's spread this message, regardless of his participation. [00:17:58] That's something I always get from his fans specifically, it seems like you have different artists, with fan bases. Like the Barbz need Nicki to participate, they want Nicki to participate, right?  [00:18:09] Whereas Burna fans, I feel like they do their own thing. They know the temperament of the artists and what he likes to do, and so they don't, they're not really like rushing for him to, adopt maybe some of those technique.  [00:18:23] Dan Runcie: And that's an interesting breakdown. Do you think that any of that is compared to where the artist is from or just the nature of their fans? Thinking specifically about the Barbz versus Burna Boy's fans. [00:18:37] Denisha Kuhlor: Mm. that is interesting. You know, I can't say with certainty, but what I will say and as I've spent more time in Ghana is that there's a level of familiarity. I find, past, maybe, I don't know what it is, but past like, experiences that maybe invoke a certain socioeconomic status. There's a level of familiarity, that you'll find these artists like I've definitely maybe seen, or you can be in spaces with so many of these artists just casually like going to a restaurant or, you know, like you living your. [00:19:16] And, I do think that invokes a certain sense of familiarity in which fame is perceived differently here. like in Ghana specifically, you see a lot of, a lot of artists here with very little to know security. just like really doing regular things. it's very different, whereas the fame is more sensationalized it feels, in the states, like you can be in the club with Burna, he's walking up and there's not gonna be the, oh my god, Burna, like that kind of thing. It's very different in that way. So maybe that wouldn't really add much, at least to his core or his home base fans, because that familiarity is there.  [00:19:56] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it feels a bit the closest thing that I would. You have in the US is Atlanta, where you would have the artists that are at the mall or you see them walking around and stuff. And it isn't necessarily the same level of frenzy, although that may be a little bit different now, but in like, you know, the nineties, two thousands, you would see them a bit more. [00:20:17] And I think there was a bit more of that vibe that felt a bit more natural like, you know, you go to Magic City or something like that and you would see someone. I think the other thing that is distinctive too with the US fans versus maybe some of the fans, others, is that online, I think you do see a bit more of that hive behavior, specifically from a group like the Barbz, where I think there's almost a falsification to them. [00:20:45] Denisha Kuhlor: And in that, I mean the reactiveness to the other side and what they're saying, and there's almost the galvanization of that and how the barbs can galvanize in Cardi B take down, or a snide comment of someone trying to come at Nicki in a way, but they that bit of catalyst to feel galvanized.You know what's interesting? I do find it that I do think that Burna fans and maybe the big three, so for folks listening, within Africa, the big threes typically referred to as DeVito, Burna boy and Whiz Kids. So they all have their, various fan bases. And the only time I really feel like that's activated. [00:21:27] Seeing how their artists are doing in the West and comparing. Right. So, you know, obviously with Burna winning the Grammy, but and I talked to you about this, like his, Madison Square garden numbers were quite contested. Like if you actually look at the Twitter account that shares,ticketing information. That one was like retweeted so many times because it was the fan bases going back and forth. [00:21:50] Like he actually did sell out MSG versus didn't he? So it's very interesting because while, you know, in some ways like his hyper localized approach in terms of the themes of his music is what's propelling him on the world stage. I do think these fan bases are very curious to see just how well they're doing and they use that as the point of comparison, as it relates to other African artist.  [00:22:13] Dan Runcie: Wait, what was the contention that the fans had about the MSG sellout? [00:22:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, so there were a few things. One, they felt like there weren't enough seats available.  [00:22:23] Dan Runcie: Oh, you did tell me about this.  [00:22:25] Denisha Kuhlor: True . Yeah. Like it was a true sellout. And, at first folks didn't believe that he had sold it out. So, it's also interesting with fan bases because you're now seeing like novice or people, fans knew to wanting to understand how the industry works and also wanting to dig into what that means. But that, I think gave the confirmation that he did sell it out,and led to other fan base battles over the discrepancies.  [00:22:56] Dan Runcie: Right? Yeah. Cuz you and I talked about this. It isn't like if someone just books like a music hall or a House of blues, purpose of that is for music venue. So the capacity's listed as the capacity, but for some of these sports venues, it could be very different because artists have such different set pieces and stage and production and you don't wanna perform with your back to people like yyou're gonna be different places. So  [00:23:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly.  [00:23:18] Dan Runcie: You can't compare the sellout for a Knick's playoff game capacity and be like, oh, well that had more people than Burna Boy's selling out MSG. It's like, it  [00:23:27] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. And that was a lot of, the conversation, which I thought was so interesting. But I also think it it came about because of how he branded it, right? One Night in Space was the name of that. It wasn't part of a tour, anything, it was just one night in space. And so there were gonna be a lot of eyes on that event, regardless. [00:23:48] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and you know, people always try to poke holes when they see something that surprises them that they probably wouldn't have, you know, seen otherwise. [00:23:57] So we've talked a lot about the things that Burna Boy's done well, how he's got to this point. Do you think there's any missed opportunities so far at this point in his career or anything that you've looked back on and be like, huh, I wonder if he did that differently, or even things that he may be doing after? [00:24:11] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, so, I obviously have a company around fan engagement, so some of the fan engagement has been interesting. I will say, one thing that's been, very pleasant for me has been some of his intentionality around connecting deeper with his fans this last album he did host quite a few meet and greets, and had people bring their albums or you know, even bring their kids and like that kind of thing. [00:24:37] I felt like he was really like seeing and touching people, which is something that in the past it didn't really seem like maybe he was open to or necessarily had the appetite for. So that was nice to see. It sounds like, or at least for me, the professionalism when it came to One Night in Space was also great.  [00:24:56] the show started on time, ended on time. Can't necessarily say the same for some of his shows within Africa. And that can be due to a host of reasons, but it definitely does lead to, maybe folks will get different experiences. And that's what's so tricky in some ways about artists, in supporting artists. [00:25:16] He's also headlined Afro Nation, Afro Nation, Puerto Rico. They've pulled out the day before and he was replaced with Rick Ross, which upset a lot of fans. So, I say all that to say, I think. It's a Burna Boy production or Burna Boy affair. it seems like everything is phenomenal. and just A- plus end to end when there are other stakeholders. [00:25:41] The process doesn't always seem as smooth, at least for the end user experience, for the fan. so I, I think it sometimes becomes a question of like are we going to continue to pursue some of these opportunities with other stakeholders, whether that's festivals or, just some of these other events, right? [00:26:00] Denisha Kuhlor: Or are we going to take the bulk of our production or the bulk of our events or how a fan can interact with me from a live performance standpoint in-house, and control the end-to-end experience that way. [00:26:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I do think that this strength weakness here lines up with the things that we're saying before, right? If he's someone that wants to be the lead, you wanna be the focus. You're gonna put more energy into the Burna Boy Productions and you may take a slight at things that are not that right. And I think it's unfortunate if some of that distribution skews between the things you do outside of Africa are the things you do in the Western world that do buttoned up, but then when you're back home it has less energy, less focus because yeah, your day one fans of your stans are gonna feel like, okay, well now that he's stadium status, what do we get? [00:26:52] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. and in fairness, you know, some of that is probably, you know, thanks to the regulation, like there is no coming on at 2:00 AM at MSG. Like they will set everyone home. You'll not be allowed to perform. they will charge you a fine. so there's also I think just some of the like, again, the standards upheld within these ecosystems. [00:27:12] But it breeds a dynamic that it's unfortunate and I think is happening just overall where consumers are privy to this at this experience. As a fan that goes to see a show, I don't really wanna hear the promoter and technical issues and like production. I paid my money, I took my money to see this artist. [00:27:35] So, now the fact that fans are being so exposed in a lot of ways to all the elements behind these things, not only are making them more sophisticated consumers, in deciding whether to patronize you again, but it's taking away some of the magic that was entertainment and like show business.  [00:27:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I do think that for someone like him specifically, it is important to work on how could this product be the best that it can be? Whether you are doing it at home, whether you're doing it elsewhere, and obviously knowing where you're doing it elsewhere, you're involved with other productions, there's things that are gonna be outta your control. [00:28:13] And I know it's asking someone that is naturally more focused on putting more into the things they have more control into to still bring that same energy elsewhere. But hopefully, I'm sure that he wants to be eventually a headliner at a Coachella or a Glastonbury. I'm to do other stadium shows as well. That'll actually go to the next thing that I'll ask you, I think that if that's the goal, then some of that energy has to con continue there. So, two questions here, this is a two-parter. So the first one, obviously London is the first. Well, I don't wanna say the first, but at least it's the one of the biggest stages that he has had himself. [00:28:51] I think, you know, we'll see how many tickets end up being sold. I assume it'll probably be at least like 60,000 or so, just given the size of that place. But where do you think, if you could project where the next stadium shows would be based on his fan base, based on what you know, where do you think those would I would say Texas , somewhere in, Texas. I mean, Dallas and Houston have some of the biggest African populations, within the United States. And so when I think about that, not only do they have African, you know, or they're first gen or immigrant populations, but a lot of people have also been exposed just by proximity. [00:29:31] So I think, yeah, I think it would be either Houston or Dallas. Definitely somewhere in the States, I do think he could do somewhere else in Europe, but if looking at the data really does concentrate, at least in London and with the disposable income, I think that would allow for a show like that, for a show like that to be successful. Another thing about Burna that's interesting is, he's been touring. So a lot of these fans, you hadn't seen him two years ago. You definitely have had your opportunity to see him now. even when I think about, by the time I saw him at Madison Square Garden, I could have seen him at Afropunk right in New York as well. [00:30:14] He did summer or he was supposed to do Summer Jam. So there were like multiple opportunities, even just within New York to see him. So I wonder though, before he does that. There will be a bit of a, break, or at least new music so that the consumer feels like they're seeing something.  [00:30:31] Dan Runcie: What about Paris? [00:30:32] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. So Paris is a really interesting market. He has a ton of fans in Paris and I talk to them quite often. I don't know though. I, I don't know if a stadium show can work there just yet. And part of the reason is because I do think that the market rewards in some ways, , those who try. [00:30:53] And while he's done a ton of podcasts, a ton of interviews, a ton of things, I can't say how much he's actually interacted with, you know, some of the French press andsome of the opportunities there. He did do something really cool, recently or, yeah, not too recently. where he did a like deep cuts performance for 300 fans and he just announced it on Twitter and folks got to go. [00:31:19] So I think he can work up to it just quantitatively. It might take longer than other markets. [00:31:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah, Paris was one that had in mind I think, those things you mentioned make sense. New York was another one too. Just given that MSG show and you have the MetLife stadium, I feel like like that could eventually happen. [00:31:39] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. Yeah. I think New York makes a lot of sense. It's pretty close to, obviously, you know, DC and Virginia, which also have big African populations. New Yorkers have seen him and know, someone who attended the MSG show. I really felt like there was like a sense of pride, like folks were really excited to be there, and to see this. And it definitely makes you feel like in events. And one that you could partake in multiple times for sure. [00:32:07] Dan Runcie: Right. And two, with this, we talked about his missed opportunities, but what do you think about the best opportunity or the best move that he has made so far in his career? [00:32:20] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think one consistency. He's been pretty consistent about releasing new music, whether it came to the album that he released during COVID, as well as his latest album now. There's definitely a strategy, I think, of always being focused or always looking ahead or being able to see what's next. [00:32:40] And so he's been able to use consistency through his own music, but also relevancy by jumping onto trends that are new, whether it's or not new. I feel like the Ima piano folks are gonna come at me for that. But,whether it's Amapiano, right? or Asake who really brought a new sound for folks. [00:32:59] So I think he's been able to do that really well. I think it was really intentional of his team. We've gotten to see, and not to compare Burna Boy to Ice Spice, but as consumers, I think so often, we see folks, do really well as a result of a breakout hit and have these expectations of them that don't necessarily correlate. [00:33:23] And it's actually been really great to watch an artist like Ice Spice or even a Little Nas X kind of come into their own when it comes to their performance and stage play overall. Whereas with him, I think he really got to build that methodically and, and over time, get comfortable on stage, see what works, what doesn't work, figure out the kinks of working with the band. [00:33:44] And so he's really, really been able to perfect and invest in his live show, which we're seeing dividends on now, while also maintaining just the consistency of new music and relevancy, which is quite d  [00:33:57] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think the Ice Spice is interesting because I was talking to someone about this a couple days ago and she had just put out her project, and I think it may be sold around like 15,000 units. And that of course sparked some discussion. And the thing is, it's hard to even frame something like that as a negative because six months ago, most of you didn't even know who this was, if we're  [00:34:23] So we have the nature of the internet being able to help someone skyrocket into a different level. Almost overnight, and then just realizing that her team, everyone else has to catch up. It's a very different situation, like where Burna Boy is showing you that, yeah, it takes time to get to this point. [00:34:42] I mean, if he starts really releasing music, you know, early 2010s. By 2017, still doing small venues in New York. And then it really until, you know, a couple years later where you're being able to hit that. If you even get to that point, it's so hard. And I do think that live performances in the honest you command is one of the few things that can't quote unquote blow up overnight and it's, if anything is the more humbling thing that we see. I think streams can be somewhat humbling to some extent, as you've seen, but even that can be misleading. So it does at least ring true, and I think for me, I'd spoke about this earlier, but the thing about his career that I think is the best move for him was just continuing to position himself as the lead and not necessarily, you know, following the latest trend just to hop on it. Although I think he was smart about things, but not just trying to attach himself. I think he still had the brand there and it took longer than some may have, you know, wanted, or maybe even he saw himself, especially, I can only imagine, you know, it's 2015, you're doing this for a few years, things still bubbling. [00:35:53] So I do think that worked to his advantage cuz now it's really only a handful of artists globally that can say they're in that position. And then really his whole continent, you know, of the big three is at least the one that has the most exposure and platform in base right now. [00:36:09] Denisha Kuhlor: What did you think of? I feel his choice to embrace Artis from the west like his last two or three really, his last maybe three albums, you see like a really conscientious approach, whether he's had everyone from YG to Keilani, had Diddy executive produce an album, and that felt really intentional to reach, listenership or an audience from the westlike you said, it's probably tricky like if that went wrong, it could have really went wrong but in his case it seemed to go right, but I'm curious what you thought that.  [00:36:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think part of the reason why it worked is like, I feel like he picked artists that felt somewhat aligned with like what he was doing too like I, at least from what I read, I think the YG track may have potentially would've involved Nipsey, but you know, Nipsey had passed, so like that didn't work. [00:36:58] It's not as if he was just hopping on, you know, who is the hot single that like needs someone or like, you know, the Drake or whoever else. And not that I think with Drake is an issue, but because obviously is done and then Bad Bunny's continue to grow. But I feel like because he's like picking certain artists and maybe not every pick I necessarily, you know, thought was like his best music, but there seemed to be a ality with people that like lined up with him where it's like, okay, I've listened to enough why G'S music over the years? [00:37:28] I could see why someone like Burna Boy would want to do music with him, right? So I feel like for me, that piece of it did line up and I know that if you're trying to grow there, there's some inevitable push of who can I align myself with that isn't just trying to do the generic pop thing. Like I don't think I would ever hear him beyond a Maroon Five song, which I do feel kind of becomes like a bit of a rite of passage for a lot of, Western hop artists. [00:37:57] But I'd be very surprised if I ever saw Burna Boy. [00:38:01] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense.  [00:38:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah. the other thing that I think this conversation taps into is just the broader growth and the broader expansion of record labels and infrastructure in Africa from what the music industry to do and how Burna Boy's been able to help. In many ways, not just, I don't wanna say necessarily lead that because I think he's did a lot of this without the infrastructure. [00:38:26] If anything, the infrastructure has kind of started to come as a result of what he's done. But I've also heard a few rumblings from different folks that some of the investments of certain record labels, some of the majors having offices there, there's been questions about how they're seeing what's viable, what makes sense now because some of the artists that blew up, they don't have those artists on those labels, so now they're trying to find the next person and they're realizing that really hard to do that. [00:38:55] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. You know what's interesting, and I thought a lot about this is I feel like most artists on the continent don't necessarily need help on the continent. So much to our point of thinking about like Coachella, that was so surprising to Burna Boy because he was a huge star within Africa. [00:39:11] and when you look at the labels, he's engaged, for like a more global expansion. The thing I think he's been very clear of and his mother and the rest of his team is that like they've got Africa covered. And so I do think that could be part of the reason why maybe some of these labels are struggling because in a way it probably makes sense or the hunches to put more money or investment into what's already working, which is within Africa. When in reality I think it, it forces you to start to iterate and experiment on what's gonna resonate in terms of an artist, fans, an artist who has fans abroad, or them starting to build their broad audience. [00:39:53] And while an African audience it probably validates a lot of things, right? Maybe stage, presence, charisma, ability to connect, that the music is global or can reach people like it, that change or that shift. now being in the states or being in Europe is also quite different as well. [00:40:11] Denisha Kuhlor: And I think it forces labels to take a true A and R approach, whether it comes to everything from media training, Interacting, there's cultural differences. And so, I think it's going to lead way to maybe a new type of executive. it's something I thought a lot about music programs like the Music Business Academy,in Africa. [00:40:33] That's done really, really amazing work. I continue to be really, really impressed with the folks at Maven. And what their talent is doing, I think, for the African music ecosystem. But, with that being said, I think that the ecosystem is still getting to the point. where it's maturing, but also maturing in a way where folks can capitalize not only on the talent from the ecosystem, within Africa, but there being true connections, going both ways, because that's ultimately where the label will be able to recognize their power. [00:41:05] But for an artist that is already successful in some ways already getting Booked for shows. You look at, you know, where Tua Savage was by the time she got signed, or a DeVito by the time, he got signed abroad, they're already huge stars, which in some ways is different than what labels are used to signing in the States. [00:41:27] They, you know, would either find an artist and before invest the development in them or find an artist who's had maybe success digitally, but are working with them, on some of their more physical initiatives. So, I think it's interesting, but I also think it's a bit of a, different framework or thinking that some of these labels need to do in terms of the true maturity of the talent at the time they're being signed in some cases. [00:41:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah. When I heard rumblings that some of these record label offices that had recently started in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa, that they were starting to question some of the future and the growth and things, I honestly wasn't that surprised because if you look at the way the record labels work in the US and at least currently they're working cause. [00:42:16] you have the Drake's and you have the Taylor's and the Adele's and Beyonces, and you've given them more favorable deals. But knowing that even if they more favorable deal, whatever share you get of that is still gonna make up for more than everything else. And that's gonna help your strategy in so many other ways. [00:42:33] Versus you're starting from scratch in a landscape where it's already harder to like develop someone from the ground up. And you're starting that without the Burna Boy without DeVito or without them, and now you're trying to find that person and you're trying to, you know, still do the investment. It's tough to get there because it took these folks so many years to get to that point. [00:42:55] So if you didn't start like a 10 year time horizon and you're have a bit of that, you know, more of a standard, okay, what has this person done for me lately? Do we keep this artist? Do we drop them? It isn't going to work in the same way. And we saw some of those same challenges, not even to this level happen. [00:43:12] 20 years ago when there were so many artists from Jamaica that were starting to blow up when reggae and reggae Fusion was really starting to be the wave when Sean Paul was doing his thing, and we didn't even get to that point where they were even trying to start the record label. There were issues with visas Yeah. Yes, and all.  [00:43:31] Denisha Kuhlor: It doesn't just transfer. That's, you know, that's such a great point. Like I think in some ways people expect the success in the continent to like transfer almost smoothly when in reality a new type of work is just beginning. And that's the type of work that, you know, when you think about the office, the big office is looking for, right? [00:43:51] Because that's gonna produce quantitatively what they wanna see. and so in a way it can feel discouraging because you're like, wow, I have this artist, they've done this, this, and this. They're getting booked for shows here. Now we're going to Europe and we can't do a 500 person venue, but we just did a 5,001. [00:44:06] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's gonna be fascinating to see how this develops, but before we close things out though, let's say five years from now, 2028, where's Burna Boy in his career, right? At that point, what is he doing? [00:44:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I really, you know, I call it like a bit of the Jay-Z effect, but in some ways I see that for him, one clearly has an ear, not only for like developing talent, but also emerging talent, from, you know, a feature to Bnxn who assigned onto his label, but ended up not staying ended to, ask to leave the label, which I think is very interesting. [00:44:40] So I kind of wanna see if he focuses or hones more on also like developing talent innately his sister's also the creative director for his brand. I think too, we'll also will also see him play a role where he does a lot of fun things around fan engagements. he talked about in an interview that he's performed at so many venues and gotten to travel the world. And so he wants to take a really exciting approach in like performing on a train or kind of doing all these other like, cool fan experiences. So hopefully will he'll start to experiment with that as well. [00:45:20] Denisha Kuhlor: And it'd be interesting, but I think he might have the potential to be a really high touring artist for a long time. We see some artists that are just like, they can go on tour. It feels whenever they want, regardless of whether they have new music or not. And to some extent, I think that he just might be an artist that can command that. [00:45:42] and this has, you know, everybody's talking about, everybody's talking about catalogs nowadays, but as you think about how digitally Native Africa is, how young the population is. I'll be curious to see if he gets an offer he can't refuse. on the catalog side, there's more and more, places invest in content within Africa. [00:46:02] Denisha Kuhlor: It's only gonna increase, syncs the power of nostalgia as well. . Well, my hunch would be that he wouldn't sell, it wouldn't surprise me if we also saw him really structuring his business or his brand in, a way, that commands a high catalog price as well.  [00:46:19] Dan Runcie: Yeah, when you're one of the biggest ones in this like wave and you're really reaching the height that others haven't reached before, you do have a bit of that advantage, right? Are able to this rise in a number of ways. So it's gonna be fascinating. I'm excited feel like at a minimum, what headline in Glastonbury feels like an inevitable thing, just given with things. [00:46:39] So yeah, I am eager to see how this all plays out. And who knows, maybe he'll be at Coachella again, and maybe he'll have the headline spot and at that point there's nowhere else to, you know, complain. Maybe we'll just have Burna Boy hyphen the African Giant and that'll be what's on the poster, [00:46:56] Denisha Kuhlor: Yes, I can literally see like just the African giants. I think that would be just such a moment, in the funniest way, like very reminiscent of Jay-Z, Jay-Z at Glastonbury, no. Yeah, it would be cool to see that all come full circle. [00:47:10] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Well, Denisha, this was awesome. Thanks again for making the time and making this happen [00:47:16] Denisha Kuhlor: Thanks so much for having me. [00:47:17] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. [00:47:38] Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

In music, web3 hype may have cooled over the last year but there are still builders in the space making moves, like trac’s founder, Cardin Campbell. Trac is one of our sponsors for Trapital, and it was great to have Cardin on to discuss how music tech startups see the big picture and are approaching this. trac is a music distribution service, but it wants to bridge web2 and web3 together in a way most distribution services aren’t. Cardin sees an opportunity to digitize how royalty payments are made without disrupting the Web2 experiences on Apple Music and Spotify. That can remain, while blockchain technology adds a layer to bring an artist’s superfans around for the journey. In this episode, we discussed web3 music — what was overhyped, what has lasting value, and where things go from here. Here’s what you can expect:  [2:57] Finding a wedge in web3 music  [5:17] What people get wrong about web3 and ownership [9:25] SEC challenges with NFT royalties   [12:04] Most music fans don’t want to invest in artists [15:31] Where web3 and web2 meet in music [19:13] Building trac’s platform  [21:37] Benefit of artists “windowing” music releases [25:59] How trac sets itself apart [32:15] Artists “moving on” after reaching success  [34:54] What’s most exciting in web3 right now [36:22] Biggest friction points to web3 [41:05] Projecting trac’s revenue mix between web2 and web3 [44:38] How to follow trac’s process Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Cardin Campbell, @iamcardin Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Cardin Campbell: Success means, you know, you as an artist can make a living doing your art, and whatever the national average is in terms of salary per year, we want every artist on track at that level to get to that level of freedom and beyond. [00:00:17] yeah, we're building for that success story. and then some that's like the bare minimum for us. But yeah, we hope to create, you know, the next superstar. Not create, but we hope to help support the next superstar by giving them the tools to make the business side and, you know, management side of their catalog super easy. [00:00:35] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more. Who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:01:03] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about where Web two and Web three meet each other in the music industry. It has been a rollercoaster past couple of years in terms of NFTs Web three Crypto and how all of it makes sense for artists, musicians, record labels, and more to help make sense of where we are and where things are going. [00:01:21] I sat down with Cardin Campbell, who is the founder of Trac is on a mission to empower artists to reach their fans more closely than ever, whether that's by distributing their music directly to the digital streaming providers or through NFTs so that their most passionate fans can get early access and a small ownership stake in their music moving forward. [00:01:42] Trac is also one of sponsors, so it was great to be able to talk with them about their solutions more deeply and how they're serving artists. In this conversation. We also talked about some of the other challenges that happened with music distribution, such as when you have those superstar artists, how do you keep them on board? [00:02:02] We also talked about broader trends in web three, where things are going, what some companies are getting right, wrong, and more really great conversation. I like the way Cardin sees things. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Cardin Campbell. [00:02:17] Dan Runcie:  [00:02:17] All right. Today we got a full conversation on deck. We're gonna talk about where Web two, when Web three, meet each other with someone that is living and breathing this every day, Cardin Campbell, founder of Trac. Welcome. [00:02:29] Cardin Campbell: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good to  [00:02:30] be here. [00:02:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. I feel like you and I have had a few conversations about this, and the industry's been in such a fascinating place right now. You look at the past year and a half with Web three, crypto NFTs. It's been a rollercoaster in terms of where the industry is, where people stand, where companies stand, and where they're focusing on. [00:02:51] How do you feel like we are right now? What's your macro take on where the industry is right now with regards to web three? [00:02:57] Cardin Campbell: I think the industry's in an interesting place. I think we're still trying to find that wedge of where web three or this concept of Web three, you know, aids music in any way. You know, I think a lot of people, are trying to think of it like this separate space and you know, this place where you can sell more of stuff and generate more revenue for the industry. [00:03:19] And I think that can happen, but I don't think it's going to happen in a way that we've been approaching it to date, you know, but yeah, I think we're still trying to find out which ultimately is where we currently are. [00:03:30] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think one of the challenges was that there were so many cool and nifty ideas that people had about what something could look like, but at the end of the day, you needed to have a real functional aspect that would add value in a way that you are either making something easier for the consumer or you are making it more unique in a way. [00:03:49] And I feel like a lot of the things that are being pushed, were more focused on, oh, here's this cool, almost wonky idea of what something could look like as opposed to, boom, here's a fundamental shift change into how things were and how things could be moving forward. [00:04:04] Cardin Campbell: Yeah.  [00:04:05] Yeah. It's really like, you know, the classic case of entrepreneurship and startup, right? It's like you try to find a problem to solve and then solve that problem, whereas with web three, there's so many cool things you could do. And people were just like building cool things and then trying to find a problem, you know, later. [00:04:24] Right. So I think that's why we're still trying to find our wedge in the whole space, but because it's just been a case of, "Oh, we can do this and do that and like, wouldn't this be nice?" You know, but not really centralizing, you know, the focus on problems to solve, right? And then solving them. [00:04:39] Yeah. [00:04:40] Dan Runcie: And as you look back on it yourself, as someone that's been following the industry to to a deep extent yourself, do you feel like there are parts where you yourself are like, huh, maybe I had overstated where I thought this was gonna go? Because I think that each of us probably bought into some of the height and potential to at least some extent. [00:04:57] Cardin Campbell: Yeah,  [00:04:57] so I still feel like we have, we've got it right to a degree, and I'll explain, right, so a lot of people approach Web three music in this like way of thinking of it like it's another medium, you know, for people to consume music, to buy it, like it's a collectible and I think that's the wrong approach. [00:05:17] That's just my personal feeling. I've always thought that, and probably will always think that until I'm convinced otherwise, right? Because you can't really treat it like a new medium. When Spotify and Apple, you know, has the fan experience, you know, being the best it's ever been, like I feel like discovery has been solved, do you know what I mean? Like the algorithms and all the things that they provide to help you discover new music and just have access to all the songs, right? There is the best it's ever been. So companies that's been approaching it where they're thinking, oh, web three, we can generate NFTs out of songs and sell them. [00:05:56] I don't know that that's it. like, I hope I'm wrong cause it feels like an opportunity, right? To generate more revenue for the industry but I don't think that that's it because we've seen iTunes come and go, right? they were selling a digital file that was the MP3 for a dollar and that was cool for its time. [00:06:12] But then we shipped to streaming, they bought beats and turned into Apple Music and, right? Like it shifted. So I don't think that that's it. And I think that's where a lot, you know, the focus has been, and I think that's where people are getting it wrong. Because it's not, another, you know, medium, so to speak. [00:06:29] Dan Runcie: That's a good point because I do think that part of the reason that streaming took off, and a lot of this was in conflict of what Steve Jobs himself thought. He of course, is one of the big proponents of iTunes, and I think for its time, iTunes especially, when did it launch 2003? I believe that was the answer at the time. [00:06:48] You could buy your favorite song for 99 cents or a $1.29, whatever it was at the time. But after a while, consumers really didn't wanna do that. And I feel like one of the reasons why Spotify worked, granted, I know that the company has had its own ups and downs over the years, but one of the reasons why I think Spotify works is because it met consumers where they were at. People wanted to have access that at the time mattered more than ownership. So some of these things that are going back more to ownership, like whether it's companies or models that you're referencing, it brings us back to that. And it's not that people don't wanna own things. [00:07:22] They clearly do. You see the boom of vinyls and other things. It's just not ownership in the way that we may have thought, or that some of these companies may have. [00:07:31] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. And when you think about it from an ownership standpoint, like you don't technically own the MP3 when you bought it from iTunes, and when you're selling a .wav file or an MP3 as an NFT, which is the same thing, you don't technically own it, you're own like access to it. Like [00:07:47] Dan Runcie: Your copy of it. [00:07:48] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. Your copy of it. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I just don't think that's the right approach. Now, I think the mistake people are making in Web three in particular is trying to mirror what we've seen happen with PFP NFTs, right? Like they, you know, collect them and it has this, you know, extreme high value from the doodles, you know, crypto punks and bored apes and all that, they're trying to mirror that. But fine art or the representation of art as NFTs in web three is a different thing than collecting music, right? Like you can't collect the mp3 like you, I mean, I guess you can, like we did with CDs and vinyl, but I think that's dead. [00:08:30] and I think that's where we're trying to like force something to be what It's not, right? Music is valuable when millions of people listen to it and love it, whereas fine art, it's like a one of one thing and that's where the value comes from, you know, I think the more apples to apples comparison with music and fine art is the actual royalty now that's the product of music and then we have two of them. [00:08:53] So music is just way more nuanced and more dynamic than fine art is. And I think, you know, those companies that are approaching it from the, let's collect the mp3 or the .wav file or sell it as this thing, you know, to consume it like another medium. I think that's all wrong. And like I said, I hope I'm wrong because I support anybody in the space trying to build a better tomorrow for music creators and the artists right, to make more money. [00:09:18] but I just don't think that's necessary. I do think the royalty side is it, but the SEC makes it complicated. [00:09:25] Dan Runcie: Let's talk more about this because when I think of the whole one of one thing, of course the physical example, you think about that Wutang album, the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, that was essentially a one of one, and I know that that's traded hands a few different times more recently as last year, but I guess if we're thinking about it from your lens, you're saying that that isn't necessarily the product since obviously it can be copied and replicated in the same way that you and I could have a replica of the Mona Lisa, in our house, the real value is the actual recording itself, so you feel like the royalty, or at least that piece is the piece to focus on. [00:10:02] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. That's where the value is. Like when we see all these companies buying catalog, you know, they're buying the royalties, right? Whether the publishing side or the masters, right? Like that's where the money is, that's where the value is, that's the asset, right? sure you can replicate that thing in the, you know, the Wutang example, and I think Nipsey Hussle mighta did something too at one point in time, selling his album for a thousand bucks. [00:10:25] But that to me is a, a marketing thing. That's like a part of an album rollout. And if you have the cache like Wutang had and Nipsey had, you can do those things, right? But when you think about doing this at scale. Where every artist can, you know, benefit and, embrace this new model or approach, that's when it starts to break down. [00:10:45] And that's when you know, it's like, that's not it, that's not the answer. [00:10:48] Dan Runcie: You mentioned SEC part of it before. And I think we've seen a few different challenges from some companies that have tried to do creative things where fans could either buy a NFT or that could get them some fractional ownership of the music moving forward. And that what that actually looks like. [00:11:05] There are companies such as SongVest and others that have gone through the securitization process. How do you view that aspect and how do you feel like that aspect of the ownership or what you may see on royalty exchange or one of those types of platforms.  [00:11:20] Cardin Campbell: So, I think of it, in two ways. So I love it because fractionalizing, the actual asset is a beautiful thing, right? the SEC though, I think, I could be wrong, but I think from what I've been hearing and reading, the SEC thinks of it as a security. The minute it's fractionalized and then you have to go through the whole regulatory process and it just kills the flexibility you can have, it kills the scalability you can have with it If it's on the blockchain and it doesn't have to go to this regulatory, you can like BS. So that's one side, on the other side, you know, we now have a different audience that we're like selling these things too, because, the casual fan is not the audience as much as we think it is. [00:12:04] Like there's a Venn diagram that exists, right? That says, yep, we have some fans that are investors, but truly who we're targeting our, we're talking about investors of music, people who value catalog and wants to own it. And yeah, that's just a different beast. [00:12:18] And that's why we haven't seen it like really take off. Like we would think, in my opinion, because we haven't like really targeted the fans just yet. And find something that they would value just as much as the consumption of the music, [00:12:32] Dan Runcie: So two questions for you on that. Let's start with the actual fans themselves and some of the misreading that I think people had on whether or not the average fan would wanna invest in or own a piece of a stake in the fan, the artist's music. Why do you think that there was an overstate or an over assumption of how much the fan would be interested in there? [00:12:56] Cuz that was a pretty popular point for sometime [00:12:59] Cardin Campbell: right.  [00:13:00] I don't know. I think, you know, it sounds cool. It sounds like, oh wow. Like if you know, we have billions of people in the world that love music. I think the last time I checked, I think six plus billion people listen to music every day. So when you think about like the total accessible market, you're like, oh shit, that's a huge market. [00:13:18] Cardin Campbell: And if we can fractionize this one asset and sell it to a bunch of people, And then they can sell it to amongst themselves. Your head explodes right at the the potential scale of this thing. but with the regulatory, you know, stuff and then the fact that fans aren't really investors, it's kind of like "womp womp", right? [00:13:36] It's like that's when you realize it's like not as sexy as it sounds, in theory, on paper. [00:13:41] Yeah, the analogy that I've always used with it is, I think if you look at the popularity of something like, Apple and the iPhone and all their products. So many people have the Apple phones themselves, but that doesn't mean that all those people necessarily have Apple stock in that way. There's a person that's gonna be the retail investor in Apple stock than the person that is still going to buy a MacBook, a iPhone, an iPad, and everything else that they have, AirPods, you name I think there was an overestimation there. And then I think additionally just with the psychology of how a fan thinks it interacts with music. I think sometimes this is part of the challenge with confusing things with sports because I think that people looked at the popularity of fantasy football and just gambling and how gambling has exploded. [00:14:28] The monetization in sports in general, and I know that several music executives have asked me like, what could this look like? And I know that there's startups that have tried to do more of the fantasy sports for music, but. It's a different fan base and it's a different type of experience and product. And what a lot of these fans are into, at least from if they wanna have something beyond just the $9.99 per month that they pay for Spotify, they don't wanna collect a vinyl, they wanna have some piece of merch, they wanna go to a concert. [00:14:58] They want things that don't necessarily always lead to actual like cash value that they could trade in, in the long term, but they want something that means something to them. [00:15:09] Yeah, they want something that shows how much of a fan they are of that particular band or artist. And yeah, like, you know, in a nutshell, fans aren't investors, and investors and fans aren't gamers. Like, in the fantasy football example, like three different customer base right there, three different audience, three different personas. T here's a Venn diagram, like I said, but by and large, they're three different people. [00:15:31] Dan Runcie: Definitely. And I think one of the other things too that you touched on earlier was just where web two and where web three meet each other because I think that a lot of the early web three excitement was around. People pointing out some of the challenges that exist for the digital streaming providers and the payouts that they give to artists, and seeing Web three as a solution to that to put more inherent value on music. [00:15:54] Cardin Campbell: And I think a lot of those things sound good. But I do think that the more actual reality, as you've said both here and even in past conversations you've had is where the two of these meet each other. And from your perspective, what do you think the best approach is, or some of the best things you've seen look like where you do see Web two and Web three meet each other in music to actually provide value for fans? [00:16:18] Right. So I guess let's define what Web three means by starting with Web one, right? So, the definition that I've used, you know, with people is web, one is read, web two is read, write, web three is read, write and own, right? And what I encourage people to do is not think of them as three separate spaces. [00:16:40] They're actually a stack, a capability stack, let's call it, right? That, you know, you had one capability in web one. We can read things like a magazine, which is why it's called a webpage, cuz it's like a page of a magazine we read, right? As you know, the error we're in now where you can post things on social and leave comments and write all kinds of things on the web. [00:17:02] and web three is read, write, own. I think it's just another capability that we now have, and I think stacking it in that way is where the value is. You still want to give people the experience and the, you know, the UX of web two, but the invisible, immutable experience that the blockchain also has and provides. [00:17:24] Cardin Campbell: So I think when you think about web three music, the way we're approaching it is, yeah, let's give them user experience in web two, but let's also write their royalties and their ownership on the blockchain. So it's immutable, it's saved forever. No one, can take it away from them, which solves a problem that exists in the industry today. Because a lot of the industry still on pen and paper, it's not very digitized just yet. So I think Web Three gives us an opportunity to digitize the music industry in ways that we've never been able to do it before beyond just a PDF or whatever, right? It's like, yes, these are real assets. We can put them on the blockchain and keep them there. [00:17:59] And I think, you know, if we think about it from that perspective, the blockchain and Web three music is more of a B2B play between the creators and the rights holders themselves. And it makes it really scalable to send, exchange and trade these royalties, in a space that is immutable and no one can change it. [00:18:19] No one can, take it away. Cause we've heard Snoop say, you know, man, the first couple of albums at death row, I wrote, what's the publishing check? I never saw a publishing. I wrote 70% of the Chronic and I wrote, that would never happen in this new era with the way we're approaching web three music, it's like, hey, let's publish your work and write itinto the blockchain. You own it, it's in your wallet. No one can take it away, Right? And if, we can streamline that and make that a standard, I think we would solve a lot of problems. and then once everybody has their stuff in their wallet. Yeah, there can be a space where we, in web two, give them the ability to trade it with each other, sell it amongst each other, sell it to a hypnosis or whomever. [00:19:04] But it's all immutable. that's my thoughts. [00:19:07] Dan Runcie: And then with that, where are you right now at Trac with making that a reality for artists? [00:19:13] Cardin Campbell: So, it's a reality already for us. Like we built the tech, right? It's now about getting the artists that have valuable assets to use it in a way that's meaningful, right? And the challenge is at what point do you make that right to the block chain? Is it in the studio at the creation process? [00:19:34] I don't think so. Is it at the point of distribution, which is why we launched distribution, right? Because I believe that's where the cutoff is from the creative process to the business of music. So we're betting on that being the right space and right place for it. So yeah, we built the Tech Stack, we built the product. [00:19:51] We're now going after the artist that can, you know, evangelize the solutions and, make it meaningful, basical. [00:19:57] Dan Runcie: And then are there any artists that you can share or any examples from, oh yeah, this is an artist that's doing what we're envision  [00:20:03] Cardin Campbell: Yeah, we have some, you know, up and coming artists that's like really, really growing. Like one artist on our platform, his name is MRG, he is like killing it. He started with us from the very beginning with barely no, you know, monthly Spotify listeners to now he has over 400 thousands. And we're, you know, we're in talks with, you know, major label artists that, that are no longer on major label deals that we want to use the platform and, you know, like, make this thing a reality. So it's really about like putting it together. Bringing it together, in a meaningful way. It would be nice if we can like, make this thing scale to all distributors, Right?  [00:20:40] But the problem is, you know, it's also attached to payments, right? So we have to like really showcase this and make it, you know, big first. I think before we can like, yeah, like scale it to everybody else, but ultimately we would love to do that and be the central solution for it all. [00:20:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I feel like with these things, especially in a space like distribution, one or two success stories with those normally help get the eyeballs and they see, oh, okay, this person did it. No different than any the headlines we see, you see what, whether it's the Chainsmokers or you see what BL or some of these other artists have done, and then that generates the attention there. [00:21:17] Cardin Campbell: for sure. For sure. [00:21:18] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And then thinking about that specifically, I know something else that you've touched on with this is just the idea of how artists can use windowing, specifically astatic, to be able to use both web two and web three, and being able to meet and serve their audience where they're at. How do you see that factoring in. [00:21:37] Cardin Campbell: Yeah, so the reason why we thought of like doing it this way is, another problem to solve in the industry besides, you know, getting assets written to the blockchain so that they're immutable and people own their stuff and no one can take it from them. That's one thing. [00:21:51] Another problem in the industry is that artists typically don't know who their fans are. they just don't, They're consumed so much by all the DSPs and even social platforms, but they don't really know who their fans are. and, and we've seen, you know, platforms like community and, you know, come, come up and, try to give, you know, artists, that ownership of their fan base. [00:22:12] But so I think the way we're approaching it is if we can give an artist the opportunity to, give away an NFT to their fan base, like it's an early listen to an album or a single, so long as they pre-shave the song on Spotify and that pre save will unlock the NFT and give them access to listen to it early. [00:22:33] That then gives us an opportunity to share that fan to the artist and build a community for them. And what I also do another benefit. It trains the Spotify algorithm to say, oh, we have a bunch of pre-safe, that means this song must be good, or this album must be good. It automatically gets added to the algorithm, the algorithmic playlist on Spotify. [00:22:54] So it's like this nice, you know, recursive flywheel effect if we can, you know, apply that using NFTs. Right. you know, and you technically can do it without NFTs, but we feel like the NFT can then now have another lifebeyond that, so if the artist is doing a show somewhere and that person who did the precinct just show happened to be there and bought a ticket in that entity could be a backstage pass or something. [00:23:18] So it just unlocks the opportunity, multiple different opportunities. the way we think about it, way we're gonna approach it. But yeah, windowing, is I think a necessary thing. we've seen the platforms try it without success. I think the success can be realized at the aggregator level because we're not dependent on any of them. [00:23:37] Right? And the artists can, you know, own the fan and give them an experience that none of the individual DSPs can, you know? So that's kinda how we're thinking about, and. [00:23:48] Dan Runcie: Speaking of windowing, you may have just saw the news that Snoop Dogg is re-releasing Death Row Records, but he's giving TikTok a one week exclusivity through their sound on service before putting it on streaming. And that was interesting because at least to my knowledge, I had yet to see an artist or at least you know, a former major label artist do anything like that. [00:24:08] So  [00:24:09] Cardin Campbell: Yeah, we've seen, you know, the Carters do it right with title, but I don't think it's been successful. Just, windowing at the platform level that is. but yeah, I've I haven't heard that, but that's interesting to see him do it. [00:24:20] Dan Runcie: So with this, you're saying that, of course, this isn't at the platform level, but they're saying whatever digital student provider that you used, you can pre-shave this song. You get exclusive access to listen to it on the provider of your choice, whichever one that you're already subscribed to. [00:24:35] Cardin Campbell: We're gonna give them a space to listen to it. At the artist level on Trac, on our platform. Like we spin up a page for them to listen outside of the platforms early. That's what the NFT gives you. It's like a token into that listening experience. And then once the release date hits, you get that notification from your stream platform of choice that, Hey, the release is here and you can go listen, you know, as much as you want. [00:24:59] Dan Runcie: Got it. And as you all were thinking through it, even just, channeling back to the earlier part of this conversation when you were thinking through, okay, a lot of the NFT things didn't exactly work out in the same way. There seems to be some type of consumer disconnect in terms of what they may have valued and what they didn't. [00:25:15] What was the value add for this one, this idea that was like, "yeah, you know what? I think a consumer would be interested in this particular type of NFT that we'd be offering here. [00:25:25] Cardin Campbell: Yeah, the benefit is you know, for both the artists and the fan for the family, get to listen to the song or the album early and for the artist, they get that pre say, which trains the algorithm to, you know, add it to playlists in the future. so that's the benefit for both personas in this case. [00:25:43] Dan Runcie: Got it. That makes sense. And then for you all specifically, I know I mentioned sound on earlier, there's a number of music distribution services out there, and you talked to different artists and I think a lot of them can sometimes feel like they can be a bit commoditized in terms of the roles that they have. [00:25:59] Cardin Campbell: But how do you feel like Trac stands out in that regard? And what are some of the things you've done to help Trac stand out so it isn't seen as just another. [00:26:07] Another. Yeah. So when we thought about the space music tech, we thought web three first, but we're like, we want to be in a position to help artists maximize their earning potential, so monetizationwas the central thing for us. And with that in mind, we thought another problem in the industry is, you know, the, payments and speed of payments. [00:26:30] So when we launched the platform, we lost distribution. We said, why wait two, three months to get your money? We're gonna pay you out weekly. We saw it went viral for us. It was like, holy shit. Who would've thought that this would happen. But you know, when you think about entrepreneurship, like I said, when you're solving a problem, you know, it tends to go viral. [00:26:49] So that's our differentiator. we want to be known as the platform that gets you your money fast. And with distribution, we unlock a bunch of other value around like, to where it feels like. we don't wanna be known as just a distributor, necessarily. So even though that's where we started, but yeah, we get you your money fast and we unlock value at the point of distribution is what we say. [00:27:13] So the minute you, you know, release your music, we also take your cover art and put it on merch. We get you syncs, like it just unlocks value around without you having to do anything else. It's literally one action. Value creation [00:27:27] is our value prop. [00:27:29] Dan Runcie: and this is the value prop you're pushing to artists, artist managers specifically. He's definitely the target that you're trying to reach there. And how would you say that's been on the customer acquisition side? What does that look like for you and what are the most effective ways that Trac  is used to be able to get artists and their managers on board? [00:27:47] Cardin Campbell: So product-led growth is interesting, right? Because it's like it scales and you don't need a bunch of people to acquire people, just do some digital ads. People come the products, you know, converts them. Oh, happy day. While that's great. You don't typically, you know, at a high clip that is, find your target audience and you definitely have to then shift to more of a sales led approach to acquire that target audience. So we are building out, you know, a team of Biz dev folks there are as to go after our target audience with, you know, the value propositions we just talked about earlier to bring on, you know, folks we feel like is our core managers and artists at a certain caliber. [00:28:32] Dan Runcie: Okay. And what is that caliber? How would you define that? [00:28:35] Cardin Campbell: We define it as an artist with 250,000 monthly Spotify listeners. That's our core. [00:28:40] Dan Runcie: Okay, nice. And then with that, is it also, I guess a vision in the artist's mind of, okay, if I'm at 250K now this is where I wanna get to, or this is where I can get to, like with Trac’s help. [00:28:54] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. that's how we want to, you know, position the brand. It's like, Hey, when you're at this point, we want to get you to that next level, that next level being success for us. Well, firstly, I guess I gotta define what success means for us. Success means, you know, you as an artist can make a living doing your art, and whatever the national average is in terms of salary per year, we want every artist on Trac at that level to get to that level of freedom and beyond. [00:29:25] yeah, we're building for that success story. and then some that's like the bare minimum for us. But yeah, we hope to create, you know, the next superstar. Not create, but we hope to help support the next superstar by giving them the tools to make the business side and, you know, management side of their catalog super easy. [00:29:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and one of the benefits that I think I often see with distribution services that stand out is that there's so much discussion right now about independence, ownership, and artists wanting to have more rights that they can stay the course, and they can do that with the service that can grow with them. [00:29:57] And I do think that after a while, The power laws do tend to take over to some extent where, of course I understand the goal is to make sure that everyone can reach at least some minimum viable level. But inevitably there will be a handful of stars that do end up having the outsize returns, hopefully, on a lot of these platforms. [00:30:17] But then it also becomes the flip side of that challenge, which is keeping those people happy because they start getting offers from elsewhere about other things. How has that piece fit? [00:30:27] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. So on one side, you know, people say, don't worry about it. Right? Like, there's nothing wrong with helping an artist, grow and then graduate, let's say, right? I don't want to think of that as like the standard or the norm. because I think, yeah, like, that feels like failure to me, right? [00:30:49] Like if you support an artist and they get to a certain level and they go take a big check that feels like we didn't do our job well, of educating them on. why that may not be the best move. Right. like getting a big check doesn't really mean it's a success, right. So yeah. [00:31:07] We're, we're, we're trying to find the right medium. is really me, like trying to find acceptance in, saying, yeah, you know what, it's okay if they move on to a label or, or, or somewhere else and take a big check. Yeah, I don't wanna accept that right now. [00:31:20] I feel like we need to get them to a certain level and, and make sure that they are educated enough to stay there, you know, and that, that's not only education, but maybe helping them build a team that can support them, you know, as much as they need, you know, as they grow. [00:31:35] Because that's really where I think the drop off is, it's like they feel like, oh, the label will do everything for me, but they don't realize your team outside the label is just as important, if not more important than the label themselves. You know? Cause we've seen a time and time again where you're forgotten, you know, even though you're a signed artist, like Frank Ocean is a perfect example, Right? So yeah, I think the market share is also shifting. So much so that, the role of the label will eventually change. That's my prediction and we're betting that we can establish a relationship with the labels that is different from the one that exists today. [00:32:13] At least that's what I'm imagining will happen. [00:32:15] Dan Runcie: Yeah, this is an interesting topic because I feel that on one hand, there is something to be said for, as you mentioned it yourself, artists moving on from one thing to the other. People are always switching things or sometimes people are trying things differently. They may go to something else like we've seen that a few with how artists may do deals with empire or label like that they do on album and then they choose to do something else on their own. [00:32:39] And it's interesting because I do think that on a lot of the music distribution services, you do technically have the ability to earn as much as you want and continue to maintain ownership and move forward with all the things which is great. The other side, some of the checks that artists do get, and I'm not even saying I advocate for this, some of those checks, it's different when there's $50 million in front of you and that's what the label's giving you. It changes the conversation.  [00:33:07] Cardin Campbell: sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. being, you know, a web three company like, and that that's possible in web three. We're hoping to do some things in defi that can challenge that, like, challenge that like greatly, you So yeah, like can't really talk about too much because it's not baked yet. [00:33:24] But yeah, like we're planning to, you know, combat that somehow, you Um, yeah, I, cause I don't feel like graduating them to a, you know, a state or a place where the problem exists is, is the right thing, even though the check is, you know, is lovely, right? It's like, is, is it really lovely? [00:33:42] You know? Yeah. I don't  [00:33:44] Dan Runcie: And I guess with this, and of course I think we're talking qualitatively, but on a quantitative side, how does this impact churn or any of the more specific benchmarks that you may be evaluating things. [00:33:56] Cardin Campbell: we, yeah, we, we we're not there in our maturity yet to really. Factor that Um, but it's an interesting question. Interesting mental model to, to, to play with for yeah, I mean it's, it's, it could be a good acquisition strategy to say, Hey, look, Trac got all these artists signed to all these major label labels. [00:34:17] So we have like a big funnel of people coming in, but then a smaller funnel of people going out like, yeah, I don't know if that's, that's not the definition of success. . So I, I try not to like, embrace it too much, you know? Yeah. I, I, I, I really hope to solve the problems in the, in the music in, in, in, in every way. [00:34:40] It's a, it's a tough, tall order, but I'm an entrepreneur. I can't help it. [00:34:46] Dan Runcie: What excites you most about this space right now? I know we've talked about a number of things, but what excites you most? Right. [00:34:54] Cardin Campbell: what excites me most is the digitization of the, the business of Um, the immutability of the, the, the assets and making payments,um, work at scale, right? Like, I think waiting two, three months is BS to me. Like it doesn't need to um, that long. I think with the blockchain and with money now being uh, on the. [00:35:20] And trust being like almost solved on the internet with, with web three. I think there's so many opportunities there. So that's where my heart is and that's where we're trying to build, but it's just tough with regulations and tough with user adoption and, you know, all these complicated technologies and whatnot. [00:35:39] So that's why we, you know, we think of the capability stack as I, as I talked about it. It's, it's, it's just another layer. We shouldn't be inundating. artists and fans and people with wallets and all these weird and wonderful things, like it should just be seamless. So yeah, that's where my heart is. That's what keeps me up at night. [00:35:57] That's what, you know, brings me joy in thinking um, yeah, I, I, I can't wait for five years to roll off and we're like, oh shit. Cardin was right. Like, look at, look at what we built. You know, like, yeah. That's, that's what excites me. [00:36:10] Dan Runcie: you talked about wallets and maybe some of the confusion that fans may have with things, and from that I can pull out some of the friction that has existed with. Web three experiences more broadly.  [00:36:22] Can you speak about that piece of it? Cuz we haven't touched on that, but I do feel like that's been part of the barrier for some of the web three adoption as well in that the people that are web three enthusiasts, that was no barrier for them. [00:36:33] They were already native, but some of that Venn diagram of who is a hardcore fan versus who is a web three enthusiast. Those things didn't necessarily always interact in the same way. If they did, then great, that's your demo. But I think that at least historically up until this point, a lot of the companies and a lot of the things they've been launching attracted more of the enthusiasts than they did some of the super fans. [00:36:57] And I think the friction of the wallets and meta masks and some of those things that you needed to be able to fully tap in. Played a factor. [00:37:07] Cardin Campbell: big, it's a big barrier of entry for the masses. Um, and I think, you know, over time the more investments that go into the infrastructure side of web three to make it more seamless. and, and like I said, a part of the, the value stack the, capability we're seamlessly, I think that's where the beauty is, which is why we built all of our web three stuff on Um, not only were they an investor, we, we believe in how they wanna approach it because it's the same, you know? I, I, I think about it in, in the same way. Yeah. Like, no one wants to have to go get this other tool just to interact with the internet, right? We've already invented the browser. [00:37:47] That's it, right? Like, that should be the standard thing and it should just be Um, So yeah, that's how, that's how we think about it. [00:37:54] Dan Runcie: It's interesting because I agree with you. I think it should be seamless. I've also heard this ongoing debate from a few other folks within the Web three community about, they feel like there's pushback on this notion of things that are in web three need to seem like they're less crypto or seem like they're less web three. [00:38:11] And then that's how you get people bought in because of some of that stigma, and I don't think that the stigma necessarily was as much about the actual function as much as it was people, you know, kind of pointing and laughing at a hype. It's almost brings me back to the.com bubble in a lot of ways because yeah, people, some people may have laughed at the internet at the time and there were laughable things that people were trying to do like, you know, delivering ice cream cones to people and pets.com and stuff like that. But what we are now in is this world where everything relies on it. And I think that is the most bullish perspective on web three more broadly. And I do think that still exists and will exist. I think that we just had to get past a lot of that. [00:38:56] And if anything, this post pandemic wave of things coming back to reality and the 97% drop in NFT volume that you'd seen from that Bloomberg report. That's all a sign that, okay, there's no more million dollar pet rocks. That was the wave, and we are now unto hopefully bringing the real businesses to come to fruition. [00:39:18] Cardin Campbell: Yeah, we, gotta solve problems. that's the bottom line. We gotta solve problems. It's technology at the end of the day that we can use to do that, solve a problem,and you know, just as we don't think of companies as not being a web company like, you know, I think that's just what we gotta think of it as. [00:39:38] Like, you're a web company, whether it's web one, two, or three, doesn't matter, like you're just, you are a company that embraces the internet, whether that's web three or web two. Like, I think that the technicals shouldn't matter. Like no one, you know, says, oh, you know, I went to amazon.com and ordered something and, you know, it was written to a no SQL DB and like no one cares. Like what's underneath is like irrelevant, you know? So that's how seamless it has to be, to really like break through, solve problems and give people immutability and, and trust and native currencies on the internet to make it like truly, truly seamless. We'll get there, you know, we just need to get through, like you said, this Pet Rocks movement and soft start solving some problems, which is what we're doing and what we're working on. it's a marathon, not a race, you know, not a sprint. So, yeah. [00:40:29] Dan Runcie: Agree. I think we'll get there too. And would you think maybe more than the short term, let's look at in the next year from now, if things with what you're building with Trac play out the way that you think it will. If you look at the business model you have, where on the distribution side you do take a cut of any of the revenue that comes in from the songs that you distribute. [00:40:46] And then I assume on the web three side of things, you would also take a small percentage of any of the transactions that come through on that side. Where do you project that your revenue mix will most likely come from when you compare the web two side of things, when you compare the web three side of things. [00:41:05] Cardin Campbell: Yeah. Music has always been a transactional business, right? it's always been , you know, we add value here and, you know, we take a percentage of whatever revenue is generated from that relationship, you know, experience. So I think that's gonna always be the case. Even like when you look at companies like Shopify, on the surface, you might think, oh, there, there's a subscription, you know, business model. [00:41:31] Yes it is, but 70% of their revenue is transaction, less than 30% actually is subscription. So I think that's gonna be the typical mix with any company in our space. Whether there's a subscription at, you know, attached to, you know, an artist's plan or whatever. and if we take a percentage, we just approach it differently than most where we take a percentage where we add-value. [00:41:54] So, you know, back to what I was saying earlier, when we launched with Speedy payouts and get your money, you know, week after the stream happened versus two months, that's when we take a percentage versus some companies say, we're gonna take 20% just to deliver your song to Spotify. That's bullshit to me. [00:42:09] You know? So, yeah, it's gonna be a mix of, you know, different, you know, streams of revenue, some subscription, because you need a pay wall just to make sure you're, dealing with serious people. That's the subscription side, but I think the majority of it's gonna be from the revenues generated from that relationship being established, and if we can add, you know, a little bit more service to our mix, to help an artist even grow even more, that's another example of adding value to why aren't you taking a percentage? [00:42:38] But yeah, I think the transactional revenue's gonna be the lion share of where the revenue comes from. [00:42:42] That's what I was  [00:42:43] Dan Runcie: gonna ask about next because I know that if we take that Shopify example further, they have their white club or their white glove enterprise offering for the clients that they hope that they can keep, that don't go create their own website or create their own stack, right? And tie back to what we said earlier, that would be. [00:43:00] I assume how you all would try to make sure you keep those superstar potential artists on Trac opposed to doing their thing. [00:43:08] Yeah. Yeah. we we're building out a concierge team as we speak. we just hired a sales guide that, that can help those clients, those artists and artists teams, you know, achieve goals that they might have and really have a more intimate relationship with them. So one might say, oh, that's a label. [00:43:25] Like we think of it like any other business that, you know, sells a software license that gives you an account manager. that's how we think of it. So it's like Salesforce, you pay them a million dollars for software, guess what? They're gonna make sure you have a success manager to make sure that you achieve your goals, that you can renew every year, every year. [00:43:45] So that's kind of how we're approaching the business for that top tier in hopes that they don't go graduate as they say to some label. But if money is the carrot that pulls them away, like I said, we're hoping to solve some of that problem, with some defi Web three shit too, you know? [00:44:00] And I think if that's what things come to, then those are good problems to have, as I always say. [00:44:05] Yeah, absolutely. Good problems to have. Yeah. Definitely. Well Cardin, this is great. Appreciate the breakdown on everything related to Trac where things are moving forward, and just good to hear where you see things moving with the industry. [00:44:17] I think a lot of companies are trying to see where things sit and what you're building as a reminder that you don't have to pick between one, find a way to integrate it into your business model and potentially do both of them. So before we let you go, what's the best way for whether it's an artist, manager, or for anyone else that's listening that's in the space to follow along with what Trac is doing? [00:44:38] Cardin Campbell: They can go to Trac.co or go to our social, Trac.co I think everywhere. and follow along, you know, all the things we're talking about. You know, we're, gonna be doing a lot more on the content side as well to just to educate the artist and, you know, talk about the problems that exist and how we are the wedge or the solution for those problems. [00:44:55] So yeah, I think our website and our socials. Would be a great place to start. and then yeah, we can take it from there. [00:45:02] Dan Runcie: Good stuff. Cardin, thanks again, and it's always great to have a fellow Jamaican on too, so appreciate you [00:45:13] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. [00:45:34] Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week. 

The Techstars Music accelerator just announced its 7th cohort. As the program’s Managing Director Bob Moczydlowsky told me on this episode, they don’t invest in music companies. They invest in companies solving problems for the global music business.  There are 10 companies that involve music in some way, including — education, web3, and even wedding celebrations.  Each startup gets a $120,000 check from Techstars and hands-on development for 90 days. Past portfolio companies include Community, Endel, and Splash among many others. According to Bob, the program has returned a 3X multiple on invested capital since starting in 2017. Companies that went through the accelerator have gone on to raise an additional $250 million in capital after the accelerator. Here’s what we hit on: [0:00] How the accelerator has evolved  [7:56] Investment areas that have underperformed  [9:02] Is there a ceiling on music innovation?  [12:38] Minor-league scouting, major-league swinging [17:07] Repeating motif of investments [18:11] 2023 accelerator cohort is “weirdest class ever” [28:49] The case for remote teams [31:44] The surge in capital from outside music industry [37:46] Music is less sensitive to macroeconomic conditions [40:39] Return on music accelerator vs. other Techstars programs  [43:32] Techstars LP’s becoming more experimental  [48:01] Hip-hop business mentors wanted Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Bob Moczydlowsky, @bobmoz This episode is brought to you by Amuse. Learn more about how its new program Music Insights can help your artist career: https://www.amuse.io/en/insights Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Bob Moczydlowsky: We have to invest in something that isn't fashionable but looks like it's before it's time, might even look a little crazy. And that's the where we can add a ton of value. And then it's our job to help to look back three years later and go, oh yeah, there it is but of course we saw that all along. [00:00:13] Like, same thing with generative media. We've been making generative media in investments since the very first year of the program and about half of them are really interesting, valuable companies now. And it took a long time for the red, the market to sort of catch up to that. and then, you know, ironically, my problem is as a small check investor just at the moment where I know that space really well and I can be really helpful and we have a good portfolio there and a community of people to connect new founders too. Now that the category is hot, we can’t afford it anymore. [00:01:07] Dan Runcie's Guest Intro: Today's guest is the one and only Bob Moczydlowsky, but if you're in the space in the industry, you probably know him as Bob Moz. He is the managing director of the Techstars Music Accelerator, and he recently announced the seventh cohort that they have for the accelerator, which includes a few companies here, let me just read the names here. [00:01:26] Baton Media, Beeper, Confetti, 5ive Mics, Haven, Highly Liquid, Homeroom, Obey Me, Royalty, and Seed. So Bob and I talked about what went into these companies, what are some common themes that went into this cohort and how this cohort has changed over time. This is now the seventh year that Bob has been running this accelerator. [00:01:48] So he's gone through the bull market of startup investing. The growth of streaming and how each of those things have impacted. So what are some of the trends that have been the most lucrative for him? How he's evaluated on his returns, how his LP mix has been shaped and shifted over time, and some general trends and some common misconceptions that people hear and think about when it comes to investing in music companies and companies that are trying to solve problems in music. [00:02:16] Great episode, especially for the founders, investors and builders out there. Hope you. [00:02:22] Dan Runcie: [00:02:22] All right. Today we have Bob Moz, who is the managing director for Techstars Music Accelerator. Bob, first time on the podcast. [00:02:31] Bob Moczydlowsky: Thank you very much for having me. I am a, longtime listener. I'm kind of thrilled to be a guest. It's very cool. [00:02:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think it's great to talk to you right now because you have the new cohort for Techstars Music Accelerator now, but you've actually been doing this now since 2017, and I think that. It's been interesting to just to see how much has changed in your role, but more broadly with music. You had this bull run, you had streamings rapid growth, and I'm sure with that, there's been so many different evolutions of how this cohort and how the companies have shaped over time. [00:03:06] What's been your read on that? How has the accelerator evolved over time? [00:03:11] Bob Moczydlowsky: Oh man, that is a gigantic question right out of the gate. so when we started the program in 2017, part of the thesis was. and it is still sort of the dirty secret of Techstars music. Like, we're not really here to invest in music companies or music tech startups. We're here to invest in startups that solve problems for the global music business. [00:03:31] So we wanted to be five to seven years ahead of, where new revenue streams would be. New audience interactions would be. we wanted to be really, really out there on ways kids could express themselves and, and or make new music or how rights holders would monetize that music and I would say that heading into our seventh class, like any, you know, venture fund, we made a bunch of mistakes. [00:03:54] we are happy to have some really valuable companies in the portfolio that are changing the way the music business works, like Splash and Endel, and community. And so the winds have come from the places we didn't expect, with maybe the exception of generative media. We can talk about that a a little more. [00:04:11] Bob Moczydlowsky: We were into that from the beginning and we've, remained into it though I can no longer afford any of those deals because that's kind of a popular category. So I think I'm kind of out of those deals now. But in general, like the wins came from places we didn't expect and the defeats came in places we thought were gonna be great spots, right? [00:04:28] So what we have learned is that you really have to focus on the quality of the team. You really have to focus on the opportunity and how that company can capture value in the market. And then you have to be patient, and just, and remember that one email, you know, with a yes on it. One phone call with a yes changes the fortunes of companies. [00:04:48] Pre-seed, seed stage, you know, one feature, one good, dev sprint, where you actually really, you know, solve a problem for your users, changes the trajectory of the whole company. So, I would say that we have, put ourselves in a position now where we ha like our thesis is defensible, our portfolio value is real, and we have an incredible list of people who have come through the program and touched it in some way that. [00:05:12] make a lot of really important decisions in the music business. So mostly it's just, I feel old when you say that, and I just feel super grateful that we get to do. [00:05:20] Dan Runcie: Well, you said a few things there that I wanna dive into about the wins and the losses being opposite from what you may have expected on either side, and I think that's a thing I've heard from other investors and VCs, but specifically with this accelerator, are there certain trends that stuck out for things that you thought would've been a big bet but didn't end up turning out? [00:05:43] Bob Moczydlowsky: Well, know, we were really excited about adaptive music and it's changing and matching your biometrics and pairing that with fitness that hasn't really come to fruition yet. . I'm optimistic it still might, but it hasn't so far. we were super optimistic that the using DSP streams to make mixes would allow, DJs to create and express themselves and create new content and repurpose music, and that wouldn't be considered a derivative work. [00:06:08] And you could give full credit stream back to the rights owner, and that would be a way to deepen engagement and maybe add a couple of bucks to the monthly subscription fee of a larger DSP. That hasn't happened really, you know what I mean? or come to fruition. it has taken longer, than we've expected for someone to make a hit song using generative media and AI, though, you know, it sort of perpetually feels like it's right around the corner. [00:06:33] but I think in that category, you know, I think we were just wrong people were gonna use generative media and AI to make songs. and instead they were going to use it to become artists and play games. and so we've learned a lot there where, what the thing we actually learned, and I say "we", but what I really mean is the splash team. [00:06:50] Bob Moczydlowsky: And Steven and Angus, I'm a passenger in that, right? So I say "we" a lot, but those guys do all the work. you know, what they realized was that kids don't wanna make songs. Like no kid is going out there looking for an AI to make a song. they're looking for an AI to help them do [00:07:05] several of the things that it require that are required to be an artist and grow a following and have people pay attention to you and express yourself. And they went and built a whole game around, okay, well then here's all the parts you need to DJ set. Here's the ability to perform in front of people. [00:07:20] Here's a framework under which those performances are judged. And that became a wildly popular game. And so it turns out that like in the gaming world, you might use an AI to control both sides of the copyright, to give the player the freedom to do whatever they want with the music. but you also need a venue and you need an avatar, and you need a crowd. [00:07:38] And there's a bunch of pieces where it's the song or the music is just one part of that. so that's been a massive, massive learning. and then the last one I would say, is that we continue to make investments around this and we will continue to do it, but the pace at. royalty flow and auto software automation for routing payments from consumption of music. [00:07:56] The rate at which that has changed and adapted to be automated and look, I'm not naive. I know there's a bunch of competing interests and reasons, you know a bunch of players who benefit from it being slow and manual. but I think that's an inevitable area that has to get automated over time, and it hasn't happened as fast as I would expect it to. [00:08:14] we we're kind of bumping up against the ceiling of growth for revenue from recorded music until we start automating those payouts and have better database ownership and better understanding of who owns what on a track. And the idea of like, you know, one publisher opting out or, securing their payment information to sort of give them leverage. [00:08:33] Bob Moczydlowsky: Like, yes, that optimizes price for any one license or copyright, but it doesn't, grow the, it doesn't swell the tide. And so I think we're hitting this point where if we really want astronomical growth, we're gonna have to start automating that process too. [00:08:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:08:48] Bob Moczydlowsky: I remain optimistic. I'll keep trying on that one, but I haven't yet, mined any gold there, [00:08:52] Dan Runcie: touching on something that I've heard other investors talk about too, where it does feel like there is this ceiling of how much innovation, how much growth can truly happen, and you hear that mostly about music tech specifically, just because some investors feel that. The incumbents just have so much power and control over the wake. [00:09:12] Things currently are done with the systems that, whether it's tams or astronomical growth can be somewhat limited compared to what you may see in other industries. [00:09:21] Bob Moczydlowsky: That's right. that's part of why I say we invest in companies solving problems for music and not music companies, is that it is a really complicated process to license music and use that. and so you think about the, act of primary listening or primary consumption, you know, some of the big platform companies use that as a loss leader. [00:09:37] You know, Spotify's a pure play streamer, but they had diversified into audio and it took them enormous scale to make that those economics work. those are great businesses. It's cool, you know, think of me as a minor league talent scout. I'm not, you know, my checks are small. I go to work to help make those companies valuable. [00:09:53] That's a level of the game that, I can't play, I don't have the kind of capital to make investments replace current big competing companies to Spotify. I'm better off make investing in companies that have an opportunity because of the way Spotify changes the landscape or the way Amazon changes the landscape. [00:10:09] Now all of a sudden there's a new opportunity because people's consumption habits are different. That's where I'm gonna invest. I'm not gonna invest in the primary piece. And then the secondary part of that is like a lot of the way music copyright works, and we could talk about this as you dig into web three stuff if you want to. [00:10:25] but a lot of that stuff is coded in the law and it's coded in the law across multiple territories around the world. You can't just disrupt the way payments work for music. That's not how it works. . Like there are rules and laws that make that stuff be what it is. and so in some cases the, those laws are holding back growth for the rights holders and in some cases they're protecting value for them. [00:10:45] and startups that pretend that, that's not true, like they're kind of lying to themselves, you know, and they're, there's a couple of those every year. I wish someone would write a really definitive blog post about how to stay out of that. it is what it is. like that's not our domain. [00:10:59] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think too, just thinking about, you mentioned something as well, just in terms of you being in the minor league position, that's not your job necessarily to make the swings for the majors, but I also have to imagine too that whether it's you or even some of your LPs, would love to be able to double down and invest some of the prorata that you may have in some of these follow on rounds. [00:11:20] Bob Moczydlowsky: Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, my job is to swing for the majors, right? but my job is to find a company that could be a billion dollar company where, you know, a couple a hundred grand and the support of the program and mentorship can put it on a path to succeed. Like if a company needs 10 million dollars to start, I just don't have that kind of capital. [00:11:40] I'm not the right profile of investor for that company. So it's not that I'm not trying to get gigantic companies, right? Like when we wrote the first check in to Endel people thought we were crazy. They were like, what are you doing? How is the personalized soundscape for helping you focus, relax, or go to sleep? [00:11:55] How is that gonna be a billion dollar company? And now you're in a situation where there's, you know, millions of dollars in annual revenue, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, interesting revenue coming out of the DSPs. Incredible partnerships with artists. No one at this point now in music, would argue that functional music is going to be eight to 10, maybe 12% of total consumption of music. [00:12:20] And that Endel isn't the premium brand and the most valuable company in that space, that's sort of a foregone conclusion. That wasn't the case when we wrote that check. That's what I mean about sort of minor league, right? It's like, it's not that the companies aren't major league companies, of course they are. [00:12:37] It's just that we have to invest in something that isn't fashionable but looks like it's before it's time, might even look a little crazy. And that's the where we can add a ton of value. And then it's our job to help to look back three years later and go, oh yeah, there it is but of course we saw that all along. [00:12:52] Like, same thing with generative media. We've been making generative media in investments since the very first year of the program and about half of them are really interesting, valuable companies now. And it took a long time for the red, the market to sort of catch up to that. and then, you know, ironically, my problem is as a small check investor just at the moment where I know that space really well and I can be really helpful and we have a good portfolio there and a community of people to connect new founders too. [00:13:19] Now that category is hot and we can't afford those deals anymore. [00:13:23] Dan Runcie: And I'm sure. [00:13:24] Bob Moczydlowsky: so that's what I mean, like it's not that we're trying to have small companies, we're trying to have [00:13:27] Dan Runcie: Right. No, that makes sense. And I would imagine too, Whether it's your investors or others, they would love for you to be able to, oh, could you still get in these deals? Or could you still be able to do the follow on investments in whether it's an end or, or some of the generative companies? [00:13:42] Bob Moczydlowsky: That's right. so the companies that have come through our program in total have gone out and raised another additional 250 million dollars after taking our initial capital, Right? so the capital we've deployed through the program is now, let me see, 7.4 million dollars after this current class. [00:13:58] It'll be 7.4 million of, checks all sort of at that 120K, you know, Techstars, accelerator deal. You know, like they're all the same. All of our deployments are Post program now 250 million plus, it's like 254 million, something like that. And change has come into those companies after the program, of which about 16 million of it has come from the member companies. [00:14:20] So that's Sony Warner's, Peloton, Hyde, Concord Monarch, Quality Control, Right hand, Bill Silva. All of those companies sort of collectively have put another 16 million dollars in post program, into those companies. So they're, active strategic investors and angel investors into those companies. the number I don't have that I should to tell you, is like also the individual, the number, the numbers, right? [00:14:44] So executives from those companies as angels, or, executives or mentors who are not from the members, but are just independent and come and visit and help in the program. They also write, you know, 25K, 50K, 100K angel checks into companies. That number's a little harder for us to capture. cuz it's sort of personal money and not, corporate money, but, everybody around the program is definitely taking prorata and in, participating in those rounds as the companies grow grow for sure [00:15:07] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I feel like those examples hit at the flip side of that earlier question of, at the time people probably didn't think that those were the areas that may have lined up with the initial thesis on paper, but they ended up being some of the most successful ones you had. [00:15:23] Bob Moczydlowsky: it is a continuing, like delightful and hilarious, like repeating, you know, motif through the whole program. Right. no one liked Splash when it came in. It was called Pop Gun at the time. No one liked that, right? That's a 70 million dollar company now and the number one music related Roblox game. [00:15:40] The company shimmer came in and was sort of like stuck mid-C ground, had a huge pivot and became community, right? That was, who could have predicted that? Endel, everybody hated, didn't believe it was real. Hey, these crazy Russian guys. This isn't science back. this doesn't work. [00:15:55] This is the placebo effect. you , know, that's a 75 million dollar company. even just recently, like last year as recently as last year, having all of this history in the program, we get all the members together to screen new companies coming in and decide who we're gonna invest in. [00:16:07] last December, the lowest ranked company in that screening was Circle Labs. Run by Anushk Mittal makes sentient NPCs sort of, and chat bot, right? A year ahead of chatGPT a year ahead of, in world, right? In those companies trying to like personalities into video game characters. you know, and during the program he went from sort of like two or 3000 users to 25,000 users. [00:16:31] Bob Moczydlowsky: By the end of the summer he had 40,000 users. They're making these creators, you know, they're making these characters independent creators are, they're in multiple Discord servers. They're chatting with people all day. They have Twitter accounts, that becomes a competitive round, that light speed leads last fall, no one thought that was a company. [00:16:48] Everybody thought that was crazy, not gonna be a thing. Now that's a, you know, $20 million plus company just you know, less than a year later, right? So it just is a thing that like can keeps repeating and repeating over time. and the reminder to us as investors and, especially at this pre-seed stage is it's okay if it's wild, right? [00:17:08] There are gonna be things that are wild that are gonna fail, but only the wild different ones have a chance to actually move into that open space in that green field and be a huge company from seemingly nowhere, right? And that's our job. Our job is to experiment with that stuff and bring the whole music business around, in an ecosystem to participate and argue about it and be wrong together and disagree. [00:17:29] And, you know, it's sort of my job to provide that safe space for those conversations to. [00:17:34] Dan Runcie: Right, and I feel like you've talked about this a little bit, and even in past conversations about how the definition of a Techstars Accelerator company, or Techstars Music Company is part of that. It continues to evolve as you've seen different cohorts, but at least for this current cohort right now, you have a few, three companies in here. [00:17:56] You have a few music companies, even one involved with wedding celebrations as well. [00:18:01] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah, we do. It's the weirdest class ever, in the best way. Like I'm actually really curious. So you've seen it almost before anybody else has. and you know, it'll be public by the time people are hearing this podcast, but it's not public right now. Like, where do you wanna start? [00:18:15] Like, it's an interesting list. there's probably a couple companies on there you've heard of before and seen, , I'm actually like, I'm happy to talk about any of them and I'm just as fascinated and curious to hear where you wanna start and what you, saw when [00:18:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So we gotta start with Confetti. We gotta start with the wedding planning there and looking at the website, this wasn't a company that was on my radar before, but that's why I love stuff like this. You know, you're able to have unique access to things and it points out, and for me it stuck out. [00:18:43] There's an experiential aspect. We all know how many people would love to be able to see and attend and experienced weddings and can't normally do so, but they're integrating brands. They're integrating music and culture in different ways and I think that's a unique thing. And yes, of course you could always throw a Zoom link. [00:19:02] I've attended Zoom weddings before, especially during the pandemic, but I think there's something different here. And that one, let's start there. That one stuck out to me. [00:19:10] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah. It's the most polarizing company, within our sort of internal community coming into the program. Andrew, the CEO knows this, like you've mentioned all the things like people wanna attend remotely. People might watch and buy a ticket to an influencer wedding. As weird as that sounds like it's totally believable thing that could happen. [00:19:26] but I also think like there are, ways to organize media and everybody's at these events with a phone in their hand the entire time. like, you know, you're dressed up, you're in your suit, you're in your cocktail dress, whatever it. The only thing you need besides yourself and a fancy outfit at a wedding is your phone. [00:19:42] Bob Moczydlowsky: You're taking pictures, you're making video, you're sharing things. So the concept of can we provide and experience people who are not there, can we generate and organize content with people who are there? Can we do virtual gifting and tipping or challenges and organize some of that stuff, especially as that pertains to the big moments in a wedding, which also, let's be honest, revolve around music in a lot of ways. [00:20:04] I mean, it's very few weddings you've been to that don't involve music in as a core key ingredient in different places. this is a thing where there's enormous number of these events that happen over time. There's enormous potential in organizing this already existing behavior. and this is a good, it's a good hack as a venture investor if the behavior already exists and the company is gonna capture value by organizing it. [00:20:27] that's a good opportunity as opposed to like, oh, we have to create some behavior and convince people to do this action. We have to change the user behavior before the company works. Those are companies that just have a much steeper hill to climb. And so this company comes to us with some traction. [00:20:43] They've done some influencer weddings, they've got kind of a cool philosophy around it. We're gonna run a bunch of experiments and see if we can turn this into a [00:20:50] Dan Runcie: So what does the business model look like [00:20:52] Bob Moczydlowsky: for them? [00:20:52] Come along for the ride, like, if right now it is a share of ticketing for the influencer stuff, right? [00:20:57] and that's kind of marketing if you think about it. Like how do I get people comfortable with, how do I participate in a wedding remotely? but we actually think the much larger opportunity is just in people moving cash around during the wedding, gifting, buying things for each other, participating or having the account to organize the media. [00:21:14] So there's several different revenue streams inside of that, and we're gonna experiment with like, what makes people happiest and they'll do sort of at volume. but right now the virtual gifting thing is a real thing. And it's easy [00:21:24] Bob Moczydlowsky: for a bunch of [00:21:25] people. Like, you don't have to bring the gift with you. [00:21:27] you know, you're not just sending, like, who wants to just buy something off an Amazon registry link that's boring. Like, let's instead, you know, put a bunch of money on at the moment and, you know, run up a cool tab for people to go have a good honeymoon with during the reception itself. Totally believable. [00:21:41] Dan Runcie: No, I think there's something there, especially even with brand opportunities too. Just think about the number of brands that want exposure. Think about anytime you see a wedding and even just a way to like share that information in a way that's more clear. I know friends get weddings, literally, they'll reshare the Instagram story of every friend that was at the wedding, and it's like, all right, you know, happy for your nuptials and everything, but I'm not gonna sit here and tap through a hundred Instagram stories. Like, no, I'm not gonna do it. But if there's some type of interesting thing that's somewhat in between some, you know, $10,000 videographer, you know, montage that they put together and something that could be done here, I think there's something cool to be able to potentially tap into there. [00:22:21] So excited for that one. The other one, come meet them. [00:22:25] Dan Runcie: I know. Yeah. The other one that stuck out to me is Five Mics. So Ace Patterson, "Call Me Ace". He's been a guest on this podcast before. Him and I are friends, and I remember him telling me about this startup that he is playing as a while, and I think that he has, interesting landscape into the industry from both his work in consulting, working in big tech, working at YouTube. [00:22:49] So he understands how that piece of it works, but then he's an artist himself, so just tapping into the collectibles opportunity, and I feel like so many people have been talking about that hip hop gaming collectible intersection, so I feel like there's something there. [00:23:03] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah, I mean, well, so we should tell people what it is, so anybody listening, the picture is very simple. Imagine a card game like Magic: The Gathering or horror stone that is started around hip hop. And so instead of playing my or versus your Wizard, I'm playing Snoop versus, you know, Chief Keith, I don't know, like I don't know if it requires name and likeness. [00:23:21] I don't know. Like the whole thing could happen. It could be Snoop Lion versus Murder Was The Case, Snoop, right? There's a bunch of different ways you could think about the organization of the characters. They could even be. Made up characters just in a fantasy hip hop world, if you don't, you know, need name and likeness, right? [00:23:36] but the concept of those cards as digital collectibles, not physical printed things, you can store them, right? You can tokenize them, you can play them back and forth. if that game is fun and can entertain you, that's a real opportunity in a very cool and interesting way. And so I think, you know, I think Ace and Adam, are really talented guys who needed a shot, they needed shelter to actually like get this idea off the whiteboard and into practical reality. [00:24:01] Bob Moczydlowsky: And part of the reason our program exists is to take really talented people who need that and need a little capital and need a little shelter to really like, feel like they gave that thing the full effort it deserves. and that's an idea that deserves real effort. Like that's a great concept. And if done correctly, I think we all could believe that could be played by millions of kids around the world. [00:24:21] No problem. [00:24:21] Dan Runcie: The other companies that stuck out to me from the list, there was a large focus I felt on community. There were a number of the startups that are either tapping into it, in some way, trying to bring music fans together, bring collaboration with other folks together. [00:24:32] Bob Moczydlowsky: A hundred percent a theme for this year's process. Yep. Like very intentional. we talked a lot about what's happening around our own behavior, and the way we are all kind of interacting with each other. And it's like, I don't know if I need to have millions of followers. [00:24:46] Like that's not a community. I need to have, you know, hundreds of people or thousands of people that are really like-minded that really teach me things and move me together. And, and so, the future being a massive niches is a thing we've all been talking about for a very long time. [00:24:59] And there's a lot of evidence happening right now that these things are starting to become really lucrative, really valuable to people, and are becoming places rather than just online destinations. so we got a couple of companies that, touch this sphere, One called Homeroom, founder named RJ Ruggles. [00:25:15] the Lazy investor way to describe this company is it's Google Analytics for your online communities. it's the, console you use to monitor Discord, Slack, other community-based environments where your community manager has to report metrics back to the business. Are we getting people out of the community into the transactional purchase funnel? [00:25:33] Bob Moczydlowsky: Do we have people leaving the community because the commentary is toxic they're getting harassed? How do we monitor and what are the standard metrics by which we operate as community managers, like that's pretty loosely defined these days. and we think we can build a piece of software that defines that for people and then also helps them do better at it. [00:25:51] and then in that same world, there's a company called Highly Liquid, run by Izzy Howell. If you imagine if you build a new fashion brand, and the buzzword of the day is a fi digital brand, right? Where you have digital and physical products. [00:26:03] Bob Moczydlowsky: You have physical experiences, online community. So if you took a company like Supreme and we're gonna start at today, not everything would be skate decks and t-shirts. but you'd have collaborations. You would have some products in person and in her mind, Highly Liquid is targeted at women who care about online and tech communities, her first, product drop is actually a pair of panties. It's like a lingerie product. The second product will be in a totally different sort of category. but the idea that there's sort of a, what's the company, mischief. [00:26:32] She references a lot that does like crazy online campaigns with artists and gets, like, creates trouble online and gets people to follow. If you combine that with sort of an ongoing community that was about female empowerment, about being active online in a, cool community, had a little bit of your favorite R-rated sex comedy jokes and attitude about it, that's a really interesting brand. [00:26:51] That could exist in lots of different channels. and so we're excited about that and you could see how a company like that would need a company like Homeroom, as part of its core, you know, control center for running the, business. Right. on the other side of that is this company, Seed,the founders come out of a small town in Puerto Rico. [00:27:07] They're living in Florida now. They've built an online music community slash school for learning about the music business. Entirely in Spanish and targeted exclusively to Spanish speaking markets. So they're not trying to like have multiple languages and everything's in English, like very specifically Spanish language, Spanish language contracts, dynamics and explaining the way the business works from the perspective of someone who sees Bad Bunny or sees Shakira and aspires to be in that world. [00:27:37] and that company is doing gangbusters business already. and could be, I think the definitive brand for how music business expands in Spanish speaking, territories, right? Again, driven by a combination of school and curriculum, but also community and professional development, and a place where you can go and talk to people and develop your career and make like sort of lifelong contacts. [00:28:00] Bob Moczydlowsky: As opposed to something like LinkedIn where it's like, oh, everybody's on LinkedIn. So there's not really any real community there, right? yes, you need that because you need the publicly available place where you're, you could be found professionally, but in your industry, in your category, in your specific vertical, you need much more interaction. [00:28:16] So, we're headed that way with sort of, with some of those companies. So I'm glad you noticed like this. It's not an accident that all that stuff's [00:28:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I'm sure too with this cohort, this is a hybrid cohort. With that, we're talking a little bit before we record it, but you're gonna have a week in la, you'll have a week in Atlanta. There'll be a lot of remote time, and I think that reflects a lot of the trends we've seen over. The past few years, and even how Techstars has run, because you started out where the teams were all in LA, at least for the duration, working outta the office during the pandemic. [00:28:49] Everything's remote. Now it's hybrid, which I think does reflect a lot of this that we've seen. and I know that the focus of teams and the people that are building these is so important, especially in early stage startups. How is your evaluation of teams? And that piece of it evolved with knowing that even the startups themselves may not be directly working in the same place. [00:29:11] Like the founders themselves may not be directly in the same location. [00:29:14] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah, I think the idea that you have to run your startup in a specific room with everybody all together, or you have to be in a specific geography like, the trend was that that wasn't true pre covid, but Covid just wiped it off the, board. You know, like we, we've had companies in the past, like investor, like go to see investors and the investors is like, oh, like everything about this deal except that your company's located in Europe or your company's located in Australia or whatever, so we're gonna pass because of your location. [00:29:44] I haven't heard that in years, you know what I mean? Like we're in a new world now where people can be multiple places at once in a really weird but true way. Like, one of the teams coming in, Baton is working on organizing all of the pre-release, like work in progress music. [00:29:59] And their teams are all over the place. They've got guys in, they have a guy in Dubai, they've got a team in Italy, they've got Americans, they have people in New York, they're gonna be with us here in LA. We have a team, working on online virtual nightclubs, specifically targeting African teens. [00:30:15] They're based in South Africa and London. They're gonna be with us in LA and New York and probably raise capital in the US and build a product targeted towards, you know, teens in Africa. So the idea that these things are geographically focused, or your thesis could be geographically focused, I think is actually a detriment if you're operating that way. [00:30:32] and so we've resort of rearranged the way the program works to try to add a maximum amount of value for Serendipity. Be together in the office, talk about hard things, have accountability, do an all hands, meet each other, share contacts, and then break apart and go back remote and focus on shipping product. [00:30:50] Bob Moczydlowsky: And you can do really great mentor meetings in, you know, 20, 30 minute sessions via Zoom and get access to amazing people because they don't have to come to the office to have that meeting. and so if as long as you're balancing the hard conversations and the development and the team organization in those in-person weeks. [00:31:08] And then you're breaking apart to go actually focus and accomplish stuff. I think you end up with the best of both worlds. So we've always had an international program by thesis design. Half our investments are outside of the United States because we think that's where most of the future revenue opportunities are and growth is gonna be. [00:31:25] So the hybrid model just makes this whole thing, you know, easier for us and allows us to actually, you know, have European portfolio companies that are just as important to us and accessible to us as Americans. [00:31:36] Dan Runcie: Definitely, especially in this industry, with any company that's trying to improve problems for music, it's most likely gonna come from places outside of the us so that makes a lot of sense. The other shift that I've seen over the past couple years, especially in music, is the increasing amount of non-music or non-music people that have a big checks or they're trying to get involved in some way, usually at later stage rounds. [00:32:03] And in your case, those could be the folks that are marking up some of your companies that you've already made investments in, do you feel like that has shifted what the success likelihood or the type of companies that may get follow on investing in that, that you're then looking at your end of obviously trying to fund those companies out to be most likely to exit and how that may have shifted the portfolio companies or just the likelihood of success one way or another for companies solving problems in. [00:32:32] Bob Moczydlowsky: Hmm. Yeah, I would say it's like, so it kind of depends like, the companies that are related to music, there are a lot of people coming into music who have bought catalog or who have, who have bought music related assets, who now wanna help further that ecosystem. and we have a company in this year coming into this year's class called Royalty that's working on, like, the analogy I would use for that company is, a company that was very boring, that wasn't very sexy, called Athena Health that automated the medical billing process. [00:32:58] Like it was too hard for doctor's offices and clinics to submit their procedures to the insurance company. Insurance company reject it cuz it didn't have some special code on it. They have to go refile it and try to get paid to qualify. Right. That model looks a lot like, royalty registration and making sure you're collecting money from copyright assets around the world. [00:33:16] And so you see people funding companies like that and like entertainment intelligence, although I guess entertainment intelligence in the program a couple years ago. We sort of co-own that as a program with Concord and secretly Canadian, and it's used by Monarch and secretly, and Hopeless Records and a bunch of other folks, to do data warehousing and trend analysis, right? It's the ability to watch what's happening to your streaming data and then react to tiny signals in that data. So, for example, you have a catalog track that you haven't done primary marketing on or 15 years starts to get a little traction on TikTok. You now need to call your rep the DSP and get that thing onto a playlist or you need to call your music supervisors and get that in somewhere, right? And so investment and capital and growth is happening for those companies. and they're so like that's the kind of company that the person who's coming to music because they bought some assets or they've had extra cash and they're developing, those are the kind of companies that we're seeing that kind of investment going to. [00:34:15] and like I'm really excited about royalty this year because of that opportunity, right? There are people now who have gone and purchased these assets, who now need the way the music business operates to become more efficient and more streamlined so that they can get growth that justifies the multiple they paid for that catalog. [00:34:30] Bob Moczydlowsky: If you bought a catalog at 20 x annual revenue, you need to make sure you're collecting every penny that's due to you, and you need to work on streamlining the way the business works to get more money in the future, right? So you get a faster payoff and better ROI on your deals. The companies that are most valuable for us, however, I still have to cajole, convince, arm twist network with, you know, grade A venture investors and show them those deals. [00:34:56] And I almost have to leave out the fact that we operate in and around music on those deals, right? Like when Splash goes to COSLA or Endell goes to, true or, gogogo comics goes to BitCraft or Circle Labs goes to light speed music isn't part of the conversation at all in those cases. And we still have a stigma of music as a category is a smaller, not as interesting place to play for those investors and instead of convincing them that they're wrong and they should look, I have found that the way to be effective is just to show them the opportunity uniquely to that one company and let them judge that and forget how it relates to music altogether. [00:35:38] Dan Runcie: That first point you mentioned I think is really interesting because if you're a company that has purchased a catalog, it would also be in your interest to make sure that those payments are being processed as efficiently as they should, or any other type of financial activity that could benefit your asset that you just spent 50, 60, a hundred million on could be even more beneficial. [00:35:59] So that piece, it made sense. And I think too, even the comparison to like Athena Health, right? How can you make a comp to some other industry where this thing did this and helped push things moving forward. I could definitely see that. I would like to imagine that the music conversation, maybe it would eventually shift at some point. [00:36:17] I know that we often hear the comparison to gaming and how gaming's revenue continues to increase and I know a very different business model different in a lot of ways. So I still think that the big tams are out there, and I think because given. There's been so much investment activity, even from the major record labels or some of the indies. [00:36:36] I know some of them are investors in your accelerator, or they have made big investments themselves or big bets like they want to be able to increase the overall pie. Just think that there's so much that is inherent with the complexity of the business and just some of the. Information that can be held tight, that can make some of it be a bit challenging. [00:36:56] But if you do have that combination of someone that knows the space, someone that's willing to find efficiencies where it can be, I still think that there is big opportunity. [00:37:06] Bob Moczydlowsky: I agree. Like If anything, there are more deals that I would like to do that I can't do. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like I'm like, oh, I didn't have enough deals to do. I think the next couple of years, there will be less cash. There will be less capital in the market. [00:37:19] which will be good because there was sort of too much and prices were too high and there was too many and it was hard to sift through which founders are real and which ones weren't. but in these next couple of years, there is unbelievable opportunity based on sort of like the inertia of where the business is headed and whatever impact we get of macroeconomic downturn is gonna hit music less than it's gonna hit a bunch of other categories. [00:37:42] And so the concept of music driving culture and culture driving everything else, and things starting in around music, and music, being willing to find these other revenue streams. music was at the forefront of the direct-to-consumer online shopping revolution. Music was at the beginning of the, how do I become, an entity that can have multiple brands and collaborations and have new consumer products driven by fandom. [00:38:03] Music has been at the forefront of these movements over and over and over again, and the company doesn't have to position itself as a music company to benefit from working in and around music, right? Like that's the way we think about it. And I just think that's gonna be more and more true over the next several years. [00:38:18] It's just gonna be, and the things that people wanna do in and around music, like go to events and go have experiences with their friends outside. are going to become even stronger. That demand is really high now, and we have a bunch of tools and platforms that allow people to do that at scale. [00:38:37] That was never possible before, right? Like this company coming into this year's class, I think it's the last one maybe we haven't talked about. Haven, they have multiple brands, one called Floating and one called Ambient Church. Where they put on events that don't have artists on the top. They have sort of experience like, we're gonna go to the park and there's gonna be a sound bath, and we're going to like 40 people, no alcohol Sunday afternoon out in nature. [00:39:00] Connect with each other, talk to each other, be mindful and relax and like de-stress from our overly technical scheduled lives. That company, you know, sold tens of thousands of tickets last year across their two brands. And they're connecting everybody with, you know, SMS community and membership belonging to a community that furthers those brands and those events. [00:39:22] But the event itself is like unplugged, disconnected, like that's the level we're at now where the tools allow you to have sort of music style experiences that don't necessarily involve the legacy music business at all. There's no promoter there. There's no primary ticketer, you know, there's no tour merch, there's no back production company. [00:39:43] There's not a huge rig and a negotiation like there's none of that stuff. It's just humans agreeing to go do something and enjoy some music and sound out in nature. But everything around it makes like you can have the entire rest of the company that looks like a really awesome modern promoter company because you can scale it horizontally into multiple cities. [00:40:03] Through community, right? So these are the things where everybody says there's no more green space in and around music. It's a low limited category, there aren't big, huge opportunities for these companies to have a hundred, 200 million in annual revenue, a billion dollars in annual revenue. [00:40:18] I just kind of chuckle cuz it's like the perfect, you know, like it's the perfect great garden bed to plant these seeds in. Like yes, they grow up to be trees in other forests, but they start there. [00:40:28] Dan Runcie: And when you hear that pushback, do you have like stats that you can show or anything that like I'd be curious to hear what does the Techstar Music Accelerator returns or success look like compared to maybe other Techstar non-music accelerators like we. [00:40:43] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah, so some of that's pretty proprietary. couple of the stats I'll give you just because I'd like you and I'll probably get in trouble, but it'll be okay. So our multiple on invested capital from the accelerator is a little over three. And, you know, we've deployed, like I said, that 7.4, you can do the math on that about what our positions are worth in those companies. [00:41:02] The reason that is true is because, you know, the way an accelerator works is you, you know, there's gonna be a power law, right? You're gonna put 10 companies in, you're gonna work on them together. They're not all gonna end up being equal, but the things you learn from the ones that fail are gonna help you make better decisions on the next batch. [00:41:19] Bob Moczydlowsky: And, so, you know, the last couple of years the market has been so, frothy, right? There's been so much cash looking for assets to the price of assets just went way up, right? Interest rates were effectively zero. If you had cash, you had to do something with it to get a return. You couldn't just put it away and get 3, 4, 5, 6% on it. [00:41:37] There was no interest to be had. So that drives up asset prices, it drove up the stock market, it drove up private company valuations, drove up the prices of seed rounds and pre-seed rounds and everything, right? That is deflating quite a bit at the moment. So, in those two years where our deals stayed the same and we make the same sort of fixed term investments and there was, it got even more competitive for us to try to get into companies and invest in them. [00:42:00] And great companies had their pick of investors, we decided to go the other way and go even earlier and even crazier because instead of competing for those really high, overly marked up deals, we're gonna help start some things. And yes, we're gonna have a high mortality rate, but if you grab a couple that work, the markups are so gigantic that you end up with a pretty good performance on your fund, right? [00:42:22] So if you invest in a company, you know, at a 3 or 4 million dollar valuation, and the next round to capital for that company is in the twenties like, now you look like you know what you're doing and it's okay that a couple other ones like that seemed crazy, turned out to be crazy and went to zero, like the magic of venture capital is you can only lose your principle. [00:42:42] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. Asymmetric upside for sure. Especially with, [00:42:47] Bob Moczydlowsky: That's for sure. And so if you're thinking about deploying capital in the category, you kind of need to be promiscuous, right? You need to have a long-term horizon on it, and you need to be willing to think about it that way. And I think the way to do that is at the very earliest stages. Now to do that, you have to know how music works and you have to be able to get people on the phone, and you have to be able to argue about stuff, and you have to have the stomach for the crazy one, you know, going belly up six months after you wrote the check. but if you're willing to do those things, the amount of information you learn by doing that is sort of creates a, little flywheel around you making this better and better and better [00:43:21] Dan Runcie: decisions. [00:43:22] Right. And I think for you, at the end of the day, it's being able to get that buy-in from the LP base. And I'd be curious to hear from you, how has your LP base shifted over time? Are there any trends you've seen there? And does that say anything about what types of companies have been more or less interested in investing in the future of solving problems for music in the past five, six years [00:43:44] Bob Moczydlowsky: Yeah. they've definitely gotten less conservative over time. More experimental, more willing to like try stuff. Like to the point even where like if you look at Warner from Warner's comments in, I think they maybe were in Music Ally or MBW a couple days ago, like late January, I think she even said publicly like, the era of conservatism is coming to an end. [00:44:06] We need to start experimenting with the way our content is used to build these businesses. I can back her up, she's awesome by the way. Very thoughtful looks at it at a really good high level. I can back her up and then I've actually felt and seen people's behavior change against that rhetoric. [00:44:22] when we first started the program, it was a lot of question about what are returns gonna look like? When are these companies gonna be valuable to us? When are we gonna get something out of this that's we can have, you know, financial ROI on and as the companies have evolved, as Endell became Endel and Splash became Splash and Community did its thing, and Gimme Radio is moving, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for catalog divisions, you know, in specific genres. [00:44:47] Bob Moczydlowsky: When AI became, you know, the source of data warehousing and is helping people understand TikTok and Concord is the secretly Canadian are like, oh, we need to actually own a piece of that company, you know, when those things start to happen. Everybody looks at it and goes, oh, all right, like, we just need to water the garden. [00:45:03] We don't necessarily need to be beating any one deal up on its ROI as long as the garden has flowers in it, right? L et's look at the whole thing. And so we have a very real feeling of, collegiality and team inside of the accelerator. you know, it's not like Warners and Sony don't compete. It's not like Concord and Sony don't compete, right? But when it comes to a company that is providing the service that could help them be more efficient. They are more likely to collaborate and share information with each other, because everybody benefits. And that posture now, you know, in 2023 where, you know, compared to 2017 radically different. [00:45:39] Like when we were first putting the program together in 2017, I had major label business affairs lawyers, like giving me checklists around making sure we didn't have like, you know, anti-monopolist or collusion issues or antitrust issues with the way we shared information in the program. Now we have a screening committee where we look at sort of the top 25 companies each year, and everybody's in the room together sharing ideas and like trading deal flow, and like, oh, I think we really like this one. [00:46:07] Do you guys like this? If we wrote a check, would you write a check? Like the conversation is so radically different and collaborative compared to where we started. That I can just say like the music business knows that to get growth, it needs to be more experimental, and it's not like it was doing the wrong thing from 2005 to 2012 or 2013 when your annual revenues are declining, [00:46:33] like anybody, you lose your job, you have less revenue. You're gonna be more conservative with how you spend your cash and what you do it, and you're gonna be more protective about the revenue you do have, right? Like when you are making more money and you made your bonus and you got extra money you didn't plan for, you experiment and you try new things and like that. [00:46:50] So the good news is I think we're in an era that's gonna stay, you know, pretty steady for a while and that experimentation and growth is gonna occur, and it's a delight to see, you know, public rhetoric from the heads of major labels, like backing up the behavior they're already exhibiting in the accelerator, right? [00:47:07] Like, I think it's time for huge [00:47:09] Dan Runcie: optimism. [00:47:09] Well said. I think that they we're in this transition moment, so hopefully we'll see more of this. But Bob, this has been great. Before we let you go though, for folks that wanna stay in touch with what's happening with this cohort, with the accelerator, where should they go? [00:47:23] Bob Moczydlowsky: Okay, so we actually are recruiting some new mentors for this year's program. we have some specific issues and people that we're interested in and we want them to come, particularly from, hip hop, right? We are constantly trying to build a deeper bench of mentors and angel investors from the hiphop community all the time. [00:47:42] And so what I would tell people, if that's you and you're listening or you are active in that area, just email me. I'm Bob Moz, bobmoz@techstars.com. I'll send you a thing to submit on mentorship, and not everybody will make it through. Some people will have to say no to. But we'll read 'em and look at all of them, but there are specific things where we wanna e expand and deepen our community, that that's one of them. [00:48:03] the other thing, would be is that if you are an investor thinking about deal flow here, you're looking at a company we're in, or you're looking at a company that we're not in, and we can be helpful to you to like, here's what we've seen, here's the comps companies, here's the competing company or Oh, you know, we made an investment like that. [00:48:18] Bob Moczydlowsky: Here's all the places that fell apart. Be careful of these places. Also just, email me you know, I'm constantly talking to investors about their portfolio, not mine, and trying to like just be useful to them. because ultimately I want there to be more capital in the category, right? I want people to raise funds. I want them to invest in deals. [00:48:36] there's not one thing I can think of where I would've a competitive posture about any of that stuff. and I would tell people who wanna be involved, like, drop your competitive pieces off out of your own actions and your own behavior. Just be a hundred percent collaborative. [00:48:51] There's only a couple hundred people who are really serious and really active in this community worldwide. There's nothing to fight over. Like there's enough for everybody. and, you know, deals that I can't afford. That's okay, I'll still tell people I think they're cool deals and if you wanna be involved and see some of that stuff, like just email me and we have ways to plug people into our, community. It's hundreds of people. So, it's not like we're off in a closet running the accelerator with, 10 folks. It's a lot of people. [00:49:16] Dan Runcie: That's awesome. That's awesome. Love to see it. Well, thanks Bob. This has been fun. Appreciate you.

The biggest stage in music is still the Super Bowl Halftime Show. In 2023, that stage belongs to Rihanna. This is a noteworthy show for multiple reasons. Rihanna hasn’t released an album since 2016’s ANTI, which was a TIDAL exclusive! Seven years is a long time. She has since built two billion-dollar brands with Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty, and recently became a mother. Could this be the start of a music comeback for RiRi? A few years ago, Rihanna famously turned down this opportunity citing her support of Colin Kaepernick. But that was before Jay Z’s Roc Nation entered into an agreement with the NFL to produce the show in 2019. That relationship — Jay signed Rihanna to her first record deal at 16 — likely patched things up. This performance is also noteworthy since it's Apple Music’s first year as sponsor, taking over from Pepsi’s decade long-run.   To unpack it all, I brought on Louie Mandelbaum aka DJ Louie XIV. He’s a pop music connoisseur and breaks down the genre on his Pop Pantheon podcast. Here’s what we covered on the episode:  [1:38] How Rihanna has stayed relevant without releasing music [4:49] Factors behind Rihanna’s cool factor [13:18] Where will Rihanna’s performance rank among Super Bowl halftime performances? [18:03] Evaluating Roc Nation as halftime show producers [26:47] “Chaotic” MTV-era producing halftime shows  [28:59] Apple Music’s impact as first-time show sponsor [32:52] Is performing at the Super Bowl still the biggest stage? [37:15] Is Rihanna finally returning to music? [45:32] Predicting future Super Bowl performers Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Louie Mandelbaum, @DJLouieXIV This episode was brought to you by trac. Learn more about how artists can bring web2 and web3 together for their fans at trac.co Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Louie Mandelbaum: I would say there's three moments that really stand out to me, maybe four. the first is I do believe from the jump, she always had the coolest records from Pon de Replay on like Rihanna, Pon de Replay, SOS, Unfaithful. These were like very state of the art cutting edge, well-made. Cool pop songs. She always had that going for her. [00:00:23] I think from the jump, but I don't know if that necessarily translated into her celebrity persona. I think that began to emerge around her third record, which is 2007s Good Girl, Gone Bad. I think Umbrella kind of to me stands as like the moment where Rihanna went from sort of upstart to like true. [00:00:39] Kind of a-list Pop Star, that record is obviously widely considered to be one of the best pop songs of the 21st Century For Good Reason.  [00:01:15] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is a Super Bowl special. This is all about Rihanna, the halftime show, and how this show has evolved over the past few years. I was joined by DJ Louis the 14th, who is the host of the Pop Pantheon podcast, and him and I talked all about what do we expect from Rihanna? This is the first big music thing that she's done in quite a few years. [00:01:35] What do we think? Where this show will sit in terms of other performances that have been historic in the Super Bowl, this is now gonna be the fourth Super Bowl that Rock Nation has done. What do we think about the job that they've done? This is the first year for Apple Music. How have they been doing and what do we think we'll expect from them moving forward? [00:01:53] And also, We all know about the Super Bowl bounce, what artists do the year after the show. So what do we expect from Rihanna for the next couple of years after the show? What do we expect to see from the show moving forward? And we make some predictions at the end on who we think would be some dope Super Bowl performances that we could likely end up seeing in the next couple of years. [00:02:14] Here's the episode. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:16] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have the pop culture expert himself, DJ Louie the 14th here with us. Today he's hosted the Pop Pantheon podcast, and he was the best person that I had that I wanted to talk about this upcoming Super Bowl halftime show with the one and only Rihanna. So Louie, we're talking a little bit before we recorded just about her and how, I know she's someone that you can riff on for a while, but it would be good to start with where this fits with Rihanna's career right now, because she's someone that, I think it's almost gonna be seven years since Anti came out at this point, that at least the Super Bowl halftime show would've happened. I know she had the Black Panther song, but it's been so long since she's released new music, but she's still stayed so current. [00:03:04] What do you think it is about her that just keeps that. [00:03:08] Louie Mandelbaum: Dan. Thank you so much for having me on the show. So glad to be speaking with you. What I think is Rihanna's number one currency as a pop star, you know, like lots of pop stars have sort of a thing that. Is the engine behind their stardom, you know, for someone like Taylor Swift for instance, I would say it's her songwriting chops. [00:03:28] That's like the thing that everybody turns to about her. For Beyonce, it's kind of her epic performance abilities. Like, not to say they don't have other attributes that, you know are working towards their success, but they're sort of like a main thing with all of them. I tend to think, and to me Rihanna's has always been her cool factor, like Rihanna is the coolest pop star of her generation, and she's never been the most traditionally talented at any of like the musical aspects of all of it. Like she's not like a generational songwriter. She's not a particularly like gifted dancer, you know, she's a very distinctive, but not traditionally powerful vocalist necessarily. [00:04:13] So Rihanna's thing has always been that she is genuinely cool, like in a way that isn't put on or try hard in any sort of way. And I think that allows her to have a certain amount of interest in everything that she does, even when she's not making music. And of course, she's done a really fantastic job of building out her brand identity outside of just being a pop star through the success of her various fashion lines, Fenty Beauty, Savage, all of that stuff. [00:04:47] Has allowed her cool factor to like disseminate through culture without her necessarily releasing music. But I think the most important part when it comes to her returning to music is that unlike other pop stars of her generation, say like a Katie Perry, who definitely does not run on Cool factor, I think that Rihanna is appealing to pop's core fan base, which has shifted out of her specific generation. So like since Rihanna's released new music, like there's an entire new generation of pop fans that are now like the kind of core center of pop music that were very, very young last time that she released music. But I think Rihanna's cool factor. [00:05:28] I guess my hypothesis is that Rihanna's cool factor can allow for her to potentially be someone that they'd be interested in engaging with on new music in a way that they wouldn't, for somebody like Katie Perry or even someone like Lady Gaga, or even someone maybe even like Beyonce, I think that her cool factor creates the circumstances where perhaps people will still be engaged and interested in her releasing new music, despite the fact that it's been such a long time. [00:05:56] Dan Runcie: When do you feel like that cool factor emerged? Because I agree with you. I think there is something intrinsic about her that just pulls people in and thinking about her career, it's almost been 20 years now. She came on the scene as a teenager and, of course, I think that in the early years we do start to see a bit more of the record label created person, and you don't see as much of the personality, but over time you start to see that. [00:06:20] When do you think that shifted? Whoever's like, oh, here is the Rihanna that is showing us why she's the shit and other people aren't quite at that level. [00:06:30] Louie Mandelbaum: I would say there's three moments that really stand out to me, maybe four. the first is I do believe from the jump, she always had the coolest records from Pon de Replay on like Rihanna, Pon de Replay, SOS, Unfaithful. These were like very state of the art cutting edge, well-made. Cool pop songs. She always had that going for her. [00:06:53] I think from the jump, but I don't know if that necessarily translated into her celebrity persona. I think that began to emerge around her third record, which is 2007s Good Girl, Gone Bad. I think Umbrella kind of to me stands as like the moment where Rihanna went from sort of upstart to like true. [00:07:09] Kind of a-list Pop Star, that record is obviously widely considered to be one of the best pop songs of the 21st Century For Good Reason. It's an incredible song and something that really allowed her specific kind of reading nasally voice to like shine through and like she gave that song a Life that I think even other vocalists couldn't necessarily. [00:07:30] That was a song that famously like got passed around to Britney and Mary j Blige and acon and a lot of other artists. So it's really her plus this song that sort of came together and it was like her cool factor and her specific brand of Rihannaness that really made that song what it was. But I also think in a sort of, weirdly, maybe this is like a sticky and difficult or chewy idea. But I do think in the wake of what happened between her and Chris Brown, which was obviously like a horrific public experience, and you know, a very difficult thing for her to parse through. And for the public who, you know, were experiencing her at like one of many zeniths of her career, her experiencing this huge public, you. [00:08:16] Incident with her boyfriend. I think the way that she emerged out of that as this kind of like titanium, no fucks given sort of, brand of like pop heroin or anti heroin in some ways. I think that was the moment in which like the Rihanna persona really crystallized like somewhere between rated R and loud and the kind of caval kid of albums and songs that came after. [00:08:41] She emerged as this very specific brand of turn of the 2010s pop star who was kind of like middle finger in the air, like kind of gave off the air of like, I'm not even trying that hard, but like everything I do is amazing. Like that was another thing about her that I think really like codified her pop star. [00:09:00] Every pop star is working really hard. It's a very hard job. So I don't wanna make it sound like she's not doing that, but there was a way in which she made it feel. She wasn't even kind of trying and like everything she did was a smash, even though she was kind of like casual about it, she never gave off the air of someone that was just like gritting her teeth and working really hard in the way that like a lot of pop stars can seem. [00:09:22] So I think it was those combination of factors around that time, oh 9, 10, 11, that like the full embodiment of the Rihanna, like pop heroin slash anti heroin. I don't know exactly how to frame that, came into full, like being at that point. [00:09:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think another thing that happened right around that same timeframe was the accountant that she had and how she had almost went bankrupt from trusting someone that was very shady with her money too. And that's where I think a lot of that zero fucks given as well. You combine that, the Chris Brown, you know, domestic violence and abusing her and then. [00:10:02] That combination. Yeah. I do feel like by loud sonically we also started to hear a little bit, it almost felt like there was a bit more of like a tone in a oomph in some of the music there, which has been cool to see ever since. And I think like over time, she's just leaned more and more into that. And she also was someone who I think for every year, for up to at least the middle part of her career, she was releasing an album pretty much every year. [00:10:27] But then I feel like by the time that Anti comes around, Slowing down. She's starting to put more into her. And we kind of saw similar transitions with how Beyonce, maybe it started to do, releases that word bit more, you know, less of the general, here is what you're getting. But no, let me be a bit more myself and tap into something like what we saw with formation and the self-titled. [00:10:50] I think you started to see that a bit more with Rihanna and I feel like this. lines up with it as well. And I think another piece that I think about with her too is social media and just how we saw another side of that personality was just a bit how cutting and how, you know, direct she could be with people, whether it was her online, back and forth with Sierra, or even, I think there was one of the Kardashians, or maybe it was like Kendall Jenner had said something about, oh, That I hear this song played at the Rihanna concert, and then she's just like, then don't come if you don't want to hear that song. [00:11:23] And little things like that. It's just like, okay, all right, here we go. You know, throwing a little spice everywhere and slowly making people realize that this is who she is. [00:11:33] Louie Mandelbaum: Yeah, the social media thing is like definitely critical. I'm glad you brought that up because she kind of was like the peak celebrity of Peak Instagram, Twitter, years. Like she was the one that made it all like really enticing. I mean, her Instagram persona in the early 2010s was like the reason to be on Instagram. [00:11:52] And of course all of those clap backs. Our legendary and still cited it to this day. Another one of my favorites is like when some tabloid like tweeted something about, you know, something derogatory about her and she said something like, your pussy's too dry to be riding my dick like this, or something like that. [00:12:09] It was just, you know, we. I think that that was, first of all, she's very clever and smart and good at that stuff, so you can't fake that. But I do think the era of the social media celebrity has been all about creating an accessible persona or something that feels relatable as opposed to like the idea of pop stardom being something that's sort of like cordoned off or celestial or like, you know, something that is untouchable. [00:12:33] You know, the transition that pop has gone through in the 2010s has been toward stars that at least give the patina of relatability or accessibility. And I think her persona on social media and in tandem with the fact that she, I think the fact that she isn't a virtuoso in the way that Beyonce is so defined by her virtuosity created or helped kind of pave the way for the way that Pop stardom has evolved over the 2010s into something that's more about a brand of personality that feels accessible somewhat. [00:13:09] Like relatable, that they could be one of your friends that you know stuff about them, that they don't have to be perfect and manicured necessarily, even though that imperfection can be perfectly manicured in and of itself. But yes, no question about it. Those were all things that she played an integral role in creating that have only become bigger and more prominent aspects of pop stardom in the latter part of the 2010s as she's been kind of pulled back from pop music. [00:13:35] Dan Runcie: and it was interesting to hear you talk as well about the things that set her apart in thinking about the Super Bowl performance coming up. Because this is a stage where so many of the best performances lean into people that are the best performers or have that musical ability that transcends in a lot of ways and for her, even though that cool factor is something [00:13:57] Louie Mandelbaum: Remember Maroon five. [00:13:59] Dan Runcie: Oh man. It's funny, before listening to this, I was listening to where you had ranked a lot of them and I was like, I wonder where he has the maroon five one. And then eventually I was like, oh yeah, like, I'm sure it's closer to that one. I mean, we could talk about that one for a while. I do think that this rietta performance should be, better arrangement and spectacle than that one. [00:14:22] I am curious though, because of course, from a range of, let's say that, "The Who" or the Tom Petty. I mean, I wasn't as much of a fan of those, and I know you weren't either, but of course, Princeton, Beyonce are more of the highly regarded ones based on what you know about Rihanna and where you think she'll fit, where do you feel like this performance would likely end up in terms of where the, where she ranks compared to other halftime perform? [00:14:50] Louie Mandelbaum: Well, I'm awfully curious, Dan, because we haven't seen her do much in a long time, so it's definitely going to fill in some blanks and some curiosities that I think a lot of fans are wondering about where Rihanna is as a pop star and performer. Prior to kind of hanging up her pop star crown, let's say in like, you know, after the Anti tour, let's say in like 2017 or 2018. [00:15:12] She had made great strides as a live performer. I think early in her career she was sort of a weaker performer. Her vocals weren't that great live. She was kind of a listless dancer. Again, she pulled out a lot just based on her swag, but like she had made really huge strides in her performance ability and her vocal ability. [00:15:31] I mean, she was singing so well towards the, you know, end of the promo cycle for auntie when she was in her like Love on the Brain live performance era. I mean, she was shutting it down in a way that I never had imagined she would. She sounded amazing. So I'll be curious to know where her voice is. The thing is that Rihanna's going to do this in the Rihanna way, I would imagine, like, I just don't think, again, prince and Beyonce are two artists that are defined by virtuosity. [00:16:02] They are artists that you know are going to get on stage and be the Absolut. Apex of musicianship of performance ability. They're two of the greatest examples of those things in the most untouchable way possible. Rihanna's like a very different type of pop star. She kind of just gets on stage and grabs her dick, you know? [00:16:21] And like everyone's like, yeah. You know, so that's like what she does. So and I also want to pinpoint that again, and I've said this before, the things that she makes easy look easy or tossed off, or casual or not, like, don't be fooled like a lot of effort and thought and work goes into all of that with her. [00:16:40] So I would imagine we're gonna get some version of "the Rihanna thing" in a Super Bowl performance, which of course, every Super Bowl performance in the modern era is gonna be highly choreographed. It's gonna have massive production values, but I can't imagine her turning in something, again, even akin to like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira's, which is another one that I think is fantastic, but two other performers that are just like impeccable dancers, like super tight performers. [00:17:06] I have a feeling we're gonna get some version of like something that actually maybe relates a little bit more to a rock stars version of the Super Bowl. Not that she's gonna turn in like a Tom Petty-esque performance, but Rihanna can actually just stand there and sort of swag in a way that like, you know, your Beyonce's never gonna really do so. The question is, Is it gonna be up to snuff? I don't think anybody knows that. I think that's part of the fun of waiting for this thing is that we haven't seen her do anything in so long. She's had a baby. It'll be interesting to see like where she's at as a performer. I wish I knew more about it, but I'm just as curious as everybody else's. [00:17:47] But I would bank on the fact that someone of her pedigree and experience is going to turn in something epic and God knows like she's got the production budget and all of the help that she needs to like make that happen. So Rihanna can do a lot just by being Rihanna. So I would say that, I'm sure it's gonna be epic. [00:18:08] My guess is it will probably be epic, I guess. [00:18:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I do think that putting her in the top half of performances is a pretty safe bet, I think you could say. I think that comparing to the Prince or the Beyonce, to your point, I think there was so much that you expected from them based on what they're known for before going into it, that you already had that heightened expectation there. [00:18:31] With Rihanna, there's a lot more unknowns. Before this, I was going back and looking at, okay, what are the signature Rihanna performances that are out there. I was looking back at past VMA performances, past Grammy performances, and again, it's so long since you've seen some of those, so it's tough to compare. [00:18:48] And even some of those songs, I mean, she's doing some of the songs that she had done with Calvin Harris, which I'm sure we'll hear at the Super Bowl. But she's also done stuff from Anti that we just hadn't seen in that, you know, grand of a estate, at least in some of those, settings before. It'll be interesting to see. [00:19:06] I'm definitely expecting at least on the top half, but I've thought a lot about just the Super Bowl at all because you brought up the J Lo and Shakira one, which I do think was great on the performance perspective, just given where they are, and that was actually the first. Super Bowl that Rock Nation has done since they had took over as the lead to help the NFL with entertainment for the halftime show. [00:19:30] So that was the first one they had. Then they had the one with the weekend, and then you had last year the West Coast hip hop ensemble with Mary J. Blige and Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop, Kendrick and 50 cent was one of the guest acts there. And then you have this one with Rihanna. How do you feel like the Rock Nation era of the Super Bowl halftime show has been? [00:19:51] Louie Mandelbaum: Well, it's definitely been putting a focus on artists of color and artists that are, many artists that are adjacent to r and b and hip hop in a way that the previous iterations like touched on but weren't so focused on. So that's been really good and I think that's been needed and an important pivot. So that's been good. I think the J Lo and Shakira Super Bowl halftime show is one of my all-time top favorites. I think it was absolutely spectacular. They were both incredible and they both managed to make their like two six minute sets that they had to split up, like feel com comprehensive in this way that I was just like floored by. [00:20:26] It was just every moment of that was thrilling. So I love that one. I did not care very much for the weekend's performance. I thought I've never found him to be an incredibly compelling live performer, and I felt the same way about his Super Bowl performance. it just didn't do that much for me. [00:20:41] But I think he was a, a good choice. I mean, he's a massive superstar. He certainly deserved the slot and it made sense. And I thought last year's was great. I mean, I grew up in that era of hip hop, so seeing Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg. I'm never gonna be unhappy about that. And I thought they did a really nice job of threading those all together in a way that made sense. [00:21:05] And it felt like, you know, if you grew up on that music, like how are you not gonna love that? I don't know. It was hard to deny. But that was a very unconventional Super Bowl performance because in the last, let's say 10 to 15 years especially, they've become very codified as this. Artist Showcase for One superstar, they become this kind of like elite performance showcase for these upper echelon pop stars. [00:21:31] if you get that slot, it sort of says something about how culture sees you as, as we would say on my podcast, as like a top tier, pop star. So the last year one was definitelylike an anomalous one in the sense that it I guess it was a celebration of Dr. Dre's, you know, production work on some level, but it wasn't necessarily like the traditional pop star extravaganza that we were used to. [00:21:55] So they've tried things, which is nice, and I think it is nice to shake it up, but I am excited for it to be back to this like one artist sort career capstone thing because I think that that's been a really fun and fruitful mode for the Super Bowl halftime show. So I'd say they've done a good job and I think that I am, you know, I mean they landed Rihanna, which is like interesting considering that she had sworn off doing this because of Colin Kaepernick, which I know was another topic you wanna talk about, but clearly there's something that Rock Nation's involvement with this has. Changed in her mind about her willingness to participate with the NFL on this after she had pretty publicly said that she wouldn't. [00:22:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah, there's been a few things that Rock Nation has done here that I think have been good. I think that they were able to create themes around the event and try to tie in the location in some way, right? They had the Super Bowl in Miami, so they went deep on K. How can we get more music involved with Latin culture even though JLo herself is not from Miami? [00:23:01] That was the tie in there with her and Shakira, and I know that after watching J Lo's Netflix documentary, she was upset about the fact that she had [00:23:10] Louie Mandelbaum: yeah.  [00:23:11] Dan Runcie: to share the stage, not against Shakira, but just Kind of like you said the past decade before that, was this is a capstone on a singular pop star, and then here you have J Lo, and now she has to share the stage with someone else. [00:23:23] I know she was upset about that, [00:23:24] Louie Mandelbaum: Which she very easily could have done. She very easily could have done that. I just wanna put that out there. Like J Lo definitely could have held down a 13 minute halftime show by herself. [00:23:34] Dan Runcie: I think so too. I mean, we've just seen her perform at all these different settings and in so many hits in. people can have issues with her as a vocalist or things like that, but in terms of the performance, it was top notch. [00:23:45] So I'm with you on that one. And then with the weekend one, I do think that's the weakest of the ones. And there was less of a tie in, I forget the location of that Super Bowl specifically, but I know that, he had a huge years, the middle of the pandemic and the only person that was really like, you know, elevating as a superstar in the pandemic to a new level was him. [00:24:05] So I understood that. And then, yeah, the West Coast ensemble, that Super Bowl was in LA definitely didn't see it coming just from what we expected, but it was cool, and I do think that a lot of this speaks to the relationship piece and this taps into maybe a bit of that factor about why. They were able to get Rihanna in a way that they may not have been able to get her in 2016, 2017. [00:24:28] I think of course, when they had done that, this was right after Colin Kaepernick was kneeling and the league had a lot of heightened f a lot of people were heightenedly frustrated with the league because of not only its stance on police brutality, but this was also a moment where the league's relationship with domestic violence was getting more underlied. [00:24:49] It was only a couple of years after the Ray Rice incident. The concussion discussions were more and more, the NFL, at least from a public perception place, was probably in its lowest point that I could remember, at least in my lifetime, in that mid 2010s era. So to ask Rihanna then was rough. And I think another thing too that stuck out to me with how Rock Nation went about things, Jay-Z had said this in one of the press conferences that the NFL would ask three of these artists at the same time if they wanted to do the show. So then if someone comes back and then someone says yes before then now you have to go rescind the offer to the other person that said yes, which is a very. Bad way to go about this, especially if you tarnish relationships with things like that. [00:25:33] So I've always kept that in my mind, like if there's certain artists that haven't done it yet and you're like, oh, why hasn't this artist done it? Part of me wonder, is it because they like asked three people to do it and then two of them said yes, and then now they need to go, you know, renege on a deal with someone. [00:25:48] So I knew that Jay-Z was very deliberate about, we ask one person at a time, and then if that person says yes, then great. But if that person says no, then you move on to the next person. It sounds so obvious, but that's how they did it. And at least I had heard close to, some sources that told me that Rihanna was the first choice that they had for this year. [00:26:07] And then she said yes. So that was cool to see. And yeah, I mean, I think it speaks to it as well. Jay-Z obviously had signed, Rihanna's, her first record deal with, Def Jam. She was with Rock Nation. After that, they've always been in business together. So it was cool to see [00:26:24] Louie Mandelbaum: Well, I think part of the problem too is that there's like, we're running out of these superstars who are deserving of this capstone performance. Like there really only is like a handful of those super, super top tier pop stars that haven't done it at this point. It's like Rihanna was an obvious one. [00:26:40] Taylor is obviously one that's sitting out there, I'm sure. Ariana could probably do one at this point. There's like a handful of them left in the mix. But like Drake, drake, absolutely. But there's not that many and you know, there's a whole, you know, extra conversation we could be having right now about the state of pop stardom and how we aren't minting superstars in the same way that we used to do it. [00:27:04] But I think that was another reason why perhaps they felt the need to shake up the format a little bit, including with last year. And maybe even with the Shakira and JLo one and find ways to like do other versions of this because there really aren't, like we've burned through the like a-list pop stars, really, like a lot of them have already done this, so it'll be interesting to see if they continue to kind of like mix it up or like, you know, [00:27:32] hopefully like Billy Eilish and Little Nas X and Olivia Rodrigo, like just really turn it out over the next four or five years so that they're ready, like, you know, in the mid to late 2010s, 2020s to take over for the Super Bowl. halftime show life. I don't know. We'll see. But maybe we are gonna get like more of these. [00:27:49] different themed ones or mis mix and mashups. I mean, that's how they used to be like in the early 2010, early two thousands when MTV was doing them prior to Janet's situation. they were doing these kind of like huge ones, like people don't remember, but like Janet's Super Bowl performance was not like the ones that we get now from superstars, even though obviously she could certainly have done. She did two or three songs, really you got Nelly and Kid Rock and I mean, Justin Timberlake, like a panoply of other artists were involved in those shows. So they used to be more of like a smorgasboard, or at least sometimes they would be kind of like these conglomerations of sometimes very loosely connected stars. [00:28:33] Louie Mandelbaum: There was  [00:28:33] Dan Runcie: Did you like those MTV halftime shows?  [00:28:35] Louie Mandelbaum: And No Doubt. I mean, they were incredibly chaotic. Like I just think that they were so random. But yeah, I mean, they had their own charms. Like there was the one year that was like Aerosmith and Britney and Nsync, and Nelly and . I mean, they were fucking weird, but like they had their own charms, I guess. [00:28:52] But just a different kind of show, I guess. [00:28:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah, going back and watching some of those, the fact that Nelly did two Super Bowls is [00:29:00] Louie Mandelbaum: I know it's so weird. [00:29:01] Dan Runcie: thinking about that moment, right? But.  [00:29:04] Louie Mandelbaum: the two Super Bowl clubs is like Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and Nelly. [00:29:12] Dan Runcie: I know, right. And maybe Tony Bennett did like one or two from the older ones if I remember correctly. But yeah, [00:29:18] Louie Mandelbaum: No, 90s ones are fucking psychotic. The nineties ones are like out of their minds. Truly like, Chaka Khan, I think like doing like Indiana Jones and Indiana, it was like psychedelic fever dreams. Or maybe it was Patti LaBelle, not Chaka, Patti LaBelle doing Indiana Jones, like themed Super Bowl Halftime performance is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen in my life. [00:29:44] Dan Runcie: Man, and it just makes you think about how far this show has come along and I think to that, even if we see these ensembles, I like the fact that there will be a bit of a theme to them moving forward. And I think there are so many creative things you can do. And I'm also curious to see how the show will continue to shape with the sponsor that's leading it because I feel like that's another element to this. This is Apple Music's first year. As the primary sponsor for the show after Pepsi had had it for the past decade, and we knew that Pepsi chose not to renew. They wanted to put more money into digital, and Apple was willing to pay more for the show. And I know that a lot of these streaming services are trying to get into the livestream business. [00:30:30] Apple was one of the more public companies I was trying to get NFL Sunday tickets. So there's always this association, both with music and entertainment that they've wanted to do to try to essentially sell more AirPods, sell more iPhones or whatever the exposure ends up getting them. [00:30:46] But I am curious to see, is there gonna be any type of integration or any other type of thing that we'll see that is a shift because I feel like this Pepsi era gave us so many of these singular pop star capstone shows. I feel like I think about Beyonce when I think about the Pepsi era of Super Bowl halftime shows. [00:31:02] What will this Apple Music one look like? I'm not sure, but what do you think? Is there anything that you expect to see moving forward now that it's kind of new chapter, new sponsor, [00:31:12] Louie Mandelbaum: Like Rihanna just like comes out wearing a pair of AirPods or like, I don't know, like she she sits down at like a MacBook Air and like in the middle of the stage. yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. I think, well, what's interesting maybe that you were making me think about earlier is that clearly having an artist like Jay-Z involved and Rock Nation involved is gonna be like a more artist friendly way to program these things that's gonna like value, cuz Jay-Z is a music artist, so he's gonna have some form of respect for the people he's booking. I think part of the issue sometimes here is that this is such a huge opportunity. This is the biggest stage in media for any star to get a chance to do this. Is such a huge moment in their career that I can understand why, like prior to Jay-Z. The NFL or whoever was programming these things in the past, like felt like they had all the power . Cause really there's very few opportunities in media. Where like someone like Beyonce feels like, oh, I should do this. [00:32:12] I mean, Beyonce barely does anything at this point. Like there's very few things that would feel like she didn't have the power in every situation. I was just reading an article the other day about how like the Grammys are so desperate to have her perform, but of course like why would she, I don't know what would be like, what would be the benefit of that to her at this point? [00:32:27] So the Super Bowl was really one of the last remaining things that feels like. Oh, like this is exposure that like you get once in a lifetime and it's so humongous. So I can see how that power dynamic works in terms of like what Apple's gonna do versus Pepsi. I don't know if I have any clearer thoughts on like how it's gonna be different except to say that like, again, perhaps Apple is like more of like, in the music industry, like is like more part of the music industry in some way. [00:32:54] They obviously like have been an integral part of like music consumption for the last 10 or 15 years. Whereas like Pepsi, like, you know, aside from like their iconic ads, like really, anyway, Pepsi's not exactly like, you know, music driven necessarily in the same way, so maybe that's gonna have an effect. Do you have any thoughts on that? I'm not totally sure. [00:33:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I'm not a hundred percent sure either, I do feel like apple's Dream would probably be to be able to have some type of live stream where you could watch it directly through Apple Music if you're on your computer or if you're on your phone or something like that. I know that the networks that broadcasters show are probably holding onto those rights and want them exclusively, whether it's Fox NBC, CBS, so I don't know if that would actually happen, but I'm sure it's something that they want just thinking about where things go. but beyond that, it'll be interesting to see. It's something I'm definitely gonna be looking out for, but I think it's still a little early to put any predictions on that. One thing you did say though, that was, that touched on something that I was thinking about earlier was just where the Super Bowl sits within pop culture within media and its importance because I do think that for a long time. We always thought of this as, yes, this is the biggest stage in entertainment, and I still do think, especially for a US artist, I think this is still the biggest stage that you could have, but thinking about someone like Beyonce, I think most people would probably look at the past 10 years and say, okay, Beyonce did perform the Super Bowl twice, and what's her signature performance of the past 10 years? [00:34:27] it was her Coachella performance and that's probably not something that we could have said about a artist 10 years before that, cuz I know Coachella has just grew and grew and definitely became an even bigger thing the past decade plus. And I'm now thinking, okay, in this next decade with where things are going, even just now where the Super Bowl sits, how are things shifting? [00:34:49] Is the Premier Music Festival and doing a great performance there, especially since they're now all being live streamed. Could that ever rival or get even close? Are there other types of opportunities that are engine closer? I feel like the Super Bowl probably will always still have that stranglehold just because of how many eyeballs you get, but that's something I've been thinking about, just how these things are shifting and what that may look like. [00:35:13] Louie Mandelbaum: Well, there's no comparing giving somebody a two hour concert to like do the most in the way that Beyonce obviously like now, has defined the most that you could possibly do with that. And of course that is her most well regarded performance ever. And like probably the. Most well regarded live performance of all time question mark. [00:35:33] So no question about that compared to like getting 15 minutes, but. There's the amount of people that are watching the Super Bowl is unmatched. Like no matter how many people are watching that Coachella live stream, like for instance, my parents, my parents still haven't seen Homecoming like they're not big Beyonce people, but my parents see every single Super Bowl halftime performance like, so I still think it's one of the rare instances where monoculture like still exists. [00:36:00] It's like one of the only things I mean I watched the Super Bowl and I could care less about sports. I have zero interest in football. I've never watched another game the entire year, but like I'm there like, you know, with it on mute until , until the halftime show happens. So it is one of the rare instances where monoculture still exists and people still tune in and you're still getting in front of people. [00:36:24] like for better or worse, the people that are watching Coachella are people that are already having some sort of interest in the artists that are performing there. This show puts you in front of a large group of people that like may not give a shit about you and wouldn't like choose to watch you perform even on the Grammys or anything like that, but there you are, so I think it is a level of exposure and a reminder to people and I think the way that these songs burn up streaming charts and Apple,you know, iTune store charts immediately following this, like, the artist that performs at these shows, like tends to like, have humongous streaming and, you know, download boosts following the show bears out that like you're getting in front of people that like just wouldn't seek you out in other instances. [00:37:06] And we have so few examples at this point of like actual monoculturelike functioning in this way, but I do think the Super Bowl is one of the rare moments where that still does happen. [00:37:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, you're right. And I think too, just thinking about how media has changed, especially since the pandemic, if anything, all the other stuff from a broadcast perspective, people are watching less and less, and that's becoming more niche in the N FL even compared to other sports is still the dominant thing. [00:37:36] So I think the Super Bowl, if anything, is probably just having more and more importance from that perspective. So I think it'll always be number one there. You brought up the thing about the bounce and the impact. [00:37:45] Louie Mandelbaum: And prestige. I mean, I think the other thing is just the prestige of the, of getting chosen for it is also something really important. Like yes, getting a Coachella headlining spot is like a big deal, but like people who wouldn't get. Super Bowl head. Letting spots yet like a Billy Eilish last year are still gonna get that Coachella slot like getting that Super Bowl slot is a badge of like honor and confirmation of your like superstar, A-list legendary hall of fame status as a pop figure in a way that like very few other things can coordinate in this day and age, I don't think. [00:38:21] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, that's a good point. And I think the other point you mentioned too, about the impact that this show has, of course, the week after the Super Bowl or the day after the Super Bowl, we'll see the streaming numbers or the downloads or even the record sales. But I think the thing that I've paid more attention to is some of the ways that these artists are making even more money from their tours or other things like that looking at someone like the Weeknd, he goes from performing in arenas to performing in stadiums and having one of the biggest tours of the year and even last year's West Coast hip hop ensemble. I think Mary J. Blige had the biggest tour that she had had. Dr. Dre, I know he didn't go on tour, but he just sold some of his music and maybe some of the high end interests there could have helped. [00:39:04] And even Snoop Dogg sold a bunch of NFTs afterward and launched his record label that was aligned with this. And if we could think about Rihanna who hasn't released music in seven years, what do we think this next year post Super Bowl will look like? Do you think we'll get a tour? You think there'll be a collaboration? [00:39:22] Do you think we'll finally get that album? [00:39:25] Louie Mandelbaum: I hope so. I mean, I tend to wonder like why she would be doing this if it wasn't to set something up because it doesn't seem like she has interest in just sort of like maintaining like she hasn't done anything in so long that I don't know why she would just do this, like randomly. So one has to imagine that this is the kickoff to an era of some sort. God knows she could launch a humongous tour without having a new album, and I think it would be massively successful like I wonder if Rihanna could play stadiums at this point. Just doing kind of what seems to be the new trend with all the girlies right now, which is doing their greatest hits. That's like Taylor's doing that. [00:40:04] Madonna just announced that she's doing that. I mean, Rihanna could certainly be like, Hey, you know, let me perform my greatest hits, which also constitute like the 25 best singles of the last, you know, 23 years or whatever. So like I have to imagine that it's setting something up. I don't know what to say about the album. [00:40:25] I mean, like I feel like I'd be getting in front of myself to say that she's gonna release something because she's really been adverse to releasing new music, and I wonder if there's anxiety about reentering a streaming marketplace that has changed quite a bit even since 2016. As I mentioned earlier, as much as I do think she has the capacity to appeal to the current pop fan base, cross section. She is certainly, you know, eight years has gone by, like, you know, things have really changed. I wonder if there's like trepidation about like how to work this system. I mean, you look at some of these seasoned pop acts, like even Beyonce. Like Beyonce did well with Renaissance. I mean, she did nothing to promote it, which is like a whole other conversation we could have about that. [00:41:14] But like, you know, the record sold well but isn't doing numbers like Taylor's doing and you know, isn't the sort of like jugg, you know, A-list, A-list, A-list juggernaut that like Bad Bunny is, or that, you know, some of like the new Vanguard of pop stars are. So I wonder if there's a feeling on Rihanna's part in terms of like someone who's had a career that's churn so much on. [00:41:38] A cavalcade of number one hit singles over and over and over and again. Album after album, after album, after album. About like how she's supposed to work that. Exactly. Cuz things have just changed so much and the guard has changed. And so that's a long-winded way to say I don't. No, if you had a gun to my head, I would say tour an album or forthcoming as a result of this, or like on the back of this. [00:42:05] I can't imagine that there isn't. But I will remind people that in 2013 when Beyonce did the Super Bowl, she didn't announce any, like there was nothing new happening. Later that year in December, almost a full year later, she dropped the self-titled album Out of the Sky, but, It felt like that performance just sort of existed in a vacuum when it happened, so it's not as if that doesn't happen. [00:42:28] So it's a little bit hard to say, but if she was smart, I would say given the amount of years that have gone by and how much like she could use of refocusing on the music and that the Super Bowl's gonna give that to her, I would hope that she's using this as some sort of direct launchpad. [00:42:44] Dan Runcie: Yeah, my prediction is Tour. Yes. Album maybe. And the album point is in large part for some of the reasons that you mentioned too, because the last album, I believe there was a botched release with Anti, I think it leaked [00:43:00] early on title cuz I think it was a early release or something like that. It was messy and I know that she was pissed about that and I'm sure that many fans were too And. [00:43:10] People can't escape leaks. I mean, Renaissance leaked early. these things are still happening. And to your point, yeah, there's a whole new system on how these things are being done. And SZA, she's someone who I think kind of perfected this system, but she's with a record label that has. Literally adapted its strategy to be able to understand how to perfect this thing. [00:43:31] And she had this whole waterfall release thing and you need singles leading up to it to kind of make that happen and Rihanna hasn't released music recently, so there's so many things that would need to happen before anyone would really expect, okay, boom, day after the Super Bowl, here's an album. [00:43:46] Like I do not think that's gonna  [00:43:48] Louie Mandelbaum: Two things. One is that, I don't know though, cause here, two thoughts I'm having. One is you are right about the anti rollout and it wasn't just the leaks that were the problem. There was a series of underperforming lead singles that led that record off until they landed on work. It was, you know, Bitch Better Had My Money, didn't crack the top 10. There was. You know, the, kind of weird Lucy with Kanye and Paul McCartney. I mean, there was like, you know, a series of singles that like, didn't quite do the job that like usually Rihanna lead singles were doing at that moment where every single one you could to a number basically were like generation defining smash hits. [00:44:25] So that's one element of it, but I kind of think the the SZA thing is an interesting comparison to me because yes, SZA released singles before the record came out, but like Shirt didn't catch fire in the same way that Kill Bill has since the album came out. And there's a big thing now with records that come out where. [00:44:44] Fans pick the hit, you know, you dump the record and fans, I mean, it's the same thing that's happened with Cuff It on some level. Like yes, you know, Break My Soul, hit number one, but Cuff, it's actually been a bigger hit than Break My Soul. If you go look at Spotify numbers, it's got more streams. It's a bigger song. [00:44:58] It's got it got the organic TikTok element that came into play. If she had done literally anything to promo it, if she had performed it or made a music video, I'm sure that song could have hit number one easily. But of course, that's a whole other thing about why Beyonce is doing nothing to promo any of this, but I think Rihanna might benefit from removing herself in the same way that Beyonce did with her self-titled Record and Lemonade. [00:45:24] To some degree, I guess, formation notwithstanding from the sort of like trying to find a lead single prior to dropping an album. I think Rihanna's in a phase, especially with Anti, which is her most critically well regarded work, an album that I think like expanded the possibilities for Rihanna being like a sophisticated and intriguing albums artist to come forth with a full record and sort of like see what catches fire from there might actually be a better strategy for her than trying to locate. In a boardroom, like a single that's gonna function like an umbrella or only girl in the world or whatever. Cuz this marketplace is just way more fickle and difficult to figure that out in than it was during her peak era. [00:46:06] So I actually think her dropping an album like literally after the Super Bowl with no notice, like, could be actually like a pretty effective strategy. But again, I don't know that she's gonna do that, but I'm just pontificating on like what I think could work for her. I actually think that might be a better strategy than like doing some more traditional rollout. [00:46:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it'll be fascinating to see. I mean, there's so many unknowns to the same way where I think even before Beyonce reformed, we kind of had an idea of what to expect. we don't know what to expect in a lot of ways, so I'm excited for that. But, Louie, before we let you go, let's make a prediction. [00:46:39] So we talked a little bit about maybe some future ensembles that we could see, or some artists that we could see perform. who do you think would perform, I don't wanna just say next year, because that might be a bit too. Keeping it contained, but what is a artist or a mix of artists that you could see doing the halftime show in the next couple of years? [00:46:58] Louie Mandelbaum: I think the obvious answer is like Taylor is obviously going to do this at some point. It's actually like somewhat surprising to me that she wasn't doing it this year. She's having a massive year. This record is gigantic. She has her biggest hit in a long time. This album is a juggernaut in a mainstream way for the first time in like, you know, a series of interesting kind of career diversions that were all huge. [00:47:20] But like, this is definitely like, feels like a big, big moment for her. And she is such a classic Super Bowl artist, not in maybe the Rock Nation era, but she is white country, you know, blonde, critical darling, rock bonafides, like whatever, like, so it's truly surprising that she hasn't done it yet again, Ariana seems like another obvious one. [00:47:41] At some point, I'm assuming Ariana's gonna come forth with a new record. She's due. It's been, I think, Two and a half years or something since her last album. So one has to imagine she's due for a new era soon. She feels like she's of the caliber and of the stature at this point to do one of these by herself. [00:47:57] So those seem like two obvious superstars. And Drake, I think Drake is on the other one. You brought him up. He's obviously seems like a slam dunk. You know, generational superstar. Literally, I don't know how he'd pick the hits, which is another thing with Rihanna, like how's she gonna pick what she performs in terms of like groupings of artists? [00:48:15] I think that's really interesting. I mean, I wonder like what a version of like the MTV format would like look like in the modern era like how could you like bring a group of artists together? Again, the Dre thing was really an interesting sort of like roll of the dice on that idea, but I'm wondering like how you might do that. In other contexts, like, I'm trying to think of like other rap crews, like obviously the other ones that comes to mind like, ha, why hasn't Jay himself done it yet? I mean that's an interesting one to me too. I know Jay famously said, you know, I don't need the Super Bowl, but now he is intrically involved in the Super Bowl. [00:48:53] He feels like another obvious artist and obviously someone that could like kind of corral and very interesting stable of guests. So. it's like Jay-Z and Friends seems like it could be an interesting one. Unfortunately, we've lost another obvious either co headliner or headliner himself in Kanye who was now radioactive and would never get the slot anymore. [00:49:12] I don't think so. He's someone that certainly deserves it on a musical front, but like I think is just, you know, persona non grata in most spaces at this point. And. I don't know. I'm trying to think of like good groupings. Do you have any ideas of like, what could be like a thematic grouping? [00:49:28] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I mean, it's funny, I was just looking here at some of the upcoming locations to see if that could give us any clues. But before I get there, you brought up a few things that I was thinking about the Taylor thing. I agree with you. I think that will happen. I think she's waiting until all of the re-recording come out. [00:49:45] So I don't think 1989 [00:49:47] Taylor's version came out. I don't think that Reputation Taylor's version came out. So I think once those come out and she's like, yes, you can play all my non-Scooter Braun owned music wherever you want after that, then I think [00:49:59] she'll do it. so I think she's kind of waiting there.  [00:50:02] Louie Mandelbaum: Yeah. I think  [00:50:03] Dan Runcie: do it. I don't think that I mean, there's no Super Bowl team in Canada, so there's no tie in there, but I wanna see him do it. I mean, I've been a fan of his for a while, but some upcoming locations. So you have this one in Arizona. The next one is in, Las Vegas, and then the one after that is in New Orleans. [00:50:19] New Orleans could be interesting. I feel like, you know, a whole bunch of, you know, culture with vibe there. I don't know. what artists necessarily, I know you have a lot of, hip hop [00:50:27] Louie Mandelbaum: Big Freedia Super Bowl halftime show when? [00:50:30] Dan Runcie: Big Freedia would be something, oh man, I feel like they'll do something with that. Assume that, you know, rock Nation is still involved. I feel like we'll get something cultural there. But, the one person that I do wanna say, and I think you mentioned this on a podcast as well, I think I love Bruno Mars as a performer. It was too early though, and I think you're right about that like he performed before Uptown Funk, before 24K magic. [00:50:54] And I think that he may have done like a snippet of those songs at the Coldplay one that he guested it on with Beyonce. But no, [00:51:01] we have a  [00:51:01] Louie Mandelbaum: whole next.  [00:51:02] Yeah. He did Uptown Funk. I. [00:51:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, we have a whole next set of those to do. And maybe if it's too bland to do him again, maybe you mix him with someone else or something like that, you know, him and Cardi B have done a few songs, like something like that could be kind of cool. [00:51:16] Louie Mandelbaum: Yeah. What about Nicki and Cardi? I mean, like we haven't had a female rapper headline on her own. [00:51:22] Dan Runcie: I mean, can you get those two in a room though? [00:51:25] Louie Mandelbaum: No, not together. Not together. Not together. I mean like what about one or the other? I mean, Cardi, maybe not, but Nicki certainly is a generation defining pop artist who like certainly deserves her own show. I think that'd be an interesting choice. I think the New Orleans one is really interesting because you're like, all right, you could have like Wayne as like one of the primary headliners of that, you know, and then you could like mix in. [00:51:50] I don't know, like other famous, you know, there's so many famous New Orleans artists. You could do like a Cash Money, Drake, Wayne, Nicki,  [00:52:01] Dan Runcie: That would be special. That would be special. [00:52:04] Louie Mandelbaum: Mm-hmm. [00:52:05] Dan Runcie: All right. Well, we're calling that now. That's our prediction. We'll have to check back, but that's our prediction for when is this? February 2025. So two years from now, Drake, Nicki, and [00:52:14] Wayne. The Cash  [00:52:15] Louie Mandelbaum: Right on. We'll have to check in about. That seems like an obvious good one. I mean, honestly, great show I That would be amazing. [00:52:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No, that would be something that would be good. But no, Louie, this was so much fun. Thank you again for coming on and for the folks that are listening and want to hear more about how you break down pop artists, where should they go? [00:52:35] Louie Mandelbaum: They should subscribe to Pop Pantheon wherever you get your podcasts. It's really a taxonomy of pop stardom. We take them all one by one. We have really in-depth discussions about their careers and disc photographies, and then we rank them in a series of tears called the Pop Pantheon. So if you are interested in pop music, I think it's both informative and fun and smart and stupid at the same time. So if you like to talk about pop music and to overanalyze it as we do, follow us at wherever you get your podcast, Pop Pantheon, and also we're on Instagram and Twitter at Pop Pantheon pod. And I'm @DJLOUIEXIV on Instagram and Twitter. [00:53:18] Dan Runcie: Awesome. Great stuff. Thank you. Appreciate it. 

The playbook for artists to go viral on TikTok has changed a lot since 2019. Sean Taylor aka “BrandMan Sean” has written and executed that playbook for his clients since the early days of TikTok. He’s the co-founder of the ContraBrand Agency, which specializes in TikTok marketing for music talent. The agency has helped artists like Macy Gray, 24kGoldn, and Trap Beckham, among others. Sean and his team just released a global report on How Artists are Going Viral on TikTok. The report is packed with insights on artist virality on the platform. According to the report, artist-generated content (AGC) is the key to going viral today. It’s more impactful than not user-generated content (UGC) from fans and other users. AGC not only works, but it’s also a cost-effective way for independent artists to break through. However, Sean points out that virality isn’t as easy as before. TikTok has matured, and overnight success is harder to achieve. Still, with the right strategy, Sean believes TikTok is still a second-to-none top-of-funnel marketing play.  We broke down this tested TikTok system in our discussion. Here’s everything we covered about the platform: [1:51] TikTok entering its maturation stage [5:39] Second wave TikTok music artists vs. first wave [9:10] Biggest shift on TikTok for artists [17:13] No, artists don’t have to post dance content [24:00] YouTube shorts lack of culture [26:29] YouTube’s advantage over TikTok [31:31] The problem with IG Reels [33:32] TikTok pushing Google for search dominance [38:55] TikTok as a marketing funnel [42:21] The rise of TikTok live [46:10] Predicting where TikTok will be in three years How Artists are Going Viral on TikTok in 2022 report: https://www.contrabrand.agency/tiktokglobalreport2022 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Sean Taylor, @brandmansean Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION Trapital #Sean Taylor [00:00:00] Sean Taylor: One of the problems that people were having were them blowing up right? Without being able to connect to an actual face, right? So it solves so many of the problems that come with that, and even helps the problem of TikTok’s algorithm where people just hop on and start running things up with ads and you haven't really even understood what your content looks like, that creates some algorithmic problems, which probably aren't worth getting into, here, or maybe they are, but yeah. Man, artists generate content. It's gonna be a love hate relationship for sure with artists, the labels, all of us, right? But, if anything, it'll force collaboration and synergy between teams, in ways that it hasn't before. [00:00:42] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more. Who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:42] Dan Runcie: All right, today we are joined by my guy, Brandman Sean, Sean Taylor, who is back on the podcast for a second time now, and I wanted to have him on because there's so much that's happening with TikTok, with short form video and how artists are using it. And his company, the contraband agency just put out a report that dives deep into this, and he talks about this often on his platform, the Brandman Network. So Sean, let's level for a little bit, and I feel like TikTok is in such an interesting place right now, 2023. It's not some of that same rapid growth that it may have had a couple years ago, but it's still so essential for artists. How do you feel about where the platform is right now? [00:01:51] Sean Taylor: I think it's in a really good space actually. It's in a maturation space. The problem with that is people aren't seeing hits come as easy on the platform. and they're actually using that to downplay the platform and say, TikTok isn't that impactful, or it's not that big of a deal. It's hard to get a hit on TikTok. The difference is it's now a normal marketing infrastructure within your whole overall marketing stack. So yeah, there was this hot period where you were getting like gains that you probably didn't even deserve. Right. Every shock, swish, nothing but net. Now you have to do what you're supposed to do in every other space. So I think a lot of the pain that people are feeling isn't necessarily TikTok not being effective. It's TikTok not being unreasonably effective, unbelievably effective. The thing that made me get on TikTok, back in 2019. It's in an interesting space, but I think it's in a good space actually. And I can go deeper into that specific argument and why I see it that way. Cuz there's some numbers and milestones that I kind of think of it and approach it from, but yeah, that's where I think TikTok is right now. It's new, it's a viable marketing channel, but it's not the marketing channel that everybody is going to be as excited about as they were. [00:03:24] Dan Runcie: I'm glad you said this because there's been a bunch of reports about how TikTok has slowed down about how artists are starting to complain, and I've heard many A-list artists, even privately and publicly complain that things are popping the way they used to. But this isn't 2019 anymore. It may take some actual marketing expertise since some clever thinking about how to find things in. I remember one of the reports I said was talking about how you can't just give some post or some link to Addison Rae and then hope that someone like that goes and blows the whole thing up for you and makes you a superstar. You have to find your niches and build from there. And in reading that, it's like, well that sounds like what it's like to grow any type of career, and that's probably how it should be, right? [00:04:11] Sean Taylor: Exactly. Should it be that you pay one person and everything just blows up. Not really. I would love it to be that way for me, you know? But look, that's just the reality of how marketing works. So you can still get that number to grow and get millions of streams, but that millions might come a little bit slower. And now when it hits that 2 million mark, 3 million mark, probably even before that, it's gonna take a lot more heavy lifting to get it over the hump where, That thing could just keep going like a rocket ship straight to 2030 and not stop, right? So it's a great space to get things off the ground and create the spark, but going beyond that spark is more difficult. [00:04:59] Dan Runcie: In past years, we saw record labels signing a bunch of artists that came from TikTok, and I would assume that because of this rocket ship success, people didn't have the infrastructure behind them. A lot of those stories probably didn't end up panning out the way that they thought they would, maybe even at a lower rate than the average hit rate for. Otherwise artists at a record label are assigned. But I would think now that things have matured a bit, the artists that are actually coming to the forefront are likely gonna have more behind them. And because of that, B, the potential to actually maybe have a more sustainable career than that first wave of artists who just benefited from a very aggressive area. [00:05:39] Sean Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing is people hadn't really seen anything like that before, right? Like yeah, there had been one hit wonder. That has happened and someone who's seasoning the game probably understands what needs to take place. But to constantly have day after day someone popping out of nowhere like a breakneck speed level and trying to figure out how to bring infrastructure up, up under all these artists at the same time is a completely different story. Cuz it's also a different story when you have these artists housed under you, and then things take off really fast. You're taking them, you're trying to create a deal and figure out how to sign them, and then create infrastructure. By the time some of these deals take place, a lot of that moment is already missed, right? So, it was a really weird space, and I'm sure there's labels that have more of an infrastructure that's prepared for that situation. It's like, oh, if we bring somebody in from that particular climate, then there's a specific path that we can take 'em. Whether we expedite some things or we start here versus there, I'm sure that's there. But TikTok was really weird watching in the beginning because you had all these people blowing up and many didn't even wanna blow up, right? Like you had kids just using the platform and blowing up, they were an artist or just a regular influence or whatever you call 'em. They were just doing what kids normally do on apps and became stars overnight, which is very different from the artist who wants to be an artist. And then they take off. These are kids who are in their experimentational experimentation phase, kind of just having fun playing with things. And then it might be a hit song, right in a bed without even them trying to pursue it. So it created this really interesting space on TikTok and unfortunately, where I saw early on there were so many artists I don't wanna say artists, actually, less artists, more general content, creators falling prey to opportunist managers and companies because artists fortunately, have had a lot of education in these pages. I'm not saying artists don't ever have bad deals and situations, but there's a very common knowledge almost at this point that's been put out for artists getting in bad deals, avoiding bad deals, what you should do, in the culture, that education is out there as a regular content creator. That information isn't out there. Right. But it's very similar. So I actually saw like a lot of kids being signed by managers who had nothing to do with the industry at all. They're just like, "Hey, I'm just about to sign 51 situation I'm literally thinking about and he's telling me, yeah man, I just signed 50 content creators right to a management deal." And then thinking of it only from the standpoint of if I leverage these 50, then I'm gonna be able to get me a bigger deal, hopefully. But he doesn't have any relationships in place. There's no individual incentive to make any of the individual influencers blow up. It's more just, Hey, let me get stable so I can leverage the stable and, most of those deals fell apart, down the road. Or hopefully the parents kind of figured it out. But I know some who got burned really bad, but things were moving so fast. Like it was crazy. So a lot of parents were. Okay, this guy knows two or three people in the industry and you know, but everybody in the industry knows two or three people. So, but for people who don't have a child in the entertainment industry, and they never had any plans and they have no idea what to do, that sounds good. So TikTok was very crazy at the beginning. It was the wild, wild west. Now we're in this period where I think everybody has figured it out. Not everybody, but many people have figured out how to create more infrastructure. The problem is now the game is harder and that's how life works, right? It's like, dang, the moment I figured this shit out. Right? Things change a little bit. but you referenced my report earlier. I think the thing that was the biggest shift was the artist has to do more work. And that's what people feel more than anything. We could do everything and the artists were doing nothing and we were blowing songs. and now it's like, dang, I gotta get my artist to participate. And we all know how hard it can be to get the artist to participate in some things, especially content, right? but you know, that's created a space for those artists who truly do have a knack for content and that drive and honestly stamina to play that content. They've been able to make a lot happen, get a lot of organic streams, which makes it so much easier on the team cuz you still gotta do your job and make it, blow from there. But I know several artists that we work with who are getting their songs to 500,000 streams, 1 million streams, 10 million streams. Right. Any other form of marketing, just their content. So that's a huge benefit, and that's what I think the silver lining needs to be. The fact that we have that is still something we did not have in 2018 for music specifically, so that we need to appreciate and have gratitude for our blessings. [00:11:00] Dan Runcie: Let's dive into this a little bit because I think this point about artist generated content versus user-generated content is key. And I know it is a big part of your report as well, because I think for years now, we've heard so many people, even TikTok Head of Music just said this at the Nylon conference a couple days ago, was talking about how it's so key to be able to get the fans, to make the videos and get involved and things like that. And while that's still important, you're saying what actually can move the needle even more is getting the artist, even if they're reluctant to do it, getting the artist to do it themselves and having the two of them together and even more so the artist piece of it can really help push things forward. [00:11:42] Sean Taylor: Right. 100%. See, we realized this in 2020, in the trenches, you see this guy post a video, right? And we construct this concept. and you get a hundred thousand streams and just off of your video. Right? And that was amazing at that time to really see that he got a hundred thousand streams. And oh, by the way, there weren't really any replications to his video or sound. It had nothing to do with the dance. It hadn't had anything to do with influencers at all. He had the right creative concept, right? Hundred thousand streams. And for the artist that he was, you know, you're talking about pretty much no listeners, that's a massive number, especially just from one post and even better a post from him. Right. With not much of a following at all. He probably only had like 20,000 followers on Instagram at the time. Right? So we saw that and then I devised this campaign with the artist. Ironically, I just got off a call with this artist. We did like a little Google chat named Fash and Kid in Australia, right? He has some followers, probably a hundred thousand, 200,000 at this time. literally never dropped the song a day in his life at this moment, right? And he's like, “Yo, Sean, I've watched some of your videos and stuff on YouTube, and like, I wanna figure out how to release this song. I'm releasing it next week. What should I do? First of all, "Hey, don't release it next week", you know what I mean? Like, let's talk. Right? So, we made it a month from there, we created this entire narrative driven campaign. And just from him posting it was all based on his post, right? I actually took the marketing method that I blew up my music festival with, before I was doing, like working with artists, and it was all organic posts, right? So I had a structure that I used, and that was literally just him posting on his page. He got 1 million streams on his very first song, right? So, It wasn't one single post that made everything take off, but it was a system of post, and those were all pre, well, primarily pre-release. And then there were some things that were done, but this is 2020, so we're like, man, just posting all right on your page can take you far. The problem, I won't even say the problem was, but the thing is, paying influencers were still working like crazy at that time, right? So we didn't have an incentive to like to lean in it as heavy for artists that, you know, we would, were a little bit harder to get onto the platform and make work. Now, it's one of those things where, okay, look, we really want you to start here because the way things are set up today. If you don't do this and create this foundation, a lot of that other stuff won't bring anywhere near as big of a gain as it did. But yeah, back then we saw success with, or artist generated content, influencers. There were things that we called TikTok creators. We saw all these different types of games, but literally paying influencers was working so great at that time it was like, ah, why do anything else But yeah, artist generated content. Man, it's the way, man, it is the foundation of how I believe. things should be ran today. But of course, the caveat with every artist still has a different path, right? So your artist generated content might look different or artist generated content. There are outliers where that just won't be prevalent for you, but as a general way in a business approach. I love the fact that, one, you're creating fans in visibility for no money, right? You know, however much it costs to create your content, but generally speaking, no money. Two, you're testing. Songs before you actually put money behind them. Right? Three, if something blows, you already have a presence on the platform to connect people to. Because one of the problems that people were having was, were them blowing up right? Without being able to connect to an actual face, right? So it solves so many of the problems that come with that, and even helps the problem of TikTok’s algorithm where people just hop on and start running things up with ads and you haven't really even understood what your content looks like, that creates some algorithmic problems, which probably aren't worth getting into, here, or maybe they are, but yeah. Man, artists generate content. It's gonna be a love hate relationship for sure with artists, the labels, all of us, right? But, if anything, it'll force collaboration and synergy between teams, in ways that it hasn't before. [00:16:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I got the impression that from the TikTok head of music, making the comments about user-generated content, of course there's plenty to back that up, but I also saw it as a bit of a positioning to not take the stance that I think some of the labels have taken, where I think that the labels have come a bit of the public enemy of the artists who don't wanna be active on TikTok. We all saw the viral post that happened last towards the end of 2022. It was Florence, Florence of the machine and Halsey and others saying like, Hey, the label's making me do this. But I feel like there's so many ways to go about making short form videos and making content. How involved do you get with that piece of it? Cuz I think some of that is because people still think that artists need to be doing one of these like, you know, vertical TikTok dances that fit in something like they're Jason Derulo or something like that, but you don't necessarily have to do. [00:17:13] Sean Taylor: No, you do not. So again, this is one of those things that I was telling people back in 2020, but the problem was, again, dancers were working so hard and so well, no one's gonna believe you. Right? But we were only seeing the commercial level, right? And everything has levels to it, just like the industry, right? You have pop music and there's some genres that. For less far reaching than pop, but they're successful. Right. So that's what I attribute seeing Dances in 2020 work on TikTok. However, there were other things that were working right? like people thought you had to be a super upbeat hip hop song, cash pages song that blew, was nothing of the sort. Right? But so I think that for one, people have to understand that it just goes back to being creative. At the end of the day, and unfortunately many artists stop thinking creatively once they leave the studio, right? And I don't think it's all the artists now. I used to just blame it on the artist where it's like, bro, you're supposed to be an artist. You wanna be creative, right? Artist means more than a musician. Musician is just music, but artist creativity, that's what we're looking at you for. You have to show creativity and how you present yourself in this content. But I think what happened was there was so much working in terms of these trends, and they saw so many. Finding success so fast, it kind of demoralized them into thinking I have to follow these specific formats to find success myself. Right? So when I hear TikTok, I hear TikTok in a specific way, not just another platform that I can distribute my video on. You know what I mean? It would be like, oh yeah, you could create a movie, but it has to be a romcom. That's kind of what they're hearing, right?. That's not the truth though, right? [00:19:08] Dan Runcie: It reminds me too, of what you used to hear of MTV back in the day as well. Right. A lot of artists, especially late eighties, early nineties, a lot of artists that went on to be huge music video artists resisted it and they would always have a bit of a you know, high brow about it. Like, oh, I'm not trying to be like the Sir Mix-a-lot baby who got back a music video, like dancing on, you know, butts and booty shaking and stuff like that. But they found their own way to make the platform unique years down the road when it became the main thing. [00:19:38] Sean Taylor: That's it, because it's you. At the end of the day, you can create the content and the platform is just how you distribute it. Now, I think there's something to be said for using the unique qualities of a platform, right? Just like albums. what people created, just like CDs impacted what people created. Just like the internet and internet culture has impacted, oh, shorter songs cause shorter intention, span longer songs. Cuz now we have more space to create. Like all those things were like, music has always been impacted by the mediums and the culture around it. Right. And I think for some reason we constantly fall into this trap of, you know, oh, SoundCloud music, TikTok music. You know, at one point in time there was I mean, well, people complain about, I've seen people complain about tape cassettes. You know, like when you look up enough, you're gonna find everybody complaining about everything, right? And then the Grammy's, what's the Grammy's formula? Everything has its success, but truthfully, I'm in their own formula for success. But truthfully, you know, especially in this independent business, you know, you don't have to play every single game. I think sometimes we find ourselves wanting things that cause us to play a game we don't want to, which is like that weird love hate thing. It's like, oh, you know, black people shouldn't pay attention and value the Grammys yet. We still want Grammys. Right. You know what I mean? It is that love and hate relationship. I think everybody's doing that with different platforms in, in, in some form of fashion. and you asked earlier, Deep and involved that we get in people's content creation. It's varying, right? we don't do it with every project, every person. It depends on the vision and also their willingness and the need that's there. But, you know, we've gone as deep as recording things ourselves. I remember one campaign. This wasn't artist generated content, it was an influencer, but we bought something off of Amazon to send her for her to wear in it because it connected with the idea. And she had like 5,000 followers at the time. And the video ended up doing like 2 million. Right. So we were like really A and R ing, cuz sometimes it's, you know, TikTok is about narrative and with the presentation, so just hold, let me go to how many followers. Cuz the beauty of TikTok is you can not have a lot of followers and still get a lot of views. But if so, if you find the right person and can contrast it in the right way. Right. You can make it move. Right. I don't want to get into that campaign cause it might be semi uncontroversial in a way. I gotta explain [00:22:23] Dan Runcie: We'll save that one for offline then, [00:22:25] Sean Taylor: yeah. We'll say that one for, offline. For sure. For sure. But yeah, man, I mean, I think what I've seen is, if people can just open their mind and not start what's moving on a platform and just think literally in Word out, "Hey, what do I want to communicate now? How do I communicate that on this platform?" It'll save a lot of stress, particularly for the artists, because artists wanna do music videos. This is nothing but another video, right? So why can't I in 60 seconds? Be creative. Use that box. That box is a framework that will inspire creativity. How can I communicate and make something really dope in 60 seconds? We've had an artist last August blow up, his profile from like 20K to 400K and did 2 million streams in about a month with very, very high quality videos. And everybody thinks you gotta be really low. To find success on TikTok and record it from your phone and have the bubbles. These were very, very high quality shots and editing, and it's darker and it worked. Right. So it's really just about dope content at the end of the day. [00:23:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. Let's switch gears a bit. I want to talk. Talk's, competitors that are also in this space wanna talk YouTube and Instagram. But let's start with YouTube first, because you had recently put out a video where you were talking about YouTube shorts, their efforts there, and you said you're not concerned about YouTube shorts' impact because it just doesn't have the culture that exists on TikTok. Can you talk more about that? [00:24:00] Sean Taylor: yeah. So the thing that made TikTok so unique, early on was it developed a culture, like once it hit that network effect, I knew it wasn't gonna go away overnight cuz there's too much money involved outside of the government stuff. But that's a different story. Right? And then culture, like people, have a different presentation and expectation on how you act on TikTok. It's looser than Instagram. That was the beauty of it, right? So that created a culture. YouTube has an established culture and relationship that they have. their audience. YouTube isn't as interactive. It's a little closer to tv. You know what I mean? And Instagram's a little bit more of a resume. Most people are putting on their best, their Sunday best, if you will. TikTok, we're involved in this together. People feel like they have the power to blow a song up on TikTok. the users feel like they're giving heavy feedback. You should drop this song. When is this gonna come out, right? It's a completely different culture that you can't just copy overnight. That's where competitive advantages get created, right? Culture. Cause it's very, very hard to mimic that. I think it's gonna be successful, but it's just not going to be a threat to TikTok in that specific way where, you know, it's like a TikTok killer or something. It's like the Jordan Stoppers. Oh yeah. You know, Jordan only scored 39 instead of 35. Cool. You might see. [00:25:26] Dan Runcie: So if it's thinking about the Kobe stopper thing, so if TikTok is Kobe Bryant then is YouTube shorts, Ruben Patterson. [00:25:37] Sean Taylor: You too might wanna take offense to that, but in this analogy, yes. [00:25:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah, but I've been thinking a lot about the YouTube piece, and I will give them credit. I think the trajectory of YouTube is greater than Ruben Patterson. No disrespect, but I do think that Lyor Cohen had said something interesting. Of course, he's the head of YouTube and one of his big things is that the fact that YouTube shorts has the connection directly to the platform  [00:26:04] Sean Taylor: Yeah. [00:26:04] Dan Runcie: on-demand listening happens, he feels like that conversion rate and that connection is stronger. And he didn't name TikTok specifically, but he was essentially talking about the fact that TikTok doesn't have that same type of win. I know they have Rezo, but it's just not the same. What do you think about that? Cuz I think the underlying aspect of that is conversion and just being able to transport an audience from one to the other. What have you seen from that perspective. [00:26:29] Sean Taylor: I think Lyor Cohen is extremely smart and savvy, and reading that statement. It was hilarious cuz you know the elephants in the room that he's addressing and it was like this competitive moment happening. It was like, come on man. Say their name. Say their name. But you're like, I'm not gonna give them any clout that was really, funny to read. But I think that they do have an advantage that TikTok doesn't. Right in that way, the long form content and that mentality, I think it's gonna be a lot harder for TikTok to get people to consume shorts on their platform than it is for No. It's gonna be a lot harder for TikTok to consume long form content on their flat platform than it is gonna be for YouTube people to consume short form. Does that make sense? [00:27:19] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like part of it too is the conversion rate is one thing. I don't doubt that there's likely could be a higher conversion rate, but I think that absolute number is still what makes the difference at the end of the day. And I just don't know if the overall absolute number of people that are converting from. Hearing a song on TikTok and then going to stream that artist and then becoming a follower and an avid fan of that artist is necessarily going to be a number that's ever smaller than what we may see otherwise from YouTube. I think YouTube has still had great strides in that area, but I just don't see it coming to that level. [00:27:56] Sean Taylor: no. Cause again, it's about that culture, right? So two things, I'll get to the YouTube TikTok second. But when we first got on TikTok and started working with some people on TikTok, it was ridiculous to see the conversion of people who left TikTok and went to Spotify. Instagram, these other places, but specifically, let's talk about Spotify. Why was it so ridiculous? Because at that time, TikTok did not acknowledge the music on the platform at all, right? You had people hearing the song and then googling the lyrics to find the song name and then going to stream it, and it was happening in droves. That much friction told us, holy shit, when they get rid of this friction, it's gonna go. And of course TikTok got rid of that friction. But pa the fact that people were doing that, like I remember telling some artists, yo man, you got like a dollar sign and this version of the song, and then it's like no dollar sign. Like, and so people were having difficulty finding it. It's like, bro, you're ruining people's ability to stream your song. Like that was a thing. And then people started to rename their songs or added lyrics in the parentheses, right? Because of the culture. And that was happening and they wanted to make sure people could find the song right. Now we see less of that. It goes back to like the mediums and how things are influencing. Now we see less of that cuz you can figure out what it is within TikTok and people know how to name it. So that transferability from TikTok to other platforms has just been there for so long and people almost expected it. It's almost like TikTok is the megaphone, the amplifier. But then you don't even really expect to go super deep on TikTok, right? YouTube, you kind of do expect to go deep, but when we. Look at the platforms that TikTok converted to, and this is where I say the competitive advantage of YouTube goes. YouTube was one of the greatest conversions from TikTok that we would see. Like so many people left TikTok to go to Spotify and YouTube. Instagram was last particularly for artists. Right? So now, yes, being on YouTube already, Is a great competitive advantage. I think there's some fluidity issues that they need to solve. Like right now, from the phone, from your phone, I could take this video that we're creating right now and say, yeah, I want 10 seconds to 20 seconds, and take that into a short and it'll automatically be connected. But I can't make a cool edited short that's specific to the short format, and then say it's from this video. Right. And that'll make things even smoother because it's hard to take a snippet from the long form content just from timestamps and that would be a good piece of short form content. So people have to be able to edit and then connect it back for that to really come into place. And also they would have to make it a little bit more obvious that you can do that because the culture is not yet to go from long. I'm in short form to long form within YouTube. I know it happens, but people aren't naturally having that expectation. Oh shoot. This is probably from a larger video that's on this platform. What people are seeing more on YouTube is actually, mm, it's the opposite of what allowed TikTok to become what it became, and I don't know how it's gonna play out, so I'll tell you what I'm saying. [00:31:23] Dan Runcie: What are your thoughts on Instagram reels? I think you talked a little bit about it, how it's a bit of a resume but where do they stand? [00:31:31] Sean Taylor: I don't like reels, in terms of the value add yet, it's very inaccurate. So you'll get higher numbers, less engagement, where it's pretty clear it's not going out to the right people. The best people you know, they're, padding the numbers, so to speak. Right. It's cool that it got more reach, but if it wasn't accurate and I didn't get that much following, what does it really mean? That's where reels are at large. Now, can reels work and has it still helped some songs? Yes. It's just not it's not at the proportion that TikTok has been, and I think YouTube shorts are going. definitely, beat reels. [00:32:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think the clear desire from Instagram to try to turn your entire feed into a for you page is forcing this content to not necessarily hit the right people, which is why. Yes, it could be good from a viral discovery thing where, okay, if you have a post that's doing better than 80 or 90% of your other posts, then yeah, it may reach a larger than initially intended audience, but I don't know if it could be necessarily relied on in the same type of way. [00:32:41] Sean Taylor: Yep. I agree with you there. We'll see if they figure it out maybe they should focus less on the Metaverse. [00:32:52] Dan Runcie: Another thing that you had brought up a little bit earlier was about search in general and just how powerful that's become on TikTok. I think it's clear that they want to, well, I think TikTok is trying to do anything and everything. I know this is something for folks that follow Trapital been writing about this recently, all the things they're getting involved with. But I do think search is one of those interesting things because they are trying to take on a Google Head on, and people have seen how, especially Gen Z, they may be more likely to look up something through TikTok than looking it up through Google. What do you see as the potential of that moving forward, and do you think that would be a credible threat to Google at some point? [00:33:32] Sean Taylor: yes. You know why tutorial culture, that's what TikTok cut into. And Instagram never did that. It was never really a place that you went to look up tutorials, right? So it's less about music and entertainment and that side of things. It's the fact that people are looking at recipes, right? How to fix things. And then once you have that, that's what creates the. For looking things up in the, at the seo, right? it's not that it can't be created in other ways, but that's like a hack. If I know I can go find this and, oh man, I can find it done in 60 seconds versus three minutes or 10 minutes because on YouTube the video's not as valuable and might not go as far if I don't do an intro and all this leads in, right? Oh, these videos won't go straight to it. So they have a lot of ground to make on YouTube. But I think they're going to succeed, I'm not into the speculation of which one's gonna be number one. There might be days where it beats YouTube or whatever, but it's going to be, a legitimate search engine. You know, Yahoo, Google at least. [00:34:43] Dan Runcie: I do think that the tutorial piece is key, and I'm even thinking about times I've used it in the past. We bought a mattress recently, and of course you could Google search, what does this mattress like? But sometimes it's easier to just put it in TikTok and have someone show me some unboxing video to show me what that's like and compare a few. I liked it for that. I think more broadly in terms of all of the search pieces of it. I think that what Google has done in this space and even thinking about, you know, decades back about how they beat Legos and Alta Vistas, some of those others, I think it will be hard to ever replace that for everything that's possible, that people would wanna search. But I do think that the video tutorial piece of it, which is a subsection of it, but I do think that that's a unique place where they can, if you get core to the market there, you can figure things out. I also think that either misinformation or wasted just credibly have or understanding for users to know, okay, "What is legitimate?, What is not legitimate? Is a concern, and I think it's maybe harder to do in a way where I think text, you can have some of those clear things come up where I think the nature of a viral platform wants to show things that you know, may be sensationalized to some extent through video. That may take time, but I think that's one thing that will need to develop, especially on the TikTok side of things for sure. [00:36:02] Sean Taylor: See what you're explaining is the different personalities of seo. Just like we talk about the different personalities of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. So Google dominates damn near Monopoly. You couldn't just be a Yahoo or actually, truly become a threat, but what you could. Was be Amazon and eventually have so much shit on there that people just think, "Oh, if I want a table, I'm gonna go Amazon, look for a table, I'm not gonna go to Google", right? Or you could be a YouTube, right? And have so many videos. If I want a video tutorial, I'm just gonna go to YouTube, right? So you enter the search engine market from the side versus, you know, the [inaudible] so I think TikTok has successfully gotten there. and even that personality being short form is something that attributes to that and the personality that Google will probably hold on to,in the long term for sure is probably gonna be the more scholarly approach, right? The more credible approach because of those other platforms. that's almost in conflict with what makes things move and the way people use them, and incentives that are in place. [00:37:15] Dan Runcie: Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. The other thing too, that it'd be good to get your thoughts on with TikTok is I think a lot of this conversation and a lot of how people have been measuring the success for TikTok is that conversion from TikTok and broader social engagement to streams, what are you seeing though from the next level down? From how looking at TikTok itself can eventually translate to concert ticket sales, or whether it's V I P clubs or other high end opportunities that fans are engaging it with an artist. [00:37:50] Sean Taylor: It's there. We've already had artists do that. The difficulty is the geography of it all. So you can do that, but you aren't completely sure that the video is going to go viral enough within your own audience, right? Because still, especially like most of last year, you still can drop a TikTok and it's mostly gonna be seen by new people, especially for people earlier on, right? So if all of your followers aren't necessarily going to see your posts, it's gonna be new. then that creates this issue with going deep with your audience, right? It's great for going viral and gaining and blowing up fast. That's why it happened, right? That built TikTok in a sort of way to show it to more new people than people who are following you. But then at some point it becomes, well, what are my followers really worth? right on TikTok. And I think some people are starting to figure that out. Like, man, I don't know if this really matters all that much. It really only matters what the individual video itself does, right. So the problem with that, if I'm doing a show and I don't know if my followers will see it, or I have no idea if it's good, or enough of video because it's outside of my normal format to get enough people to see it in general. Then, man, that's not predictable enough. It could be my strategy, but it's not predictable enough. Now, the advertising might come into play, which is a different conversation, but there's that, and then again, also, who's gonna see it geographically in the world? We have no, you know, way of controlling that. Again, outside of ads so far. It's definitely something that's useful for selling things like merch, for creating awareness for your shows, but the best way we've seen it with shows for the most part, is almost to talk about your tour as a whole, right?. So you bring awareness that multiple are going to happen, and then if your artist is down for it and it kind of works within your format, you can also vlog in a way, or like let people know, oh yeah, I'm gonna be in Atlanta tonight. Right? So they see and get reminded that you are on tour, right? So it's trying to create this awareness of all the spaces and places that they will be going. And then also reminding them that you're in process of this to remind them, oh yeah, when he's gonna, when is he gonna beat in my city? That's kind of like the best middle ground we've found. But it's hard to be like, Hey, I'm gonna be in Atlanta next week and all my Atlanta people and expect all the Atlanta people to actually see that and convert. [00:40:27] Dan Runcie: Right. it's a funnel at the end of the day, right? And TikTok sits at the top of it, even higher than some other social media platforms, right? And then from there, it's always going to be hardened, honestly foolish to an extent. If your main message on the top of the funnel awareness platform is, "Hey, Join my V I P club or join my Patreon or buy tickets to my concert, right?" You need to introduce people, let them know who you are, and maybe at that next level of engagement, then you can start to push more of those things. Then you can start to have more of these things come through, because there's just gonna be less friction there and you're doing the job that should be done at each level of the. [00:41:08] Sean Taylor: I agree man. I think, like you said, at the end of the day, it always goes back to the fundamentals of it and there might be aberrations. Give us more for moments of time, but things are always gonna default back to that basic infrastructure and use the thing with the right expectations versus expecting everything from it. [00:41:30] Dan Runcie: right. The other thing that I've thought a lot about for this conversation is, and even for reading the report and rolling into the show notes, so others can take a look at it as well, but thinking about how artists generate content and having artists push is what the wave is. At least at this particular moment. And I think there's a lot of reasons to think that yes, this is what makes sense now moving forward, but we also know how quick these things change and how things have evolved. Do you see another element, like I know eventually gaining steam eventually, I know that we talked about ads, we talked about influencer campaigns and just UTC and how a lot of these things were stronger and now relatively weaker to artists generated campaigns. Is there another thing that you think is going to play a role or that we may see another shift in this. [00:42:21] Sean Taylor: The dark horse is TikTok lives. Everybody's actually. Investing more in a live culture in general when you look at YouTube, as well. but TikTok lives the way they use that for you. Page is ridiculous, man. On Instagram, you're gonna see the lives of people that you're following. Again, on TikTok, you can go live and people will discover, right? It'll pop up on the people's For You page, and that's a different paradigm, right? I've seen it live when my partner was live where all of a sudden, like thousands of people came in, right? Because TikTok was feeding him to so many people. and then he would see it also trickle off. Whereas like experimenting, they wanna find a live that's engaging in a way that content isn't, moves up the algorithmic letter, right? So they're, look, that's how they display lives. So the fact that you can blow up doing lives, it's a completely different paradigm because it's like having a show but the people who do it well, they're getting money in these lives. A lot of money. I've seen people make a lot of money in their lives, but it's also a great format to build a relationship far deeper than you can through individual content and lead people over to buy tickets. We've used lives to like getting emails and, I mean, I did one campaign even back in 2020. , that artist Fash we probably got 10,000 emails more so from him going live, not more so, only from him going live. Actually, he even use a little bit of IG live. So the fact that you can do that is going to create this other performance skill that artists will have. [00:44:06] Sean Taylor: Almost like being a salesman, right? But doing it in a way where you give the presentation and the ask isn't so blatant. it's, we're going into this climate that's going to breed so many different types of artists like that have these, you know how you could be an artist that plays an instrument or you could be an artist that sings, maybe you could do multiple, where there's now these soft skills that we'll see artists, oh man, this dude is, he's just a salesman and he knows how to entertain people on live. And that's how he plays his game. This person still is just a pure musician, or this person creates a really dope content in the box of the regular feed. There's gonna be things like that. And the thing is, these other platforms are, you know, homogenous in many ways. They keep copying each other. So that culture that starts on TikTok, it's not just a TikTok thing. I always communicated it as a new language to learn because the new generation would be used to hearing and seeing things and consuming things in this format. So they'll wanna see it on other platforms. And inevitably, right, like we have an hour podcast, two hour podcasts, and people were like, Hey man, can you make this in 60 seconds? Like they expect to be able to learn something really valuable that's gonna change their. You know, in literally 60 seconds. I mean, we literally have had those conversations and seen those comments, but everything's not, you know, how you bake a cake? People like you can't rip at everything and change your artist's career in 60 seconds. But that's what we're seeing, like live is truly a dark horse, and I think it is gonna become more prevalent in TikTok and YouTube as well, to be honest. [00:45:45] Dan Runcie: No, I can see that happening definitely just with the way things are going. But, last question before we let you go here though. So let's fast forward three years. 2026. Is TikTok still in the dominant position that it is right now? And if it isn't, is it because of geopolitical concerns or is it because of another competitor that now has the next big thing? [00:46:10] Sean Taylor: If it isn't geopolitical, I think it's gonna be pretty dominant from what I've seen. in terms of their vertical integration and investment, particularly in music. It's just nothing like any other platform like you've seen, I mean Sound On, right. Rezo. Right. It's just different in what they're trying to do. They have deals that they've offered artists. Right. Which is really nice. Right. And unique because, oh, you're on, sound on and you. You have a song that blows up using their distribution platform. They have all the data. So now we can offer you a deal and you don't have to pay it back cuz it's gonna be paid back through the royalties. We're probably using the algorithm to calculate how much we should give you anyway. Right? This is already happening. Right. So the way they invest in it, I think it's just gonna be hard to get a pool away from it in three years. again, it's going to. More of a norm, less hot in its way, but I think they're gonna be pretty dominant in three, three years down the road. Yeah. I'll, I'll leave that at that. [00:47:10] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think three years, because even though I do think that TikTok has been the fastest to grow to a billion users, at least what we've seen from a social app, I do think that the next app will probably be even shorter just thinking about how much faster adoption is, but. It still took TikTok several years to get to this point, so I think maybe five, six years would be a different conversation. But no, I agree with you. Three years. If it ends up being shut down, it'll be for some geopolitical concerns, but we'll see between now and then. We'll have to check in again at some point if any of that ends up going in that direction. But Sean, it's been a pleasure man. Thank you for coming on and for people that wanna learn more about your insights on TikTok and the stuff you're doing at Contraband Agency, where should we reach out? [00:47:56] Sean Taylor: Brandman Network on YouTube is a nice place to start. You know, you watch the podcast or you just go to no labels necessary on, Spotify, but no labels necessary is our podcast. So type in no labels necessary on YouTube or, or Spotify. At the moment, I think the podcast is probably the best place to go. But if you're immediately interested in services and want to speak with our team, that would be contraband.agency. There's no.com, www.contrabrand.agency [00:48:28] Dan Runcie: Good stuff. All right. Thanks again, Sean. Appreciate you. [00:48:31] Sean Taylor: Always good speaking with you man. [00:48:33] Dan Runcie Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Everybody’s got something to say about Cash Money Records and the brothers who co-founded the label —Bryan “Birdman” Williams and Ronald “Slim” Williams. To paint the full Cash Money full picture, good and bad, I brought on Zack O’Malley Greenberg who has interviewed the brothers at-length while working at Forbes. Cash Money has one of the deepest catalogs in the game with several classics. And unlike some other upstart hip-hop labels, Birdman and Slim maintained control as they rose up. Their 1998 distribution deal with Universal is hip-hop’s Louisiana Purchase. But we can’t ignore Cash Money’s lows either. There is a long, long list of artists who claim they were not compensated fairly by Birdman and Slim. Zack and I go through 30 years of Cash Money as a business, its competitive advantage, and what comes next now that Drake and Wayne are gone from the label.  [1:44] Is Cash Money the greatest hip-hop record label of all time? [7:34] What people sleep on about Cash Money [11:01] Cash Money’s history of not paying artists  [16:52] Did Cash Money succeed because of Birdman and Slim or despite them?  [19:29] Biggest signing?  [20:29] The 1998 Universal-Cash Money deal  [25:31] Lil’ Wayne’s mixtape run [29:03] The benefit of partnering with Republic Records [31:49] Bidding wars for Lil Wayne, Drake, and Nicki Minaj [33:21] Connection with New Jack City  [40:56] Cash Money catalog valuation ? [43:00] Lil Wayne’s beef with Birdman  [45:48] Can Cash Money strike platinum again?  [50:44] Birdman’s love for music  [56:08] Hopes for a Cash Money reunion tour and biopic  [58:24] Who “won” the most in Cash Money’s history? Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Zack O’Malley Greenburg, @zogblog Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. Transcription [00:00:00] Zack: You know, some of the subsequent deals that they worked out with Universal, you know, maybe some of the deals where they were able to get universal to, to tackle some of the back office stuff. I mean, it's very unsexy, but you know, that's clearly an area where they needed to improve. So, let's say,to give some cash in terms of like higher distribution fee in order to have Universal, you know, cover some of this stuff. It's kinda like a boring, dark horse candidate, but you know, I mean, you could say that, that's probably useful in terms of buttoning things up. [00:00:37] Dan Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:57] Dan: All right. Today's episode is all about the one, the only cash money records. I got the one and only Zack Greenberg here who has reported on this company many times before we ran to this company and the business moves they did in our Top 10 Revolutionary list last year. So Zack, welcome back. I'm excited for this one. [00:01:18] Zack: Always good to be here with you, Dan.  [00:01:19] Dan: Yeah. So for the folks listening, we are gonna do this in a few ways. We got a bunch of categories here that we're gonna run through, just evaluating Cash Money as a business, some of the highs, some of the lows, and just where they stand overall. But I think it'll be great to kick it off with the question that we often hear from folks is Cash Money, the greatest hip hop record label of all time? What's your point? What's your take? [00:01:44] Zack: How, man, you know, I mean, I think it's sort of like, any of these greatest ever are you talking about, overall body of work or sort of like, you know, The label at its peak. But you know, I think you gotta take it in an overall body of work, you know, type of thing. You know, it's hard to top Def Jam, I think, you know, if you were gonna go with an overall body of work, hip hop, legacy. But, you know, I don't know other than that, I mean, it's hard to say that there's anybody who you'd put above cash money, I'd say. Especially something that is, you know, really artist founded in that same way. I mean, you could talk about Bad Boy, you could talk about Rockefeller. But I think that, you know, Cash Money has staying power. You know, through Drake and Nikki and Lil Wayne and so forth, you know, in a way that, you know, I would argue that a lot of these other labels haven't, and, you know, who else can say that they've had Drake for that long? And I guess he's not there anymore. But man, that was pretty recent development and it's been a pretty great run. So, you know, to go all the way from the early nineties, you know, through basically now being relevant, stacking up all that catalog, you know, it's certainly, if not number one, it's, you know, gotta be top three, if not top two. [00:03:00] Dan: Yeah. So my answer is Def Jam as well, and we'll get to Def Jam in a minute. But, the case for Cash Money is this, and I know a few people have said it. Irv Gotti recently said it. Russell Simmons himself said that Cash Money was the greatest hip hop company that has come through. But the case for cash money, you mentioned it earlier, the fact that they did it while owning the core asset and the music and still doing that moving forward says a lot. Not something that can be said about Def Jam, many of the others that would be even in the conversation. I think even with a newer label at Quality Control, they've still done it while owning it. Well, at least up to this point from some rumors that are happening. But I think that's one case for Def Jam. But then I think of the continued run of success from everything that happened in the nineties from I guess we could start with like juvenile drop in HA in 98 and then pretty much everything from Drake's last Cash Money album, which I believe was Scorpion. So if you're looking just at like that run from everything there, that is such a strong hit rate. And I think that's the thing too that I would give them over Def Jam is the hit rate of who were the artists we signed and what was their likelihood of success and they were just able to do it. Even with the imprints, I mean, I think major record labels. So wrong with so many imprints. I just never worked out and for them to have, whether it's Young Money or even the smaller moments with the best music or with Rich Gain, there was always something there. And even though there was some conflict, and we'll get to that, I think that's the Cash Money case. The Def Jam case though, I think this is where I think of course Def Jam did end up becoming a major record label, so it's a little bit nuanced there, but I do think you have that eighties run Beasties LL Public Enemy. You got the nineties run with all those artists too. Especially looking at what Red Band met the man DMX. I feel like they had New York on Locke and then two thousands, the Rockefeller partner. Murder Inc. The video games, I mean, it's, I know the last decade hasn't been there, but it would be tough to not put Def Jam up top, but I understand if some people would consider Def Jam a major as opposed to, you know, an independent. So, I get the nuance there.  [00:05:10] Zack: right, right. And, and being, you know, fully owned by a major as opposed to Cash Money, which really has distribution agreement. You know, and you could look at, you know, I guess Def Jam was sold in chunks, but the total amount that sold for, you'd have to adjust for inflation and stuff. But I wonder how that would stack up against the current value of cash money today, which, you know, it's incredibly driven by the copyrights that they still control and, you know, definitely hundreds of millions of dollars. You know, if you look at, Lil Wayne kind of quietly sold his The Young Money, Cash Money Partnership for a hundred million bucks a couple years ago, that was before the catalog boom, got really crazy and then kind of died down again. So, you know that that's valuing what Birdman and Slim Own, you know, just on the Young Money, Cash Money side of the business, you know, at nine figures. So there's, you know, there's a lot more to the company than that, although that's, you know, that's kind of the gold line. But still, you gotta think that, you know, this is still, you know, sent a million dollar business and, you know, I'd be curious to see what a proper valuation, you know, what it would look like against the total value that Def Jam got, you know, in terms of dollars over the years. But, you know, when you think about who was hottest and what record label was hottest at any particular point, Yeah, I think probably the peak was there was that year that Def Jam was, you know, getting sold or the second half of it was getting sold. And, Lyor basically said to Jay and D M X, like, let's have two albums this year. And, you know, because the valuation is gonna be based on revenues, not earnings. And like, the more you can sell, the more we get. And so, you know, that moment at D M X at his peak, and you know, Jay, I think, I'd say at least at his commercial, you know, record Sales Peak, you know, as an individual artist, you know, that was about as hot as, as it could ever get for, for any record label, I think.  [00:07:08] Dan: That's a good point. So I guess if we were to compare Def Jams 98 and 99, like that run to Yeah. Cash Money, and I know there's a few runs you could put in there, but from an overall commercial perspective, it would have to be 0 8, 0 9 20 10, I would probably assume, because you get. Carter three, and then you get, you know, Drake's debut, Nikki's debut. I feel like it would probably be somewhere in there.  [00:07:34] Zack: Yeah, that's probably pretty close. I mean, that was a lot, you know, that was a lot of concentration within a couple year period as well. You know, and I think the other thing about Cash Money, that maybe people sleep on to some extent is, you know, just like the efficiency of the label, especially in the early days. And, you know, of course we can get into some of the issues with paying producers and so forth, but, you know, they really had a system and you know, it was going and finding artists that were bubbling up, you know, first in the New Orleans area. I mean, this is in the nineties, and, you know, and then kind of just plugging them into the machine. Right. You know, put them with stable producers in-house, get Manny Fresh on there and, you know, it was not like a, you know, high expense kinda situation. Like maybe you would've seen with Def Jam or, you know, some of the New York, LA labels, it was just like, you know, you know, probably low, low cost, high output. You know, like there's a high margin business, low overhead, you know, it's lean and mean. So I think from, in that regard, Cash Money, you know, it might have been, it might have been the best business, you know, out of any record label. Right. In terms of sort of like efficiency and profitability and stuff like that. [00:08:47] Dan: That's a great point because if you look at that vibe, I think that was the vibe for the South overall. We saw that with no Limit as well, just with in-house production sheep, that production does almost everything and the music videos aren't flashy and the fact that I think they stuck with what they do and what they work with well, and eventually I think collaborations came, but that was something that they were hesitant about as well. Just thinking about juvenile dropping 400 degrees, and I'm going back to that just because that's the first album that comes after that 1998 Universal deal, which we'll talk about soon, but, that album, I'm pretty sure the entire production value for those music videos probably costs less than one of the suits that Puffy and Mace wore in the music videos. or, yeah, Jay-Z's Sunshine Music video, which I know has been talked about for years on end, but that's what the vibe was. There were no Hype Williams music videos coming through Cash Money. Right. At least at that point. I know they came later when Wayne blew up further, but that's what they did. They stuck to what they did and it worked. It worked so well.  [00:09:55] Zack: Warren Buffet would love Cash Money.  [00:09:59] Dan: Oh yeah. He loves little cost. [00:09:59] Zack: Cash Value. Value, cash value investor. Right. Early cash money would be the Warren Buffet play. [00:10:06] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. And the thing is too, you talked about it earlier, just some of this things leading up to the big deal that they had, but even back in those early days, even before the Universal deal, Birdman and Slim, the co-founders of Cash Money Records had a history of legal issues with artists and not paying artists on time. And I actually have a list here, and it's probably an incomplete list, but artists that have had some type of dispute or issue with Cash Money records when it comes to payments. So I have Lil Wayne, Pharrell, Clipse, David Banner, Bangladesh, the producer, at least five or six artists before 1998, Wendy Day, who's not an artist, but one of the attorneys and people that helped make this deal happen. Behi Turk and Shal and Jazz Prince, of course himself. Tiger, Manny Fresh, and I'm sure I'm missing people from that list.  [00:11:01] Zack: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a long and storied list of people to have disputes with and, you know, it really is something that goes, you know, hand in hand with success.You can't ignore that history. So, you know, I think it is important to remember some of the context. You know, these guys were coming out of a completely different world. You know, and they were hustlers. They were legit hustlers in New Orleans. And, you know, in doing some reporting, you know, I verified it. I mean, you know, they were the real deal. They moved things over. They went legit. They became record moguls and Bird Man's Case became a rapper himself. And, you know, they were not people who had dealt with, you know, sets of books, right? There was not really necessarily like bookkeeping apparatus in their form of business. So, you know, I think there was an adjustment period that, you know, let's say perhaps went on for too long in terms of, you know, getting things papered up and straightened out. But, you know, I wrote a big story on them in 2019 for Forbes, where I went down to Miami and spent some time with Birdman and Slim. I talked to their lawyers a lot. I talked to Wendy Day. Spend some time in the studio with them and you know, I mean, everybody of course has, if you ask people in the Cash Money camp, they're gonna have their side of the story. If you ask whoever they're having the dispute with, you know, they're gonna have their side of the story too. And you know, obviously when there's smoke, there's fire, there's a hell of a lot of smoke when it comes to not getting paid on time. But…  [00:12:29] Dan: What would you say is the Cash Money side of the story, though? The Cash Money is this it? [00:12:33] Zack: They, you know, started out as people who had not had formal training in business, doing business with a lot of other people who had not had formal training in business, who were represented by people who had not had formal training in business. And so when you go back to some of these early documents, it was not properly papered over on either side. And so there's a lot of question over, you know, who owns what, you know, I don't know that anybody who was involved in some of those early deals really, you know, had a full grasp of sort of, you know, music copyright and publishing and, and master recordings and all that. I mean, you know, it's not like an intuitive business, you know, it's like, wait, what? There's two writes to every song. They've like, there's a publishing and a recorded music. It's separate. How does that work? So I think a lot of that was, you know, kind of like if you go back the nineties and early nineties, especially when they're getting started, you know, before the Universal deal there was just really like, you know, I would imagine a lot of handshake deals, a lot of just, you know, kind of like, let's see how, how it goes sort of stuff. A lot of, you know, here we're gonna give you a bag of cash and you do you give us this beat or you give us a verse or whatever. So, you know, it makes sense to me that it might not be papered up properly. But, you know, the fact that that's continued, you know, so far into the future, you know, that's another story. So, you know, what they did say was that, you know, after, and we can talk more about this Universal deal, but after the Universal deal started and then, you know, as it continued to evolve, you know, to where Universal got an even bigger cut of, you know, distribution fee or like an even bigger distribution fee than it had signed up for in the beginning. Universal took on more and more of sort of the back office function. And so, you know, some of the more recent stuff is, you know, a little bit more papered up properly. So that's the Cash Money side. But, you know, it's funny, I mean, when I did this story and I reached out to all these folks, you know, what I got was like a no comment, which says to me that, you know, things have been settled up and they kind of don't want to get into it anymore. Right. Or maybe there was an NDA involved. But yeah, a lot, a lot of smoke. A lot of smoke in that area, for sure.  [00:14:42] Dan: Yeah, the NDAs are key. I remember there was one of the people that I had mentioned earlier that I was going to have on the podcast of Trapital, the interview timing didn't work out, but that was one of the first things they said. If you have any questions for us about Birdman and his relationship with this artist or anything like that. No, we're not answering it. And I was just like, all right, noted. Like, and I feel like that's kind of RANE with a lot of this, but I think they and Birdman and Slim specifically in an odd way. It wasn't even just to them alone. I feel like there was this ethos of, you could almost put Suge Knight into this same category as well, but these people that were cut throat with business folks that they were doing major deals with, whether it was Suge Knight with the folks at Interscope or Birdman with Universal, I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna take what's mine. And rightfully so. They kept ownership over what worked for them and they did that, but they kept that same energy with a lot of the people that like worked with them on the other side too. And that's the piece of it that while it was frustrating to see there are actually some other sides of this too, because even the fact that I think we can get into it in a little bit, but just some of the artists, they were able to sign how they went about that. As frustrating as it was about them not paying artists, like there not every aspect of the business was and is predatory. So that's one thing that you know started to come up more and more as once you get past the salacious parts of the details and stuff, you're like, okay, no and no different than why you went down there to report them. Right. There is nuance and there are a number of things to dive into. For sure, for sure. So shifting here, one of the other things that I've thought about, we talked a little bit about what set Cash Money apart. We talked a bunch about the backstory and the bad rep, but the next thing up here is about Cash Money itself and whether or not you think that it succeeded cause of Birdman and Slim or it succeeded despite them. So thinking about this hypothetical world, if it even is possible, other folks that would've had this label in their hands and what things would've looked like, what's your take there? If we're really isolating them as business leaders. [00:16:52] Zack: I absolutely think it succeeded because of them. I mean, did they get in their own way some of the time? Absolutely. But I think, you know, anybody who can run a business that goes from like the early nineties in an informal economy, you know, in like the Louisiana area to being this global thing, to this day that is still, you know, very much at the forefront of an industry. I mean, you know, like they gotta be doing something right. You know, 30 plus years on the staying relevant and, you know, from like the early days Hot Boys to like the late nineties and, you know, remember Big Timers and Oh yeah. Still flying, all that, you know, heyday as we were alluding to, and sort of like the late s apparently, you know, 2010s, you know, of Cash Money, Young Money with Nikki and Drake and Wayne. Even coming through to, you know, to you to say Scorp. I mean, that's a really long run of relevance and you know, have that, I mean, yeah, like I said, they gotta be doing something  [00:17:53] Dan: Right. Yeah. I think it's because of them too. I will. Because as much as there are issues, and we've talked about a lot of them here, There's so much of this that would've succeeded with folks, other folks in charge, because there are a lot of record labels from the South that tried to do what Cash Money did as well. And a lot of them came and then most of them went. And the fact that we're having this conversation and not having it about them is part of it. And a lot of those record labels had talented people as well, but things just didn't carry over. They may have taken, you know, a bigger deal to get more money upfront, but then the hypothetical is, let's say it was in the hands of someone else that wouldn't have been able to push it forward, then it becomes part of the Island Def Jam conglomerate and then just kind of gets mixed and mixed. And then it becomes one of the many labels that you hear about where it's like, oh yeah, whatever happened to this one or that one. And I think it took what could have been easily, because there would've been enough meat on the bone if we just talked about Cash Money from the early nineties up until, let's say the mid two thousands. Right. And I think that's, inflection point that we can talk about in a little bit. Even that itself was a great run itself. And then you look at the second half of the career from like the mid two thousands on, that's a whole other historic record label. They have two of those under the same house. I think it's because of them and as much as it can be frustrating to hear and see and, you know, unlikely there's some critical things. But let's jump into that now though, because I think one of the questions we have here is the biggest signing that this record label has had. What do you think is the biggest signing for Cash Money? [00:19:29] Zack: Oh man. You know, I think probably easy answer is Drake, but you know, I would actually say Lil Wayne because if you don't have Wayne, I don't think the Drake thing happens, you know, and really Lil Wayne from such a young age going all the way back to the hot boys and, and you know, coming through. All those Carter albums, you know, like he's the backbone of this whole operation, you know, musically, sonically. And I think without him you don't get everything else that comes along. What do you think? [00:19:58] Dan: Yeah, it's Wayne too. That's who I have. I know that Drake is the highest commercial artist. If you were to look at all of the numbers and I think without him, the past decade would've looked very different. But we would still be having this conversation in some form. Likely if it wasn't for the past decade of Drake, it may be a bit more truncated. But we may not be having this conversation at all if it wasn't for Wayne. So I think it has to be Wayne there. What do you think is the best business move for Cash Money? [00:20:29] Zack: You know, I'm gonna go back to that first deal that they struck with Universal. I was in the early nineties at Wendy Day, who he mentioned earlier. It was sort of like a go be who helped, you know, really get them, you know, kind of set up properly with this deal. But you know, they negotiated it and they wouldn't take anything less than something that they felt was an incredible deal. And, I remember the story that Slim told me as they went in, they sat down some mid-level executive at Universal and low-balled them to straight up buy half the company. And so he and Birdman just got up to leave. Then Doug Morris walks in and he was the head of Universal at the time. Comes in with another colleague, Mel Lo winter and Slim members, you know, Doug saying, Hey, if I were you, I wouldn't sell my company. He comes in and offers him 30 million advance just for the privilege of doing business. And, what does Universal get a 7% distribution fee, which is not a lot. So kind of almost doesn't make sense from Universal's perspective unless you think about it in terms of market share. Market share is so important when you're the biggest record label because there are all these great things that happen when you have the most market share. There are all kinds of rights that are assigned based on market share. Like anytime there's, you know, a mislabeled song that gets played or gets spun,and this happens a lot, the metadata in music is a disaster. So if, you know, there are these huge pops of sort of like unresolved money and you know, what they eventually do is they get resolved down by market sharing. So if you're Universal, you know, you get the land share of that and there's a lot of other things, a lot of other places where calculations are done based on market share. You can also brag and say that you're the biggest stuff like that. So, you know, certainly it was worth it for Universal to come in and especially, you know, you think about at the time, You know, hip hop was still at a nascent stage and particularly hip hop in the South was like, not even really on the map for Universal to be able to come in and have this connection was really great for them. But, yeah, I mean, what a great deal. 30 million bucks. You don't have to give up anything. You just give, you know, just give a distribution fee and frankly, you would want your stuff to be distributed by this, you know, enormous record label anyway, so that you could expand and get bigger and better. So I think hands down, that's it. You know, that didn't stop, that there were rumors, you know, that they were even bootlegging their own music, like out the back or wherever, so that they didn't have to pay the 7%. But I, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's that talk about, you know, efficient business. But, you know, I think you go back to that deal that kind of laid the groundwork. Cause if they had given up half of their company way back then, I mean, you see what happened, Jay-Z he up, you know, a huge chunk of Rockefeller early on and. And I think was never really that incentivized, you know, to make that his main thing anymore because, you know, he'd given up such a big chunk early on. [00:23:29] Dan: Yeah, it's one of the best deals we've seen in music and one of the best deals we've seen in hip hop over the past 30 years without question. And the fact that they were able to get everything you mentioned, plus 2 million advance for three years. They kept ownership of the Masters too. And that's the thing that, as we talked about, Birdman and Slim are still collecting on that year after year. So it's up there. It's incredible. And I know that there were other labels that tried to do the same, but just couldn't. I think part of the reason is that this goes back to them focusing odd, what works for them. They had a unique sound. Universal saw this as their entryway to the south in an authentic way because back then, you know, the south was still vying for dominance. And I know that, you know, things were happening at LaFace, but this was different. The New Orleans sound was different from what was happening in Atlanta at the moment. And this gave you an entry path into that. So it was big time.  [00:24:27] Zack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, I think, you know, also 30 million back then, I mean, probably more like 50, 60 million when you talk about inflation. But you know, I would, to our earlier point, you know, did Cash Money succeed? You know, or despite Slim and Birdman, you know, that's situation where, you know, obviously I wasn't there and there wasn't a video of it, but, you know, when you sit down with Slim and Birdman, like you can get the sense that it would be tough to negotiate with that.You know? I mean, Slim's sitting there, he's like 10 feet tall. He doesn't really talk very much, you know, and Birdman, he can get pretty loquacious, but like, uh, he, you know, when he wants to, you know, be kind of stone based, you know, I mean, he can, he can have a great poker face. So I think, you know, if you're some executive, you're going in and you're trying to get them to sell, and they have really no incentive to sell, and they're sitting. Just like, Nope, we're good. You know? I think that that leads you to offer them some crazy deal, like the one that Universal offered and so I really would chocolate up to some very good negotiating, on their part as well.  [00:25:31] Dan: Yeah. You need to be able to negotiate to pull off hip hop's Louisiana purchase. Got to at least one half. Absolutely. At least one half of it. Yeah. So, yeah. The other thing that I did have was a dark horse move and a move that doesn't get talked about as much, and as much as that move does get focused on the one dark horse that I did have is the, well, I guess too, but let me focus on this one. I would say that the mixtape strategy that they had with Lil Wayne in the mid to late two thousands, even though cash money had ownership of the music, even though this, I think that worked so well. One of the questions that we have is just how well did this company record label transition from different stages of music, whether it was from the CD era, ringtones or ringtones, to streaming it, Cash Money knocked it out of the park. With each of their albums sold, especially when they did this deal at the height of the CD era, when the music industry was struggling in the mid two thousands and they were trying to get people to buy CDs. They were just like, Hey, let's give away the music for free. And Wayne was rapping over other beats. He was in his bag more than anyone, and from dedications to Drought, all of those, just so many classics in there that I think real Hip Hop fans and folks that were following Wayne were following even more so than the next album. So all of that speaks. Lil Wayne being able to sell over a million albums in the first week when the Carter three drops in 2008, which is still a very tough time for CD sales to even happen. So that whole run and just the thought to do that. And granted, I think some of this may have been a bit more on Lil Wayne's push himself, especially because at that point he had his own young money imprint. But all of this is happening and you know, Birdman and Slim had a problem with it. They could have said no. But I think the fact that they leaned into the change that was happening, you already saw what 50 Cent did with his mixtapes in the mid two thousands. You get drama, you get the other folks in the south to be able to help make this happen. And I think it worked out well for them. [00:27:34] Zack: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point too. So, you know, I mean, I guess when you have a label that has been that successful, that long, Yeah, there should be a couple different options for what the best move was. Yeah, I like that as a sleeper pick.  [00:27:47] Dan: Yeah. And Lollipop is the best selling ringtone of all time too. over 5 million ringtones sold, and I mean, ringtones, were selling for like three bucks each to that point. So I mean 15 million just from folks wanting to, you know, have, you know, that little jingle on there, Motorola razors or whatever the hell people were using at that point. But, what was your dark horse? Oh  [00:28:10] Zack: Oh man, that's a really good question. I don't know. I mean, I guess it was just so clearly the Universal deal to me. But, you know, and Drake wouldn't really be considered a dark horse candidate, I guess you could say. As time went on, you know, some of the subsequent deals that they worked out with Universal, you know, maybe some of the deals where they were able to get Universal to tackle some of the back office stuff. I mean, it's very unsexy, but you know, that's clearly an area where they needed to improve. So, let's say,to give us some cash in terms of like higher distribution fee in order to have Universal, you know, cover some of this stuff. It's kinda like a boring, dark horse candidate. But you know, I mean, you could say that that's probably useful in terms of buttoning things up and you know, there was a lot of smoke, like we said, but you know, nothing ever, like the house never burned down. So, you know, maybe, maybe those kinds of arrangements really kind of help prevent something like that from happening. [00:29:03] Dan: And I think that back office piece also just makes me think about the broader partnership and the expertise that they were able to lean on. And a question that I actually didn't explore, but now I'm thinking more about it, is how different do we think that the Universal partnership would've been, let's say Cash Money had partnered with another label under the Universal umbrella? Because obviously part of this is very close. There was Universal Republic at the time and they've been hand in hand working with Monte and Avery Lipman ever since, and they are two of the most highly regarded executives in the game that have now being, year after year after year, the label with the number one market share. And part of that is because of Cash Money itself, but it's also because of all the other stars, even outside of that label, they have been able to bring it to, as opposed to many of the other labels in the Universal Umbrella or the umbrella of Universal Music group labels that have not had that consistency. So I also think there's a dynamic there where, let's say there's another world where cash money was under capital or cash money was under some of these other labels that have struggled to stay relevant, what that would've looked like. [00:30:10] Zack: Yeah. I mean, I think if you, if you kind of need to go back to Def Jam, you know, some of the back and forth that Def Jam has had over the years. It gives you an idea of, or even as like a top label, the kind of trials and tribulations you might go under. But you know, when you're coming in, you know, going directly to Doug Morris, you know that that gives you a lot of leeway, a lot of leverage. You got that line straight to the top. And, you know, even with somebody like Jay, it took him, it wasn't until, you know, I don't know, when he was dealing directly with Doug Morris, when Doug, this is, I think around the time of Blueprint three, and Jay had that line. I gave Doug a grip. I lost the flip for five stacks. He could have the album. They bet 10 million on a coin flip and like, you know, one way or the other. So, you know, but Birdman we're doing that like, you know, 15 years earlier, having that kind of direct line. So, you know, again, I think going straight to serve them incredibly well. [00:31:09] Dan: Definitely. Yeah. Another, another piece too. So, two other, like sonically three other dark horse candidates, I'll bring 'em, but they're all under the same thing, was Bird Man's ability to win bid wars and win huge bidding wars, I think is an underrated piece of this record label. So I'll bring up three of them. First one, go back to 2004. So this is around the time thatCarter came out and Wayne was considering to leave Def Jam, and this was around the time that Jay-Z had just became president and Jay-Z pushed hard, make that happen and couldn't leave cash money for Def Jam. That was the thought, right? [00:31:43] Zack: Yeah. Yeah. Carter boys, and there were all these, you know, kind of … [00:31:49] Dan: Yeah, they're trying to push the whole Carter board thing and yeah, Birdman was like, all right, come through. I'll give you your own imprint and you are the president of that imprint and let's continue this thing. And that obviously sets up young money and then the next 15 years after that, right. So he does that. Yeah. And I think that's huge because then that sets the stage for the bidding war for Drake, because Drake drops so far gone beginning of 2009. And this is like, you know, everyone is trying to, it's like when Yaba sweepstakes we're seeing in the NBA right now everyone wants this person and everyone is going after them. I mean, truly Greenwall Lior, everyone was trying to get 'em. And it was that connection that Drake had with Cortez, Brian and Jay Prince Ja Prince and that whole crew that I think eventually helped keep him on the cash money roster there. So that was a huge one. And I think we saw something similar with Nicki Minaj as well. A couple months later. Everyone wanted her to beat me up. Scotty the mixtapes were hot and he and Wayne, Wayne was like, no, I want her to be the, the first lady of the label. That was the whole thing in the two thousands, right? Everyone wanted to have the first lady. You saw it in the nineties, right? But like everyone wanted to declare and elevate this person and rightfully so, but like that's who we had. And then we obviously saw the beginning and the middle part of that next decade. Just go on one of the all-time runs. So Bird Band's ability to win against the biggest people in the industry for record label that his men, you know, his brother own is really impressive for sure. [00:33:21] Zack: And you know, it served Lil Wayne well in the end because Young Money became something that he was able to sell for, you know, about a hundred million dollars for his stake later on too. So, you know, keeping that ownership as opposed to just chasing the biggest advance time and time again we see in hip hop. You know, it's so important. But, you know, I was thinking the other night, it is funny, like everyone has watched New Jack City, and it had been ages, ages, ages. And if they reminded me, I mean, how much of the whole Young Money, Cash Money situation is modeled after elements of that movie. I mean, even just like, The name Cash Money or C M B Y M C M B. The shirts, like the shirts, are incredibly similar that, you know, a lot of the lines, even the Carter, you know, the albums are named. I mean, the Carter was the building, you know, where Wesley Stein's character was like running this whole operation you know, that's kind of like another interesting element to the whole, you know, to the whole narrative. Like, you know, these guys coming out of Louisiana, you know, had their eyes up on this very New York kind of, you know, almost role model, for a business. And, you know, they had been hustlers. They were kind of modeling themselves after these, you know, fictional hustlers in New York and, you know, and then in a way out hustled sort of like the New York record label establishment. So I thought that was kind of an interesting, you know, little side bit of color to the whole story. And, like a bit of irony as well, you know, when you talk about, South versus, New York kind of situation too.  [00:34:59] Dan: And I think that also speaks to some of that mentality too, because here you have Birdman that was getting inspiration from a black crime movie. And I think a lot of the ways of him doing business are very much central on, okay, I wanna support and uplift the black community, do what I can here and grid. And I think, you know, part of how he was able to do that has, you know, been quite controversial just with certain artists he's had on. Yeah. But still, I think that ethos stems back from ownership in trying to keep things in-house as much as you can. And it took them a lot to even partner with other artists from other parts of the countries and stuff like that, that I think you saw with Dino Brown and how he was in that movie and how he carried versus I think someone like Jay-Z who record label Rockefeller named after one of the great white business magnets that you had in this country. Right. And so many Jay-Z bars, whether it's Black Axl, Rose Black, Kirk Cobain called me this. I feel like, you know, people always get on Kanye for some of that. Like always trying to like be okay. I'm, you know, the black version of whatever X person. But I think Jay-Z, you know, also had a lot of that too. And then I think also looking at his business mentality, a lot of his success came from his huge and lucrative partnerships with established companies in this space. So the inspiration I think also became kind of telltale sign for the type of businesses these types of folks ended up creating too.  [00:36:23] Zack: Yeah. And you know, I mean, you know, brown was a really ruthless character. And you know, I think there's like the money and the success that's glamorized. But you know, it's a gritty movie. I mean it seems like he is not a likable guy in the end. You know, without giving too much of the plot, I'm sure everybody's seen it, but like, I was like, wow. Yeah. I don't know if I'd be wanting to model myself after this dude. You know, he's pretty brutal. But, you know, even on the, you know, kind of the lighter side, there's a scene where he's like giving out turkeys at Thanksgiving. Yep. And you know, the Cash Money guys always give out turkeys in New Orleans at Thanksgiving and I wonder if they got that directly from the movie. You know, cuz so many of you know, from the Carter. You know, the c n b kind of, kind of like whole, you know, ethos there. I wonder how much of that they just pulled directly from the movie, so… [00:37:16] Dan: Oh, yeah. I could definitely see that mentality too. And speaking about it, you know, full circle. I could also see Birdman having a bit of that cancel that bitch mentality too, in short situations. [00:37:28] Zack: Right, right, right, right. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, and they won't talk about that part of it, the interviews maybe, but you kind of get the sense of like that's where the negotiation and the cash element of the Cash Money comes in. Yeah.  [00:37:42] Dan: The aita literally held people over the balcony of a building to get what he wanted. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of that came through to fruition. But next category up here. So missed opportunity. Is there anything that you look at that you're like, man, obviously it's an overall successful company. Is there anything you look back on about what if they did this differently or what if they did that differently? [00:38:02] Zack: I think the number one thing I wonder is what if they had sold the whole thing, you know? A year and a half ago, could they have gotten just an insane multiple? I mean, you know, you're seeing like Springsteen staying and all these guys getting hundreds of millions of dollars for their catalogs. So, you know, I get it. And there's, you know, catalogs, hip hop catalogs are valued differently from rock catalogs. And also one of the benefits of rock catalogs is they're usually, you know, written and owned by, you know, all the rights are with the band. There's not like a million different producers coming in. It's not as complicated. So like, you know, they can sell the whole thing, you know, a hundred percent of the rights and you don't have to, you know, it's not like you're just buying like, you know, I don't know, 30% of this and 50% of that and whatever. It's, it's not this complex web, let's say there may not be as many things that haven't been papered over as there were with Cash Money, but man, you know, there were some pretty insane, numbers flying around and I really wonder if, you know, if they had, been applying some of, you know, 20 or 30 x multiple. To whatever they were pulling in, you know, which is, you know, they can just sit there and make, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year, just off of this catalog. I mean, so what would the market have been if they had went and sold the whole thing at the peak of the catalog? Boom. That's what I really wonder.  [00:39:21] Dan: That's a good one. So I guess some high level back of the envelope math on that. So let's say that the peak of the catalog boom was like December, 2020 maybe, and then like, you know, into the spring of 2021 and we definitely saw some 30 x multiples there and at least the last public number I saw, and I think you had this in one of your latest articles as well, but that Cash Money's Masters generated around 30 million annually, or 20 to 30 million. Was that the number? [00:39:49] Zack: Yeah, I think it was at least 30. And you know, cuz Bird, like most of hey Birdman, you know, has been making like close to 20 million a year, for a while, give or take. And you know, most of that is just, you know, the catalog. So yeah, I mean that's just his cut. And then if you figure you double that for Slim, yeah, probably, you know, it was around 30, 35, something like that, so, you know. Yeah. I mean, are they gonna get a 30 x value even at the peak? I don't think so because just hip hop wasn't getting that kind of valuation. I don't really understand that because everybody's like, oh, rock and roll music gonna stand the test of time. It's like if you ask the average 20 year old who Bruce Springsteen is, they're not gonna know. I mean, so I would argue that hip hop is actually gonna be more valuable down the line. But just the valuation, you know, that's not what people have been paying for. So even at the peak, you know, I, I don't know that I saw any valuations anywhere near 30. I think Kanye was shopping his catalog at one point and wanted a 30 x multiple, but, you know, didn't get any bites. So I think it comes down to like, yeah, what kind of multiple could they actually have gotten?  [00:40:56] Dan: Yeah, because even more recently, so yeah, we're recording this now. January, 2023, there was a report that just came out about Dr. Dre selling a collection of music assets that I believe are worth different multiples. But the number that I heard from that was, They generate around 10 million per year and that he wanted 250 and he's getting just over 200 million or somewhere between that. So that's around a 20 x multiple for a deal. That sounds like it was still coming underway in 2022. So if you were to put that multiple on, let's call it 35 million for maybe what Birdman and Slim have collectively, then that is you're talking $700 million. So that's a pretty sizable number, not a billion. But maybe if there are some concerns about, maybe there's a bit more of a split of who owns what. We didn't even talk about publishing right now, but there may be a split too, especially if everything was captured. and even thinking about quality control, for instance, and I think they got around 400 million, 300, got 400 million, but this was last year. So I would assume that 500 to 750 sounds, if I heard a number there, I would be like, sounds about right. If I heard a number lower than that or higher than that, I would probably be surprised one way or the other.  [00:42:15] Zack: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that makes sense. And it's not just one artist, you know, obviously it's a whole bunch of artists and a bunch of pieces of different artists. But I think another thing, and this is maybe one of the reasons why the hip-hop valuations are lower, is like when you have all those producers, it might not be as easy to get, you know, to get clearances for using stuff in commercials and that sort of thing. Whereas if you buy a hundred percent of the rights, there's no question. Right. And so I'm not even sure if somebody owned 1% of, of something, whatever. Like I don't think they would have some, like, veto right. About the song being played in a commercial. But, you know, when you start to have so many different parties owning bigger stakes, a particular song, it can get a little convoluted and, you know, I do wonder if that's a big part of it as well. [00:43:00] Dan: Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah. Cuz I think sampling also is a huge piece of that as well. The missed opportunity for me, this is a bit more of a specific one from like a timeframe, not like a specific move, but Birdman and Little Wayne not settling and squashing the beef, the issues that they had in the mid 2010s. I think we lost out on Wayne. I know Wayne was in prison during part of this, but we lost out on his momentum. We lost out on a lot there because I feel like a lot happened from the Carter four coming out in 2011 to the Carter five coming out in 2018. I believe. There was so much back and forth. There was so much drama. You know, Drake was going on his all time run at that point. Nicki was doing the same. And the fact that the signature biggest artist is literally tweeting out, I want off this label, but it's not that easy. Or sending these messages out in the middle of Wayne and Drake having their tours and him still being on albums and trying to figure out how to drop things. I think it was obviously a great decade in run, but I think it could have been even greater if they were able to solve some of that stuff and figure it out.  [00:44:11] Zack: Yeah, a hundred percent, you know, that that was like, it's a long time to be going between, proper albums, you know, so, and I think that was a really interesting time in the music business. And, I mean, the music business changed completely right from, from 2011 to 2018 from being, you know, oh, this new streaming thing is gonna be important to like, you know, it is the entire business basically. So, you know, and I think that an artist like Wayne, you know, as somebody whose music translates really well to, you know, to that medium. And, you know, as we know, hip hop is a monster on streaming and, you know, tends to do really well. So I would've been really curious to see if he had been able to continue that momentum, you know, just how much bigger he could have gotten in that period of time too. [00:44:57] Dan: Yeah, definitely. The next piece we add too, I think we talked a little bit about this just in terms of how did the label handle the transitions? And I think you just mentioned it there. They were able to do a lot of it well, especially the mixed day piece and the ring toes. And then I think a lot of it laid the work for streaming and Drake is streaming, did a lot of that, the Cash Money labels. So I think that worked. But this next question is interesting though, because it's been around three years, I think it's been at least three years since you did your deep story, the Forbes cover story on Cash Money, where you went down and interviewed them. And then I know it's been four years since I had written a piece around the time that Drake had completed Scorpion and we knew that it was going to be, or at least I thought the future may be bleak. And I think the question that you pose into the piece was, can they strike platinum again? It's been three years since now. What do you think?  [00:45:48] Zack: You know, I don't know. I mean, the rules for platinum, like what constitutes platinum have changed so much that, you know, all it takes is, you get, you know, one hot signing and they do really well on streaming and suddenly you have a platinum whatever. And, you know, it's like, okay, I think that, you know, Drake is gone. Wayne is gone. When I went down there, they were really big on blue face and Jack Reese, you know, I don't know what either of them are turning out to be like, I mean anywhere near Drake, Nikki, Wayne, et cetera. Jack Reese is the king of R&B though, right? That was the whole thing too. So what I'm gonna go with, no, I don't think they will begin Drake Platinum. But I would caveat that by saying it doesn't matter because they can just sit back, and collect these checks. And that's gonna happen. That'll happen even if, you know Drake and Nikki and Wayne retire. I mean, their back catalog stuff is still gonna be a gold mine. And you know, when I was down there, what they said was that they're forever in business with Drake. But they wouldn't get more specific. And so what I took that to mean was, you know, at the time, you know, he was kind of an ex extra kidding himself. But even once he's gone, they're still sitting on these, you know, their share of the copyrights that will be, you know, Drake is a streaming king and they have a big piece of that. So, yeah. Do I think they'll strike platinum again? You know, probably not, but I don't really think it matters. I don't think so, what are they gonna do? Like what are they gonna do? They're gonna sit back and collect those checks. Yeah.  [00:47:26] Dan: Yeah. I came to the same spot as well. I guess platinum in the purest sense of having a chart hit. Sure. There could be a legacy hit that gets, you know, some viral thing on TikTok and then that becomes a hit. Like, I don't know, I don't know if I like slow motion singles, like juvenile when platinum, but I feel like that's the type of song I could see go viral and some TikTok thing and then bring new, that's one of my cat favorite Cash Money songs. And I feel like I could see something like that happen. But I feel like you were kind of posing it more so in the moment of looking at these runs of like late two thousand, late nineties, early two thousands, that Cash Money is like a platinum moment or mid two thousands. Wayne's mixtape ran late two thousands, early 2010 or to mid 2010s. Young Money rises to the highest of heights. I don't think we'll see that moment again. And it's crazy cuz I think there’s times where maybe things could have happened. You had the rich gang moment where he looked like he was so close with Young Thug. And I feel like especially in 2014, people expected Thug to go on to that superstar level and still be very successful. But I think that the stock for Thug at that moment was a little higher than it may be actually reached. And I think some of Thug's proteges kind of reached the heights that we thought Thug would've reached at one point, just in terms of a commercial success perspective. But it just never quite happened. But again, they own this. It's not like they missed some opportunity. This is something that is literally generating tens of millions per year and that's not changing anytime soon. [00:48:54] Zack: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, it's funny, they have, I guess just to sort of like switch gears a tiny bit, but you know, last moment when they said when Birdman and some said they're forever in business with Drake. It wasn't in Miami, but I met with them for some follow-up questions in New York. and they have, like within Universal's building in Midtown, they have a Cash Money conference route. Like there are actually these, I mean I don't think it's diamond play, but the door handles are giant dollar signs, like the Cash Money logo. And, and it looks like they're diamonds in the dollar sign and whatever it is. But, you open up the thing and you go in and there's like all these plaques on the wall and it's just a conference room that's always there. And it's sort of like their designated conference room when they, when they cut the tat. And I remember, yeah, we sat down in that conference room and I really tried to press them on the Drake thing. And I mean, if you dig up the Forbes story, we did a video too. And there's this great kind of tense moment where I'm like really kind of pushing them about it and they're like, we're forever in this with Drake. And like, that's it. And it's clear that's all you're gonna get out of that. But, you know, so, in terms of striking platinum again, yeah, I mean, I could almost envision a scenario where Drake like does the Super Bowl and he plays some, you know, catalog hit that never went platinum. And just purely by the exposure of people hearing it be like, oh man, listen that again, it just suddenly goes platinum again. You know, or for the first time. But yeah, short of that, I know I'm gonna agree with you. I think probably not again, but that it doesn't matter anyway.  [00:50:32] Dan: Yeah. So we have a couple questions left here. This one, and I think it's maybe similar to the fourth you're bringing up, but if you were in Birdman and Slim's shoes today, is there anything that you would be doing differently? [00:50:44] Zack: You know what, I think I go back to that question of like, would you sell the whole thing? Especially if the prospects are kind of dimming a bit and, you know, it's like, I don't know though. I mean, you know, it's like if you're getting up there in age, like would you sell you, you know, you got this great house that you bought, you know, you got this great penthouse apartment in New York that you bought. For like, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in, you know, 1982. And, you could probably get, you know, I don't know, 10 million bucks for it. And then you could just like rent and do whatever you want and you know, for the rest of your life. But like, you don't really need the money. Like, you're fine as it is, like you sell it. Like what would you even do with the money that you got? You really love living in that apartment. Maybe you just stay. And I think that's kind of the point. Like, just remember being in the studio with Birdman and he doesn't need to be doing this. Like, he doesn't need to be running around with Jack in Miami trying to make him the, the king of r&b or whatever. But he truly loves it. Like you, you can tell that he's passionate about it and. After the interview was over, and I wish I had this on tape, but we're just like a dozen of us sitting there in the room. And, Birdman, he goes, Zack, why do people think I'm scary? And I remember he said, he was like, really pointy moment. He's like, I'm respectful. You know, I'm not a clown. I don't turn tables over. I don't scream and yell. I'm respectful. Why are people so afraid of me? And I thought for a minute and I said, you know, as like, look man, like, to be honest, I think the base tattoos really are kind of like off putting some people who are not used to that sort of thing. And, he was like, yeah, I've been thinking of getting them removed. You know, I think it'd be better for business. So, you know, it's like there's still this element of, you know, even though he's made it and he's got everything he wants, there's still this part of him that came from a different world. That, you know, he's kind of like still stuck between two worlds, between the world that he came up in and the world that he can afford to live in. And, I think, you know, where he feels at his best is in the studio. So why would you sell that whole thing? Why would you, you know, I mean, why would you kind of give that up? And I think Slim likes it too. And you know, they have this really funny relationship and, you know, Birdman's in the studio and Slim does live the business. And that's kind of the breakdown of it. And I just remember, like after this interview, you know, after leaving the studio, I went and we were all supposed to have dinner together and I went off with Slim and we waited for like a half an hour in the parking lot for Birdman. And he just never showed up. And then we went to dinner and he just never showed up. And it's cuz he wanted to stay in.He just stayed in the studio all freaking night. Cuz that's what he really loves. So, yeah, I guess it's a long way of saying, what would I do if I were them? I mean, you know, probably like the financial advisor advice would be. Sell this big thing and then you're totally set for the rest of your life. But you know, if it's throwing off enough, more than enough money, tens of millions of dollars every year for you to live on, what's the point? You know, why not just do that and do what makes you happy? [00:53:59] Dan: I think that's a piece that often gets for guys and understands what some of this stuff is, that some people really just love the craft. It makes me think too about someone like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg and these directors that are now in their seventies or eighties, they're not doing these movies to try to make more money. Well, granted, yes, I think they're bought into the financial success. They want fair terms. But this is what they enjoy doing. They've been doing it since they were kids and they wanna just find outlets to be able to do this in the best way possible. And I think the same could be said about Birdman of wanting to be in the studio and just wanting to have that energy. And if you sell that, then what do you do? I think especially for someone like him that's stuck to the thing that he does well. And you know, like he isn't out here like Jay-Z trying to be mogul in the sense of having different things. I mean, there's a mogul aspect in terms of media ownership, but not in the sense of like, yes, I own this, I do this, I do that as well. Sure. Maybe there's some smaller things that are in the, you know, new Orleans or, or the Louisiana area, but not in that same way. So I do think that speaks a lot to that.  [00:55:06] Zack: Yeah. And I think they have dabbled in other stuff for sure. And you know, real estate, and I think there was some period of time where they had like some oil rigs or something like that.They had a vodka called G T V. They were trying to really build up Y M C M B as like, as a clothing line type of thing, rather than just merch. But, you know, none of that really kind of like ever went viral in the way that any of their artists did. So, you know, and maybe because it was that they just didn't have the passion for it that they have for music. Like that example of Birdman. So, you know, Jay clearly has the passion for the business. He clearly has the passion for, you know, doing the champagne thing or, you know, doing the VC thing. And you can tell cuz he's out there doing it. He’s doing it cuz he loves it, and he makes money. But, I think it's hard for something to do well if you aren't truly passionate. Because consumers can kind of see through that. And also, you're not gonna go the extra mile for something if you don't truly care about it either. Definitely.  [00:56:08] Dan: Definitely. And mine is a little different. And this may be more so from a selfish perspective of what I would do, but that's part of the question, right? Yeah. As someone that is such a fan of the vibe and the culture that they were able to create, I want to be able to relive that in different ways. I wish that Birdman and the team could patch things up and there could be a true Cash Money reunion tour that goes across the country. I know there's been different things here or there, but the same way that Didat did the Big Bad Boy Arena tour in 2016. I wanna be able to see that. I'd love to be able to do that. And I also wanna see a music biopic and the same style and the same budget and energy of Straight Outta Compton. I would love to see that about the Cash Money story. And to be honest, I feel like, I know there's a lot of energy around these biopics, but like I may be biased because it's the genre I like since Street Outta Compton came out, I just haven't seen one that's, you know, as good as that. And sometimes it's a bit frustrating when I see movies like Bohemian Rhapsody or Elvis, which I think they're fine, but I don't think they're as good as Straight Outta Compton and they're getting all these awards and stuff. And it makes me think that okay, I don't know whether it'll get Gary Gray back again or someone that can, you know, tell this story in a great way. I would love to see that unfold, but I think you would also need buy-in from the artist because obviously the fact that the relationships are straight can make some of this tough. And the willingness to tell the story in an honest way and the fact that there's kind of two sides to everything. Is Birdman gonna be bought in if he and his brother are being shown as, you know, like predatory loan sharks, like screwed people over. Right. Are the artists gonna be happy if it's making it seem too favorable to Birdman? So I know there's some contentions with how the story is told, but it's still something I would love to see done in the right way.  [00:57:56] Zack: Yeah. Not to mention, how would you clear all the music, you know, how would you handle that? Although maybe now it's a little bit more streamlined, but you know, again, you know, a lot of different cooks in the kitchen there, so you never know. But yeah, no, I'd love to see that too. Oh man. That people asked.  [00:58:13] Dan: All right, so last question here. Who won? If there's one person, artist, executive from Cash Money, who would you say is the winner of everything that's happened over the past 30 plus years? [00:58:24] Zack: You know, I think there's a lot of winners, a lot of losers, A lot of you get kind of a little bit of both, but I'm gonna go with Slim, you know, I mean, Slim has been in the background, like Birdman has gotten some more of the glory, but he is also taken a lot more of the heat. I mean, he has taken basically all the heat, I think, and Slim has managed to just sit back, run this like incredible business and make just a boatload of money without taking some of the heat that his brother did. So, yeah, I'm gonna go with Slim. How about that? I wanna know, what do you think? I like that answer.  [00:58:57] Dan: I'm glad you said that. Yeah, because I think it would be both, but Birdman is my answer. The bidding wars that he won over the years. The ruthlessness of just getting the deals done, staying true to what he knows. There's a lot that I disagree with, and there's a lot that I wish that he had done differently and a bunch of missed opportunities, but they did something that we have not seen done in hip hop before, and we may not see that again, just because of how things have changed and evolved over time. So it really is a credit to that happening. So yeah, I love the Slim take too, because the fact that he reaps the rewards without, you know, any of the backlash. Like I've never seen anyone tweet or get frustrated about like, oh yeah, you know, Slim's really screwing these artists over. Slim's really doing this. You know what I mean? It's always a photoable Birdman, you know, like, right. But yeah. Oh man. Such a fascinating label. Yeah. Before we close things out, any final thoughts on Cash Money records?  [00:59:57] Zack: Well, you know, I wouldn't say also, About Slim. You know, there's this, somebody had a great quote. It was some writer and they, it was some famous writer, and they said, a writer's fame is the best fame because you are not famous enough to get bothered on the street, but you are famous enough to get a good table at a good restaurant. And, you know, in a way, I think that's, that's kind of what Slim was able to do. Like, he could get, you know, what, whatever he wants, he could have, but nobody's kind of bothering him about it. And I think that's how he wants it. And, you know, Birdman, whatever he wants, he could have sort of, but what he can't do is walk outside without, you know, everybody harassing him, you know? So, you know, I think that to some extent he's more interested in the spotlight. You get the good with the bad. But you know, I think that spotlight it's important, like being able to turn it off is a really great luxury to have to turn it on and off. And, you know, once it's on all the time, you'll never be able to turn it off. So I am going to Slim for that. Yeah, for sure. [01:01:02] Dan: And Slim also did get memes made out of him from telling Charlamagne off of the Breakfast Club, either or that too. [01:01:08] Zack: Yeah. Or the Birdman hand rub.  [01:01:11] Dan: Is that the Birdman hand rub? Yeah, the No clap though. I mean, I need to put on that though, but man, what a moment. Yeah, yeah. All right. Toasted Cash Money. And this is a fun one. What a fascinating case study. And yeah, we're gonna tell the stories that don't get told elsewhere. So Zack, thank you for coming through and thanks again for this Young Money, Cash Money t-shirt for those folks watching the videos. You can see this is the one last time I was in New York, Zack came through, he was like, I got something for you. And yeah, I had to make it happen.  [01:01:40] Zack: That's right. I should have worn mine today. But, it was in the laundry. You know. It was in the laundry. .  [01:01:45] Dan: Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, man. Thank you. [01:01:48] Zack: Appreciate it. All right. Have a good one. Thanks again. Yep.  [01:01:51] Dan: All right, cool. [01:01:53] Dan Outro: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend and post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

I had a great chat about the future of streaming and more with Ari Herstand, who isan independent artist who also runs Ari’s Take, an education business to teach others artists about the industry. He just released the third edition of his book, How To Make It In the New Music Business. Ari joined me to discuss how artists are navigating new music releases. It's increasingly getting out of the artist’s hands in favor of the uncontrollable algorithms powering the likes of Spotify and TikTok. Ari says it’s like, “playing the lottery.”  While algorithms are taking the human element out of music discovery, that human touch has found itself into new artist monetization tools like NFTs. It has inverted what Ari calls an artist’s “pyramid of investment” for an artist growing their fanbase. Ari and I covered a lot of ground on this episode. Here’s what you can expect to hear from us: [3:10] Waterfall release method infiltrating Spotify [8:15] Music discovery power shifting away from human, toward algorithms  [11:40] DSP’s purposely pulling power away from playlist editors [19:21] TikTok isn’t for every artist [21:26] Evolving team structure of an indie artist  [27:55] Role of music NFTs [31:44] How Sammy Arriaga sold $250k of NFTs to non-fans [40:02] The Pyramid of investment  [49:10] Ari the musician vs. Ari the educator  [50:05] Updated version of How To Make It In New Music Business book Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guest: Ari Herstand, @ariherstand Learn more about Ari's book, How to Make It in the New Music Business here: https://book.aristake.com Learn more about Ari's Take here: https://aristake.com/ This week’s sponsor is Laylo. Join artists like Kodak Black, Sam Smith, and others who notify their fans instantly when they drop merch, tickets, and more. Create your own drop page for free in seconds at laylo.com Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] ARI HERSTAND I'm not a good recording engineer and I'm not a producer. So that's another team member that I'm going to hire when I make a record. Like I'm not Finneas. I'm not going to make a record in my bedroom. Like I can't do that. And that's not what I want to do. Like honestly, that doesn't inspire me. What inspires me is to make music with other people. [00:00:26] DAN RUNCIE INTRO Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level. [00:01:36] DAN RUNCIE Today's episode is a playbook for all the indie artists out there. I had a great conversation with Ari Herstand, who is a musician himself, and he's also the founder of Ari's Take, which is his education business that focuses on how artists can make it today, especially indie artists. How indie artists can make it today in the new music business. And that's actually the title of the third edition of this upcoming book. Ari and I talked a lot about some of the new and updated insights that he has in this edition of the book, specifically around streaming, and how artists are starting to favor and prefer focusing on algorithms and how that can get them more listeners and where playlists currently sit with artists prioritizing them. And we also talk about NFTs, TikTok, and Ari's concept in the book called the Pyramid of Investment. This is a great conversation for anyone that wants to better understand the music industry, especially for the growing segment of independent artists that are carving their lanes out for themselves. Here's the episode. Hope you enjoy it. [00:01:48] DAN RUNCIE All right, today we are joined by Ari Herstand, who is the author of his new book that's coming out, how to make it in the new music business. He's an artist himself, and I was lucky enough to be a guest on his podcast a couple months back. So Ari, it's great to have you on. And congrats on the book coming up. [00:02:06] ARI HERSTAND Yeah, thanks, Dan. Thank you. Thank you. Very exciting. The third edition and get ramped up for that. But it's great to be here with you today. Thanks for having me. [00:02:17] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, definitely. And I know for you, one of the big topics of the book is just how artists continue to evolve with how they're releasing music, how they're paying attention to what's going on with streaming right now. I feel like you have a good vantage point for this because you're doing so much of this yourself with your own releases. What are some of the big changes? Because I know that everything post-pandemic has been a little different, and now we're heading into this new phase right now with the new year. What's the big thing for you that you're seeing with the evolution? [00:09:07] ARI HERSTAND Right. So every artist needs to ask themselves what their intentions are with their release. And so, you know, the beautiful thing about the new music business and the scary and daunting thing about the new music business is there really isn't a right or a wrong way to do anything. There is the right and wrong way for you. And that could be the wrong way for me. So everyone, you know, it's based on your intentions and what your goals are for the release. If we just go, you know, more in the mainstream realm or let's just say your intention is to be successful on Spotify. Because that's a metric that most artists these days are kind of using to gauge the success of their release. And they want to have the best chance of, you know, grabbing that Spotify, being being blessed by the Spotify God, I guess. So to do that, there is a very specific release strategy that has been studied and now tested and now used by everyone from Lizzo and Krungman to Maggie Rogers to Robert Glassberg. And that's the waterfall release method. And Indie artists, you know, that are just releasing their first few singles are using this as well. I mean, this is the waterfall release method. And I'll break this down a little bit on what this means. This has started to get used a few years ago, but it really picked up last year in 2022. And now 2023 is I think going to be the year of the waterfall. But basically what it is is that, you know, you release singles leading up to the album. That has been happening for years now. However, here's what gets a little bit more where where it gets a nuance on how those singles are released. It's you don't just release a single song anymore as a single. You release your first single one song. That's just the one song released one second now your second single is that the new song is track number one. And the previous single that you released is track number two. So it's technically your second single, but it's kind of like a two song album. If you really go that way, if you're tuning it up, if you're an artist is to the artist asking this all the time. Well, how do I do this in my district? back end or whatever, like doing it's a two song album. And the way that the streams maintain for the previous single and that you don't lose your playlist inclusion, all that stuff is you use the same highest or C number. And so it's if you use the same highest or C number that used when you released that track, a month prior, it will be identical stream counts. And then a month later, you release your third single, but that's now a three track album. You know track number one is the new single track number two is the single you release a month ago and track number three is the is the single you release two months ago. And as long again, use the same highest or C numbers, it'll be included in the same playlist. They will be identical tracks, wherever they're included on people's algorithm, personal playlists, all that stuff. You can do this. People are doing five or six singles that way. And then the album and this release method, you know, this could take eight months, essentially, if you want to do one single every four to six weeks, and then the album. How you can kind of look at it, is you're building the album. And so it doesn't have to go on order, you can pick whatever order you want based on your singles. And then the final album is the album order, no correlation doesn't have to be the single order, you can pick whatever order you want each time. The track art can be different each time. I've seen it, people do different single art for each release. I've seen people just use the album cover for every release. So you know, at the end, you might have like six singles released that each have a few different songs on them. And then the full album, some people pull those previous singles down. So if they want to get a clean discography going up there, you just have a final album at the end of the day. And the previous singles with like the two song album, a three-song album, the four-song album before they pull those down. But you're not going to lose any playlists, you're not going to lose any stream counts because you're using same iris to scene numbers each time. So that is a release method, and the reason people are doing it this way is for the Spotify algorithm because Spotify likes to have regular releases. And if you send somebody say, hey, here's my new song and you send them the link, they're going to listen to that song. Now, if there's nothing, no other songs following that song to listen to, after your song finishes, Spotify is going to recommend them something to listen to or they're going to jump off and listen to something else. Now, if you give them the songs to listen to that after your previous releases, they'll stick around and keep listening to it. So the reason people are doing this is for the Spotify algorithm, but also to keep their fans engaged. So like say, here's your single number four and they listen to it and like, oh, cool. What now? I'm going to go back to listening to my favorite artist. Unless you have singles three, two, and one also there. And like, oh, I'll just keep listening to the other songs on this essential playlist. You think of it, whatever you want, a four-song album, a four-song single, a playlist of your new singles. However, you want to think of it, the user is just thinking, oh, I'm clicking on this link or new music Friday, or I'm in my release radar. I see this new single come out by this new artist I like. And then Spotify is going to start to recommend those songs through the algorithm. And the best thing about continuing to release the and the waterfall method is like those previous singles stay included in release radar. So this is like what has been figured out by labels and managers and artists over the last few years. And based on what Spotify wants to see and basically what they're being rewarded for with the algorithm from Spotify. And you know, I think a few years ago, everybody was chasing the playlist editors and like, oh my gosh, if I can just get included in the rap caviar, then like I'm set forever. Whatever the playlist inclusion, the editorial playlists are not as powerful right now as the algorithmic playlists are. That is a big change. Is like three, four years ago, people were like, oh, it's all about the official editorial. Now you want to trigger that algorithm because that is now personalizing every single user's playlist based on what Spotify thinks that user likes to hear. And you want to get your songs included in that. And people are just letting Spotify feed them now based on the algorithm versus seeking out playlist [00:09:27] DAN RUNCIE And why do you think that that shift happened from the playlist prioritization to the algorithm? Was it something internal with Spotify or is it just a natural decline in the power of playlist? {00:11:40] ARI HERSTAND Yeah, I mean, the main thing is is let's think about what Spotify's intentions and goals are. Their goals are to keep users on their platform as long as possible. And they've discovered that if you feed users songs that they want to hear and have a higher success rate of them continuing to listen and stay on Spotify, then they're going to follow that. Then Spotify is going to do more of that. So they've been AB in this for years. They're like, OK, do people stick on our platform on Spotify longer by listening to our editorial playlists that human beings employed by Spotify are creating? Or do they stick on our platform longer by the algorithmic playlists that are internal robots are curating for them, the algorithm is curating for them. And what they found is that people are sticking around longer with the algorithmic playlists. So they're now doing more of that and realizing that this is what it is engaging users to stay on Spotify longer, because that's what users prefer. The algorithm has gotten a lot better at learning people's tastes, music tastes, than any singular playlist editor. And the other thing is, when we're talking about indie artists, is that why indie artists need to refocus their efforts into more of the algorithmic lane versus the editor lane, is that playlist editors, I mean, it's like playing the lottery to try to get an official Spotify editorial playlist. For one, with 100,000 songs being uploaded every day, you have a very, very hard chance of getting selected being one of those songs that is going to get included on. The very select few Spotify editorial playlist spots. But the algorithm, there's billions, literally billions of playlists that theoretically that they can put you on, or the algorithm will insert you into various people's radios or discover weekly or whatever. You have a much better chance of getting there. And then if users respond, well, do your song there. I mean, you pop up on someone's discover weekly, and they click save. I like this song. I want to hear more of it, and they don't skip it. That sends signals back to the Spotify algorithm, like, oh, this song is performing well. Let's try it in more algorithmic labels. Let's try it in more radio. Let's try it in more of these. And then theoretically, you'll just get included more and more, and then it'll just kind of snowball onto itself. [00:12:46] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, I think the algorithm getting better, that what you mentioned, is likely one of the big drivers of this, because if I think back to the days of, let's say, like the mid 2010s, the algorithm still felt a bit similar to those old Pandora algorithms where after the seventh song, you start hearing the same thing over and over. And if you're comparing that to, let's say, what Tuma Basa was doing at Rap Caviar at the time that, of course, yeah, I think Tuma is going to be the better curator of what you have. But if you're shifting things to now, where these algorithms just get better and better and better, then, and I think as well, over time, a lot of the playlist also had that alert. There was a bit of the, oh, this is the new radio. This is this, but then, yeah, when the playlist is better and better, even as a Spotify user over time, you can see that, okay, they do have a better sense for where things are. So naturally, it did shift the behavior. And I think you kind of saw this more broadly with, you know, outside of music as well, with movies or TV shows and other things. I think the algorithms do get better over time. [00:16:02] ARI HERSTAND Oh, absolutely. Yes, we're seeing that, you know, absolutely across the board with Netflix and Hulu and Prime and all that stuff. But, I mean, you bring up a good point about, you know, the human and the human playlist editors and what, you know, the power has shifted away from these playlist editors in part because Spotify is pulling the power from that. Because, you know, they're not giving the playlist editors free reign. It's kind of like if we can compare it to, you know, radio stations back on the day that the DJs had the power and they could play whatever they wanted. And that was like, you know, when the 70s and the 80s and maybe even a little bit into the 90s, you know, the DJs could play whatever they wanted. And they were all powerful because that's how people discovered music. Then Clear Channel took over and bought up all the radio stations and was like, oh, guess what? These are the only songs that you're allowed to play now. Here's the list. And then every week Clear Channel would update that list and send the list to all the DJs and say, you can choose, but you have to play these songs. So then the DJs became less powerful because that power was removed away from them by the overlords, which was the owners of the station, which was Clear Channel. The same thing has started to happen on Spotify. The editors used to be the all powerful DJs. They used to be all powerful playlist editors. Now they're overlords, they're owners, Spotify has come to them and be like, well, guess what? Your playlist is not keeping people on this, on Spotify and on the playlist long enough anymore. So you're only allowed to do three new songs a week. And in those three songs don't really perform well, then you're either gonna lose your job or you're not going to have the liberty to choose the song anymore. And of those three songs, they actually have to be from this list, which is the song that have already been pre-tested on the algorithmic side. So it's kind of like we see the same thing as it's like, instead of clear channel dictating the list based on their private marketing rooms and studies with surveys of listeners like they used to do when they would test songs with radio with market groups, now Spotify's testing songs with the algorithm and then they send those songs to the editors and be like, okay, these songs are proven. So when Tua was selecting the song for Rap Caviar, he was at the start of it. But as it got later on and on and what's happening with today's topics with Rap Caviar and all of them, he's just not one person anymore that's shooting. I mean, when Troy Carter was at Spotify and kind of in charge of all this, he said this and this was mind you four or five years ago, this was happening to them. It's like with those big, big playlists, he's like, it's no one person that is deciding this. These songs are tested and then we decide that it was going to go into those big playlists. But now that's happening on every playlist top to bottom. [00:16:25] DAN RUNCIE Right. And circling back to what you had said at the beginning that this, of course, is shifting artists to that focus on how they're releasing music, the waterfall strategy, but tweaking that specifically for what they're doing with singles leading up to the album. But I also have to assume that to a certain extent, some of this does become table stakes in that everyone, as you mentioned, is doing it that knows what they're doing right, whether it's you or it's Lizzo or others. So once that's kind of the lay of the land, are there additional things that, you know, artists that you're at least suggesting that artists should or shouldn't be doing or at that point does become more and more dependent on things that are independent of the release, whether it's the artists fandom, the quality of the music and so on. [00:19:21] ARI HERSTAND Absolutely. And this goes back to the intentions. And so, you know, it's no secret that in 2020, 2021, if even a bit last year in 2022, the Tiktok was, you know, a massive driver of streams. And so it's like, for some artists, that was where they found success. But, you know, and this is where we get into what are your intentions and who is your fan base? If you're making kind of straight ahead rock and roll, that's going to appeal to like 35 year old plus or you're making like throwback traditional R&B, that's similarly going to appeal to a 35 - 40 year old audience and up. Your marketing methods should not be Tiktok. So like if somebody's like, oh, you got to do a Tiktok, well, like, no, you don't have to do it. You know, you have to understand who your audience is, if your audience is on Tiktok, then maybe. And if your music that you make could be tiktokified, it's like, you know, it's like it's funny, you know, and all that and with Lizzo's song About Damn Time. You know, the thing that went viral on Tiktok was like the seven seconds of the first line of the second verse. It's like the most random shit that catches on Tiktok that you just like don't even know and oftentimes it's just like, you just never know what's going to catch or not. And it's like, so yes, Tiktok that can be a strategy. Absolutely. And it's like buying lottery tickets. So like the more you post, the more, you know, tickets that you're buying the higher profitability you have of something catching and then people using that bit, of course, there's deeper strategies that you can implore if you really want to study this. If you're like Tiktok is the method and the way that I want to go, totally like you can, you can work influencer marketing. That means, you know, get hundreds of influencers with varying audience sizes, micro influencers, macro, whatever kind of budget you have, pay them a little bit of money to use your song or your snippet of your song, your 15 seconds of your song in their video. Have everybody do it in the same week. And hopefully that gives you a chance that inspires more people to use that same 15 seconds in their videos. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. It's kind of like back in the day, you know, when labels would work a radio campaign and spend $300,000 on promoting a single at radio. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes you lost $300,000. And that's what we're seeing right now with influencer marketing campaigns because Tiktok is so fickle and random that you don't know if it's going to work. And if you spend $100,000 on an influencer market, so that is one way. [00:19:38] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, I think the Lizzo point is key with that because I know that she spent and her team spent a lot of time focused on trying to make that whole album special pop on Tiktok. So to your point, the fact that they probably thought it would have been the bad bitch of clock live but then ends up being a completely different line that ends up going completely viral because don't know how exactly it's gonna go but the fact that the team put in work means that something was able to pop there. [00:21:26] ARI HERSTAND The beauty of TikTok is that you can test and test and test and test and test for free, especially like indie artists are doing this all the time. So like yes, Lizzo has millions of dollars behind her and a full team of people that can do this. I'm seeing this with indie artists doing this all the time where they're just testing on their own, you know, they'll post a few videos a day or a week or whatever with different snippets of their line, of their songs rather, and seeing which ones respond best. And then like, oh, okay, it's this part of the song. Like, you know, if they were Lizzo, they were like, oh, it's the first line of the second verse responded better than the other previous 15 snippets that I posted over the last three weeks. So let me do 10 more videos of just that first line of the second verse and see if it was a fluke or if this is actually about a pattern that I'm on to something and they're like, oh, that is what's connecting. And like, oh my gosh, 20 people just posted videos using that the first line of the second verse and they're like, all right, let's keep doing that. And then you kind of, you know, this is how you discover what work is just trial and error, whether you have a label of, you know, 20 social media experts doing this and a million dollars behind it to like, throw gasoline on the fire by hiring influencers to do this. Or if you yourself and your best friend in your bedroom figuring this out, it's the same strategy. [00:21:46] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, that makes sense. And especially with the fact that Indie artists can tweak it, it is free to essentially tweak on TikTok. But I'm curious to hear your opinion on just how the Indie artists specifically can have the ideal team structure. Cause like we said, on one end, you have Lizzo's million dollars behind you on the other end, you have, yeah, it's you and maybe your friend can help you do this. But somewhere in the middle is that successful Indie artists that doesn't have the, you know, major record label resources, but it's still tweaking things. So even if we think a bit more broader than social media, what does that team look like? Like maybe even for yourself, like what does that team structure look like to make sure you have all the pieces in place to run a successful Indie business? [00:27:12] ARI HERSTAND Totally. I mean, it's a great question. And I talk about this in the book. I've updated the new team. I call it the new team. Because there's been the traditional team that's been around for decades. And that's what everybody understands. Like your art manager, your personal manager, your record label, your booking agent, your publicist, your attorney, you know, a publisher like this. That's the traditional team that, you know, you'll read about in the other music business both written by lawyers that were written 30 years ago. Most in the industry on that level, they haven't really updated that team. But when it really comes down to what we're looking about in the new music business with Indie artists, especially before you get those big players on your team, you still have to run your own business yourself. And sometimes we've seen a lot of NDRs that don't ever want a record label. And that's totally fine. So, you don't need that scene, remember necessarily. But what you do need is to be putting out regular content that's representative of who you are as an artist. And so what does that require? Well, it requires video content. Okay, you need someone on your team that can make really good video content. If that's you, cool. But sometimes it's not the artist. And so having someone on the team that's good at video, videographer, whatever, an editor, that is a key number of the new team that is extremely necessary. Say with a photographer, you know, it's really important to kind of have regular, new high quality photos or any kind of photos, whether it's your, you know, candid photos when you're around, when you're on tour, photos from the stage, from behind you with the audience there showing what you're about, promo photos, press photos. So like a photographer. It doesn't need to be a full time member on the team, but I think doing regular photoshoots and having people that are regularly pumping out photos. Again, it doesn't need to be as formal as like a record label or a team member like that. It's like, oh, you're my best friend. You have a new iPhone and you're really good at taking photos. Let's like take a lot of photos all the time and continue to post them. And that counts too, you know, and same with like a designer, like a graphic designer, you know, there's so many used cases where graphic design is gonna be necessary, whether it's designing your album cover or it's merch items or it's show posters or, you know, any other cases where you need something design. Again, it doesn't need to be a full time member of the team. It could be someone you enlist over Upwork that you hire to do that or it could be a friend of yours. That wants to help out. And then there's this role that I call the digital specialist. And, you know, managers and labels of column, it's like, are they calling digital? They're a digital person and it's like, oh, you know, we're going to send it over to digital. Basically, what that is, is like they specialize in social media advertising. This is something that is is really crucial when it comes to the release strategy that we're talking about previously. Virtually every single record label, it be label up to the majors down to individual artists that are releasing music on their own on that have a little bit of a budget are now running social media ads. It takes a lot of time to learn all this and it's a specialty for sure whether you're running ads on, you know, via the meta ads manager with Instagram and Facebook or Tiktok ads manager, YouTube, Google ads, all that stuff. That's what a digital specialist can do and then they kind of monitor everything and then they gather all the assets and then they help kind of guide the strategy. And so all this being said is like these are team members that are important to every indie artists career right now. They don't need to be individual people that handle these roles. I've seen indie artists that do all these roles themselves and they're their own team right now and that's cool. If they can figure that out for me personally like I know that I'm not a good recording engineer and I'm not a producer. So that's another team member that I'm going to hire when I make a record like I'm not Finneas. I'm not going to make a record in my bedroom. Like I can't do that. That's not what I want to do. Like honestly that doesn't inspire me. What inspires me is to make music with other people. So like I'm the type of artist that I'll get into a studio with eight other musicians and we'll track something live, you know, and like that's what I like doing them inspires me. But I need a producer. I need an engineer. I need a mixing engineer. I need a mastering engineer. These are all team members that I might enlist for that one recording. You know, but other people like Finneas was Billie Eilish's first team member. And he was her recording engineer and producer and like she had that built-in team where they could be pumping out music to Soundcloud regularly early on. Whereas like a lot of artists don't have that but some do. It's like again, what are your intentions? What inspires you? What kind of music do you want to make? But there are certain roles that can be filled by either your brother in down the hall, in the bedroom or by someone halfway around the world and Upwork. But these are the roles that can be filled and the jobs that need to get done. [00:27:55] DAN RUNCIE That makes sense. I know another thing for these teams is someone that is always keeping their eye on the new big thing or the new small thing to be able to test out just being able to figure out what's there. And the past couple of years, Web 3 and NFT specifically have guy and even more traction and I think maybe in the most recent year got a little bit less traction to just a more overall transaction level. But as we're heading into 2023 now, how do you look at NFTs as part of your strategy and how do you look at Web 3 more broadly for what artists are doing and any examples that you may have of like yes, this person that is an indie artist that wasn't just a mature artist like did it and they've done it really well. [00:31:44] ARI HERSTAND Absolutely. I don't see Web 3 slowing down anytime soon. I still see that this is as a digital society is heading. It's evolving for sure. Bitcoin isn't kind of what is all encompassing anymore like it was five - six years ago. It's not even just the mouth crypto currencies and it's not even just about NFTs like NFTs. The reason that it's lost a lot of its initial luster and sheen is because when it first kind of caught on, you know, early 2021 or so. It was like that was the sexy new thing that nobody quite understood but once you got it you're like well, this is crazy at the digital collectible.Cool I collected playing cards when I was growing up, I get it, sweet, that's what this is the digital collectible one of one okay cool I understand it so that was like. And people are trying to find used cases like you know we initially heard about Kings of Leon was like one of the first that did like an NFT album and they tied you know physical experiences to their NFTs like you get front row tickets that you were one of the NFT holders for life and you could redeem the NFT for proper tickets. So that was like the first way by say now we're seeing is more used cases and people that are creating them independently so like I had on the podcast on my podcast the name is Business Podcast. Sammy Arriaga, he's a Latin country artist and he's a really great, really cool crossover artist. He is a country musician but it's kind of with Latin infused country music it's really cool. He had a deal with Sony, he was signed to Sony as an artist and any of the publishing deal for a while they you got dropped up. It wasn't up to the major label success standards that they were hoping for. I got dropped. Then he actually had a little bit of success on TikTok in like 2020 and then he pivoted to NFT's in 2022 actually, I believe. And just cut to the headline, he made over $250,000 on his NFT of his album or actually of his song. Just one song to be honest. And how he did it, what was really interesting, it wasn't because of his fan base because the vast majority of music fans right now still have not come around to NFTs. They're not really in the metaverse. They're not in the crypto web 3 community yet. But the web 3 community is still very, very strong. It is thriving and kicking. If you can tap into that, then you can actually have a lot of success there right now, currently today. Now in five years, I do believe that most music fans, there will be used cases and every artist will have something to do with NFTs and Web 3 and micro and bastine which I'll get to in a second. But what Sammy did was he went to that Web 3 community and where do they primarily? Just at the time and still really is on Twitter and specifically Twitter spaces. What he did is he went into these Twitter spaces rooms. These are like the audio, Twitter spaces, the audio, new version of clubhouse and any space that was talking about NFTs and Web 3, he'd pop in, he'd listen for a little bit and then he'd raise his hand and I asked to come up and speak. They'd invite him to speak and he's like, hey, guys, you've been talking about NFTs for the last hour. I play you a song that I wrote, actually about an NFTs and it's called Metagirl and it's a META Metaverse Metagirl and they're like, oh, okay. So essentially, then he played the song. He's like, you can actually get that song right now as an NFT, the links in my, you know, pin the link right here and they were like pin the link in the Twitter space and that's how we did it. And he made $250,000 just from doing essentially by busking on Twitter spaces. [00:32:18] DAN RUNCIE How many Twitter spaces did he do to make that happen?  [00:35:05] ARI HERSTAND It was a lot, you know, because some of the 100 people, some of the 1000 people, but you did it for a while and like, that's a way, you know, that's not a scalable method necessarily that I'm encouraging people to like go busking on Twitter spaces and make an NFT. But he was able to do that and by finding that community, now, you know, Baratay is another indie artist. She was one of the first to kind of start experimenting on NFT platforms and selling NFTs. What she also did early on that we're now starting to see more widely adopted was she not only would release NFTs tied to her songs, but she would tie royalties to the NFTs, meaning you don't just buy an NFT as a digital collectible that you're hoping to resell and make a little money on. You're actually buying a percentage of ownership of the song or like a royalties as I should say of the song. So like she had one time, you know, auctioned off, I guess, you know, and it was through a blockchain platform. I believe she used royal at the time, which is NAS's platform. She like gave away 40% or sold 40% of one of her songs to people. So you could buy whatever percentage you wanted and it was valued at a certain level. And then you can buy that. Now, those platforms are starting to pop up like I'm on the advisory board of label coin and they're a new platform that, you know, started by a booking agent, Mark Miller, who I've known for years. And he approached me and he's like, Hey, here's what we're doing. And it's essentially it is the same concept. Using blockchain technology, but essentially being able to sell a percentage of royalties for your song. So you could theoretically like say, I'm going to sell 50% of the royalties of my song. And it's like, I'm going to sell it to a thousand people. So you could buy like, you know, a half a percent or a quarter of a percent or a small percentage. It's like buying stocks, essentially. It's like, you know, like the Robin Hood from music. So we're starting to see that and the blockchain technology that the whole infrastructure is built on because it's just more streamlined that way. And so like, we're moving to in the future when these platforms likely, book, coin and royal and the others like really start to break into mainstream is the fans are going to think, Oh, I have to learn cryptocurrency and I have to get a wallet and, you know, buy some of Ether, you know, from the Ethereum and buy some ether and like. You know, that is the heavy lift that why it prevented so many people from getting the NFTs. Like I want to learn how to do this and pay gas fees and blah, but like all the shit that it takes hours and hours and hours and hours just for one person to buy like one NFTs. It's like we're getting a little away from that and it's gonna be like a fan is like, oh, I'm gonna get 10% of royalties of Ari's new song and it's done in 10 seconds. And like they don't even know [00:36:33] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, it needs to be as easy as like buying something called the Amazon, right? Like it needs to be instant. And I think that I agree there. I think that was probably one of the biggest gaps for a while. There was all these things. And some of it I think is natural with any new technology. There is an adoption curve. It's always gonna track the enthusiast which at least in this recent era congregated mostly on Web 3 corners of Twitter and we're discussing things. So I think it's really smart, you know, for artists to, you know, jump in on Twitter spaces the way that they did. It was really interesting to hear that in a lot of ways yeah, they weren't even reaching, they're like die hard fans. They were just reaching people that were interested. But that said, I think so much of this rings true with something else that's a concept in your book, the purement of investment. And I think I look at this a lot of ways, almost like a inverted sales fund if you will, address in terms of building awareness, the decision intended and actually getting people to act on it and knowing that you can obviously generate revenue at each level of those streams. But NFTs, especially if they're used the way that they could is something that does sit at the tip of that pyramid. It's not gonna be everyone, but it is something to monetize the die hard fans that you have. But even there you could adjust where it sits based on what you price it, how many drops you have and so many other things. [00:40:02] ARI HERSTAND Absolutely, yes, the pyramid of investment on this concept that I have in the book, I'll just kind of break it down a little bit so people understand. It's like, you think about it, you know, this is financial investment. I also have a pyramid of engagement, which I'll get into a second, but what just investment at the bottom of that pyramid, we have the people that don't really spend any money on you directly, they might stream your song, they might stream your music, you might make a little bit of money from what their actions that they're taking like the stream of your music, but they're not like spending money on you directly. So that's the bottom of the pyramid and that's where the vast majority of the music of fans, audience, listenership lives just across the industry. But as we go up the pyramid, you know, then there's like, those that might attend your live stream and like tip you over that or they might just like tip you here and there and you know, in the digital realm, sure, it's a live stream, it's on Twitch, or whatever, or like, you know, they can tip you in real life or something, they're going to your shows and they'll tip you. So it's like the tippers essentially, then you go up a little bit higher, that people are actually buying tickets to your shows. Now they are actually directing money directly to you and they're coming to your concerts, they're your ticket buyers, your concert goers, then you look a level higher, they're the merch buyers. They're the ones that buy merch at those shows or buy merch online, but you know, your store or from your Spotify profile or whenever they're buying merch directly from you, they're like, I'm a real fan, I want to buy merch. Then we go higher and then we're into that category of fan clubs, crowdfunding campaigns, you know, investment, NFT, three point, you know, with that whole realm of like, I'm like such a big fan that if they're on Patreon, I'm going to be their patron. If they're running a Kickstarter, I'm going to back their Kickstarter. If they're selling a percentage of their royalties of the new song, I want to buy that. And then at the very tippy tippy top of that, it's kind of a little bit of out too, but it's like those that are buying the VIP packages. So it's kind of like a combination of it all. It's like that, am I going to, you know, go to the show and I spend the $250, you know, do a 10 sound check and get the merch package and do that whole thing. So it's like that's all at the top. And so you think about this as the pyramid of investment, you're going to have fans at every level of that and you want to make sure that you cater to all of them and that you don't exclude some. So it's like, you know, I think people can kind of have understood this concept when, like, I first got this like six, seven years ago when Patreon kind started to hit after Kickstarter. And I saw some of my friends that were running Patreon campaigns and Kickstarter campaigns, I know simultaneously. And to me, that seemed counterintuitive. I was like, wait a minute, your fans are only going to do one or the other. It's like, they're going to either back your crowd and bring you an album or they're going to be your patrons, right? No, I was wrong. What it was, was really like Kickstarter was below on that pyramid. There were more people that are willing to drop a hundred bucks this one time, this one year to back your Kickstarter, but then there's fewer people a little bit higher up on that pyramid that are going to pay you $10 a month on Patreon or Substack or whatever it's going to be, Band Camp, any subscriber service that are a level higher that will be your subscribers and then it just kind of keeps going up from there. [00:40:28] DAN RUNCIE Yeah, I think that makes sense. And the thing that I've often thought about the model too is that of course the revenue that you get per fan does increase as you go further up that period. But if you were to multiply that by the number of fans in each of those tiers, do you think that the tiers do start to equal out roughly or what does that look like for you? [00:41:39] ARI HERSTAND That's a really great question. I don't really need data to back that up, but that's a really great experiment and something that should be studied, I think like an artist that kind of, yeah, I'm going to work on putting those numbers together. That's a great idea. It's kind of like along the lines of the Thousand True Fans Concept, where this concept is, you know, they say that if you can get a thousand people to pay you $100 a year every year for the rest of your life, rest of your career, now you have a career and that's all you really need is a thousand people to pay you $100. However, if you break that down a little bit differently on the government of investment, you don't need the thousand people to pay you $100. You could get a hundred people to pay you $400, you could get 200 people to pay you $200. You could get, you know, 400 people to pay $50, you could get 700 people to pay you $20 a year, you know, and you could really break that down a little bit differently. And so it's like, how are you going to get to that $100,000 a year mark if that's your goal or a million dollars a year, if that's your goal. And it all these fans are going to fall somewhere. All this money is going to fall somewhere on that pyramid of investment. [00:43:12] DAN RUNCIE Yeah. I think about it this way too, maybe from like an example perspective. Let's look at someone at the top. Look at someone like Beyonce. I could see her. I would need to do the math. But let's just say ballpark speaking, she gets $30 million a year revenue from her music, right? Purely from streaming. I could also see her getting $30 million a year from, let's say she does a few concerts that year or a few special one offs. She could also get $30 million a year from doing two private shows of performing at a wedding or something like that or performing at an Uber private event. So each of those things can equal that amount. But yeah, I think that way to break down the thousand true fans, I think is important too. Because I think when that theory came out, Kevin Kelly's, I think it's back in 2018, but it made a bunch of sense. But I think for most people putting things out, yeah, even that requires a bit of segmentation there. So it's fascinating. And I'm sure so much of this is fascinating for you as well. Because I feel like you kind of have two examples of this with the businesses that you're running. You have Ari Herstand, the artist and you have your own, pure, mid of investment. You also have your visit of this podcast, the courses and the book as well. And for you, I'm sure I know you have a team that helps with each of these things, but do you look at it any differently between the two, you know, yourself as an educator that is sharing this information combined with yourself as the musician? [00:49:10] ARI HERSTAND Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like, I think, you know, why people have responded to the artist take business and my book and the artist take account of me and the music, the podcast and all the stuff that like, I do on the music business education front is because I am a musician. I have that musician's empathy. I've, you know, lived it and living it and it's like, I understand how hard everything is. It's like, you know, I'm not just saying it to say it like NN because I read it somewhere. Like, I'm living it. I'm interviewing people that are living it. You know, I put on two different hats like I look at myself almost now as like part journalists and like kind of, you know, in the lane that you're in where by interviewing more people, we learn more and that's great. Like, I know my perspective and everyone's perspective can be limited to their own experiences. So I try to widen my experiences by widening my information base by talking to more people. So the whole point of the podcast honestly was just to talk to more people, smarter people than me that are doing bigger things and more successfully than I was doing. So I could learn from them and then share that information. Like I've always interviewed people from like artist take and writing for other publications and I then made the podcast basically public. With my own music career, you know, the intentions have shifted. But when I started Ari's take as a blog 10 years ago, I made 100% of my money from my music. I was like a full-time artist, touring artist releasing music, all that stuff like touring most of my year, going on plenty of national tours. The intentions have shifted when I realized where I can be most useful and necessary. So like I don't tour anymore. You know, I'll do one-offs here in there. Like when I'm with my new funk project, Rasmentisdrake, it's like I do in a kind of an immersive funk experience. And I want to keep that in one place like we did in L.A. in like last summer, we did, you know, a 16-show run in L.A.. That's like my creative outlet. Like I do in the intentions of that, I want to top the Spotify charts and like go on tour. So like why I keep going back to like what are the intentions for every artist is like they're different. So my intention for that was like I wanted to sell out all those 16 shows and like that was my own function for the off thing. Or I wanted to at least, you know, get people a good experience and have a good time doing these things. Like I released a solo album last year under my own name. And the intention of that was honestly not I want to go on tour or I want to, you know, and get millions of streams. It was just like I went through a break out and I needed to write these songs and release them for my own mental health and just like honestly just for my own well-being and like get these songs out there. And people connected with them. And that was wonderful. And like I heard from tons of people that really resonated with the songs. Like that was something that you know gave me some perspective to is like, my focus right now is not making a living just for my soul of singer songwriter project like it used to be. That being said, there's a place for everything. And so, you know, I covered this concept of like the multi-hyphenate. Everyone's a multi-hyphenate. Everyone from Beyonce down to me and any other indie artist that is working at a day job or whatever, everyone's a multi-hyphenate. Like, your job title can start with musician and then it can be, you know, what else? Like, some people are musician, lift drivers. Some people are, you know, musician, entrepreneur, CEOs like, you know, Dre as Beaks, headphones is like, oh, he's an entrepreneur and a business person. And so it's like, I don't think the artists need to feel like shameful or insecure about their other hyphenates, their other job titles. You know, at the end of the day, you want to do what inspires you. And so for me, you know, my idea of success is making a living, supporting the kind of lifestyle that I'd like to live doing what I love and offering value and meanings to people. And so I've kind of structured my own life in a way where I go to where I feel like I'm needed and then where I can bring value to people. And that I've found, you know, most useful in kind of the artist take blame and the music business lane of everything I'm doing. But at the same time, like, I'm an artist. Like, I'm never not going to be an artist. Like, that's just like who I am. That's like what my soul is. And so it's like, I can't ever stop doing that. Like if I don't want to force myself to ring out as much money from that, there's no shame in that. Like that's, you know, sure, you know, I always say it was all the time to be, it was like, if you're happy making music from home and putting it online and you're making like 50 grand a year by doing that. And that's like what you figured out how to do. You've got some same theory, you're on some ads, you got some streaming, whatever. And like you're doing that and you're happy. Wonderful. Could you make a hundred, 200, 300,000 dollars more if you like one on tour or up your merch operation or like, you know, started a Patreon or launch an NFT or something like that? Maybe. But do you have to? But no, of course not. Like do what makes you happy. Like if that's going to make you unhappy because you're chasing more money and like why? Like you don't need to do that. Like do what makes you happy. And that's the big thing. And so it's like, you know, I'm constantly figuring that out for myself and I encourage other artists that figure it out for themselves. [00:49:30] DAN RUNCIE Yeah. And I think that's a good way to put it, right? There's so much action now. You know, there's so many opportunities in everywhere. It isn't multi-high fit. It is really up to you how many hyphens you have behind that name and how heavily you want to push all of them. And I think the other one for you is author. And of course you have this book coming out in a couple of weeks. So yeah, before we let you go, let me just do one more close to let people know the updates with the book and when to expect. [00:50:05] ARI HERSTAND Yeah. So It is out January 17th, 2023. You can get it wherever you find books with its Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your local bookstore. And I don't know when this is airing or gonna go live, but if you're in L.A. on January 17th, join me at Barnes and Noble up at Grove and we're doing a book signing and a live podcast recording there. But yeah, I've added a hundred new pages to it. I've updated stuff in every section. I've rewritten chapters, but scratch, of course. A lot of stuff we talked about today is in the book like NFTs and Web 3 and TikTok and live streaming. A lot of stuff that didn't exist three years ago. So I've completely rewritten the majority of the book. So you know, if you have the first or second edition of the book, I encourage you to check out this third edition. It's very, very different and updated. [00:50:46] DAN RUNCIE Good stuff, man. Excited for you. Thanks for coming on. This is great.  {00:50:50] ARI HERSTAND Thank you.  {00:50:54] DAN RUNCIE OUTRO If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating and give a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is one of hip-hop’s most serial entrepreneurs. His business track record stretches 30 years with successes in completely-different industries — music (Bad Boys Records), clothing (Sean John), spirits (Ciroc and DeLeon), media (Revolt), among many other ventures. To take a closer look at Combs' empire, I brought on Tarik Brooks, who is the president of Combs Enterprises.  Many chalk up Diddy’s entrepreneurial success to his influence and brand alone. While Tarik doesn’t deny Diddy’s star power, he also argues that line of thinking understates Diddy’s business acumen — his ability to spot trends, attract talent, raise capital, and so forth.  Not only that, but the broadness of Combs Enterprises is a unique competitive advantage. Diddy’s different businesses across sectors give them unique data points that can drive decision-making. The group announced a new foray into cannabis in late 2022. However, they won’t enter the space completely void of knowledge. Using insights from Revolt or Ciroc, they can glean how customers think about cannabis already.    Tarik and I dove deep into Diddy’s sprawling business empire this episode — the “why” not the “how” behind Puff’s success. Here’s what you can expect to hear:  [0:00] Combs Enterprises’ focus in 2023 [2:22] Synergies between Diddy’s different businesses  [4:40] Using Revolt Summit as a testing ground  [6:29] Origins of the “Ciroc playbook”   [9:32] How much strategic overlap is there between Ciroc and DeLeon marketing?  [15:41] Entering the cannabis space [18:00] Regulatory challenges in the cannabis industry [26:01] Why Diddy is not just another celebrity entrepreneur  [30:03] How Combs Enterprises invests in startups [34:21] Did Diddy really back Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter? [36:45] No rush to sell Bad Boy Records catalog  [41:32] Sean John comeback  [47:05] Diddy’s attempt to buy the Carolina Panthers in 2018 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guest: Tarik A. Brooks, @tarikamin     Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Tarik Brooks: Twitter's impact in society is certainly bigger than how it shows up from a profit and loss and from a market cap perspective. And when you look at, you know, where Twitter is trading today is trading at a fraction of like Facebook or like Snapchat is the question from an investment perspective with some you could create meaningful. [00:00:33] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:53] Dan Runcie: All right, today we got my guy, Tarik Brooks, the president of Combs Enterprises. Second time on the podcast. Great to have you back, man. [00:01:01] Tarik Brooks: Happy New Year my brother. Great to be back.  [00:01:03] Dan Runcie: So what's the latest from the House of Combs? [00:01:08] Tarik Brooks: Things are wonderful enterprises, man. Tremendous 2022, where we did a lot of investing in our existing platforms and in new platforms. And so, you know, the big push in 23. Is to operationalized and grow a lot of those new platforms. You know, a lot of people are familiar with the cannabis deal, which we announced late last year. We're gonna close that deal and get that operational. We've also been working on an e-commerce platform with Salesforce, called it Power Global, that will launch this year, you know, released music last year. That did great. I mean, he and a sub-Christian. You know, with the first father and son duo to be number one. At the same time, there'll be more projects from Love Records coming in this year. So a lot of new things are in 23, so I wanna accustom a lot of exciting developments.  [00:01:56] Dan Runcie: And I feel like one of the strengths for him whenever he is launching a new brand is being able to find some type of synergy between something that he's done that's already worked and finding some way to tie it all together. And for you, I know you've been there for a couple years. Is there like one company or one tie in that really stands out about, oh yeah, what Puff is able to do here? Tweak the formula a little bit, brought it over to this company and then it helped that one too. [00:02:22] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. It is interesting, man, like, because you know, with the ecosystem we have that there are synergies all over the place that we work hard to exploit everyday. What I'll tell you bigger thing is that underneath our ecosystem sits the core premise, a core belief that our culture drives culture, that our people drive what's cool and what's next and what's hot in a meaningful way. So, you know, you go back to blues and jazz and rock and roll to hip hop, TikTok, viral dances, like our people drive that. And so if you look at all of the different elements in our ecosystem. What you see are different sectors that we drive through our cultural presence. And so when you look at our platform through that lens, you see how they all fit together. So then synergies just become finding places where, you know, we can work together to make one plus one equal three or four. Right? And so like, you know, easy examples when you think about how you know our brands will show up at the Revolt Summit. So Revolt hosts this amazing event every year in Atlanta. 10,000 people come. It gives us an opportunity to kinda have revolt, touch to people, but also have ourown touch to people for us to do research for new companies that we're developing the test concepts. These are ways that we don't place there with our ecosystem. I mean, I look at a great example. Deleon tequila. Used Druski in an ad, you know, super funny guy. Did a tremendous job with the ad. We then, you know, connected in with the team in Revolt and he did something with Revolt. It ended up being a great, great opportunity there. So like throughout our ecosystem, you see all these opportunities that exist with our portfolio companies and with the companies that we invest in. We think about how we invest and part of it is all the stuff you expect from any traditional investment vehicle. You know, do you have great leadership? Do you have a strong destructive concept? But what we also know about there two or three ways that this thing could be utilized is our ecosystem for the company. So it's an everyday activity, you know, finding, exploiting, and developing those things  [00:04:31] Dan Runcie:  You mentioned earlier about the Revolt Summit and how that can be a test space for whether it's new products or new things. Can you talk more about that? Cause I think that's really interesting.  [00:04:40] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, so I mean this past Revolt Summit, the team at Empowered Global, which is the eCommerce platform that I just mentioned, had a space set up where they could introduce the concept to the participants at the Revolt Summit. And more than that, we actually had, and it was, I gotta find you a picture of this. A digital vending machine that was filled with black-owned products. So, and kinda like what you would see at the airport where you have vending machines, where they kinda have, you know, non typical vending machine products, headphones, and different things like that. Our vending machine that we had set up in the Revolt Summit was all filled with products that were owned by black that came from black owned companies. And so that was like just a real example. In that moment, we were able to introduce people to the concept of the platform, try out some new tech and get real time feedback from people who we believe will be a part of that target.  [00:05:34] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Yeah. Because you wanna have people that are first bought in, you get the people there and I think the people that are gonna attend Revolt Summit likely end up being culture shapers or mavens within their particular area themselves. They start saying something's good, and then they can, you know, go back and that's how you're able to spread things. [00:05:52] Tarik Brooks: 100%. It's the way, you know, everybody talks about it in terms of synergies, but we like to talk about it in terms of not planting there, right? Like we have these resources, we have these brands that mean something to people. You know that the most impactful thing we can do is find out how putting those brands together at different times in different ways produces more information, produces more insight, produces more, you know, revenue generating opportunity than any of those entities in silos. So for me, like the silo is the enemy, right? Like the key is to have all of our leaders and all of our team members continuously engaging in a very fluid way. [00:06:29] Dan Runcie: Yeah, the one that always stuck out to me too was Ciroc and the on the ground promotion for that, because there are so many through lines going back to The Bad Boy Days, the Bad Boy Street team, and then the Ciroc Boys. It's very similar playbook and being able to help push that.  [00:06:45] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I mean, look, and again, the playbook is the same. It's the same. You know, when you look at what the spirits industry looked at at the time, it was very different from today. You know, a lot of folks don't realize at that time the only people really trying to market, know black people in the hip was more liquor. Right? Cause I know I wasn't on the team back then, but what I can tell you is he looked at how nightlife worked and how the culture was working and evolving and saw a huge opportunity for an aspirational luxury product. And then was able to apply a lot of the same tools that were driving his success in the music business in spirits. And so that's how you end up with us showing up better than most people in the nightlife, us being able to have the DJs, you know, be a part of our experience. Cause Puff knew back then, in which he knows now how powerful DJs are in the culture and in the communities he lives in. If you look at even now, like a lot of, you know what he's posted socially as, you know, the efforts around love, records, respect. Like, we get what algorithms can do, but understand like DJ is culturally important. Like they mean something to their communities and they mean something to our culture. And in that way they have outside influence, that I think people still underestimate.  [00:08:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think as much as things have been movement streaming or NFTs or whatever it is, people still wanna go to the club and people still want to be in the hands of a DJ that knows what they're doing and can introduce them. [00:08:12] Tarik Brooks: Absolutely. There is power and curation. Right. And look, theoretically A.I. will be able to kind of take that input and lead curations that are solid. But you know it's tough to replicate, you know, instinct. And natural art, you know? Exactly. That's the thing, right? Like to be able to think you can do it with just an algorithm means it's all science. And I think, you know, most entertainment industries, particularly when you talk about the power of a DJ, are art and science together. That art is that intuitive thing that, like you, some folks just have, they know when to play the right record. You know, not just cause it's a similar bpm, but they know, cause they know that crowd, they know that venue. They know that audience better than most other people do. [00:09:00] Dan Runcie: Definitely. And I think too, a lot of that we definitely saw with the Ciroc Playbook, but I wanna spend some time in this conversation talking a bit more about Deleon because, I think that that is relatively newer business for other portfolio, but I think there's a lot that's similar, but the lot that's different too in terms of how you've all rolled it out, what you've done, how you've done things differently. So love to start there and maybe start first specifically, how much of the Ciroc Playbook was used with what you've all done so far with Deleon? [00:09:32] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, so I think the core premise stays the same, right? What Puff has been amazing at throughout his career is being able to spot and help develop trends very early. And he saw back in 2013, 2014, that the next wave in spirits was gonna be, you know, brown spirits, in particular tequila. And so when he formed the joint venture with Diageo, that he built that knowing that a tequila wave was coming. Now from the perspective of how industries developed, tequila and vodka are two very different places, right? It is very big, very mature right now, trying to fight off the growth of some of the spirits that are taking customers away, whereas tequila is smaller but fast growing. And it's also very nuanced. So like when you think about what we've been able to do driving Deleon's growth, and Deleon right now is the fastest growing tequila in the country, right?It's on fire right now and just, you know, small plug, you are new to tequila. Deleon are absolutely amazing. I will put them against any tequila that's out there, you know, so smooth ice cube, orange slice. You're good. [00:10:41] Dan Runcie: But any numbers to share in terms of like, cases sold or anything like that? [00:10:45] Tarik Brooks: So look, I'm not gonna go into the details on cases, but again, this is Nielsen’s data,this is not coming right? So right now, you look, it is triple digits right now, you know, comfortable cause to disclose. But what I would say is, you know, part of the Deleon story is making sure Deleon is relevant in culture. And when you hear Deleon Lemonade in the young Miami, I'm not sure when, when you see Deleon on, when you see Deleon sharp in these things, it's a part of ensuring Deleon is relevant in the culture and shows up the right way, but there's also a big part of the future of Deleon that will grow. Talking about the liquid itself, you know how we get to such a high quality. It is the fact that Deleon is aged in both American whiskey and French red wine barrels to get the distinctive taste that, like, that's just part of the story that we're still just beginning to tell and roll out as we build it. And from our view, we are building, you know, iconic, long lasting brands. We want Deleon to be thought of the same way you think about Johnny Walker or Hennessy or any other great brands that are out there. So our view is like you don't rush that thing, you develop that story over time. You feed people in, you bring people into the brand and then you culture that and as soon you cultivate that audience, you know, as it grows. And so, you know, a lot of the kinda principles that we've applied in growing, we're applying to Deleon, but we're also being very aware that, you know, vodka and very different liquids develop differently, Exactly The same. And you think about that as you start to position the brand.  [00:12:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah, cuz I think that was a good point that you mentioned just in terms of how vodka has been the market leader just from a type of liquor for so long. So you didn't necessarily have to do that piece of it, but it was more so Yeah. How do you bring this brand that I think some people may have forgotten about, but bring it to the same level as your great gooses in your others.  [00:12:44] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. People know people, I mean, look, the way Ciroc hadn't been positioned in a way that was creating a lot of noise, a lot of impact, and I think, you know, part Puff's genius was figuring out that it was amazing juice. It was amazing liquid, with beautiful bottles. So if you positioned it the right way in culture, you could create a wave. And that wave has been historic. This was a brand that was doing, you know, cases annually and now this is a case brand globally. Huge brand in the spirits industry in a sector that was big, vodka's a very, very big sector. Tequila we're growing Deleon as the sector's growing as well. So it's just, again, from a marketing perspective, a different set of challenges, but the same principles apply to how we think about leveraging culture. Leveraging, you know, our ability to kinda set trends to help drive a career meaningful brand, but it all also starts with a great quality liquid that we stand by. I mean, one of the things, right? Yeah. I think one of the things has always been super consistent about is the authenticity around, like, standing behind the products he brings to market. There's not a variant of Deleon or flavor that gets released without Puff. Personally, we stamped that saying, you know, this is okay to go to market with our income. [00:14:03] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah, cuz I think the distinction too on the flip side with tequila is like, not even that it's so much education cuz I think a lot of people know tequila, but just getting the consumer a bit of a visual of yes, this is the setting where not just our brand but this broader aspect. And I know there's 1800 and there's like others too. Yeah. But like you all be able to be like, hey, This is where, so some of that, what I think worked so well for sag, just in terms of thinking back to those like Vegas promo shots where they had all the people there being able to, you know, have whatever the tequila and Deleon equivalent is of that. [00:14:39] Tarik Brooks:  Yeah. I mean, look, I think a part of the tequila growth story is helping people understand that, you know, while they may have been introduced to tequila, you know, with shots on spring break or something like that, you know, once you learn more, you learn a much more complex liquid that can be enjoyed a lot of different ways mixed drinks, neat, you know, over on the rocks, you know, and all the other kinds of occasions. So I think part of our experience is helping people understand that it's versatility is part of why it's growing as fast as grown.  [00:15:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think too, just thinking more broadly about spirits and things that people enjoy you all now going into cannabis, I think that there are definitely some similarities there. People wanna be able to relax and enjoy what they choose, but so different in terms of not just regulation, but the culture. How has it been, just, I know, even thinking about the origins of that deal, how some of that playbook and mentality can be leveraged for what you all have now with this massive opportunity in cannabis? [00:15:41] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I mean, look, there are certainly two categories that are at very different stages, but you know, you could argue they've been on similar journeys, right? Like there was a point in time when alcohol was prohibited. When you look at the history of cannabis, you know, you start to realize a lot of the way this product category was treated was less around the specific impact of the product and more around the specific influence. The culture that was around, you know, before that was hip hop, cannabis was huge in the jazz community. And the jazz community was something that black people were bringing and spreading throughout the United States in a meaningful way and, you know, real impact culturally, and there were folks that didn't wanna see that happen. And so a part of the criminalization of cannabis was connected to slowing down the influence of that jazz, that black culture. And so you've seen over the past years been that cannabis has been illegal, you know, the disproportionate criminalization of black people as it relates to cannabis, more than white people. And so this opportunity is an opportunity that gives us a chance to basically through doing good sound business, you know, rights and historical wrongs. When you look at the last 10 years of legal cannabis, Despite, you know, the overcriminalization of black people, it is dominated by white men. You know, 85, 86% owned by white men. Black people only own 2% of the space, and so for us, particularly coming in this way, it gives us an opportunity to kind of make change and enter the business at scale to be able to come in with a three state footprint and be able to use that as a platform to help change the cannabis ecosystem to make sure to use our platform to enable black and brown people to participate in the industry in a number of different ways. To be able to use our voice, to be able to help shape the way regulators and lawmakers think about how cannabis needs to be developed going forward, and continue to do what we do at our core, which is bring our audience, great quality product for them to enjoy. [00:17:46] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I do think that those stats you mentioned are just around the 2% of the business, that is only being, again, like I said, at this point, currently run and administered by black people. And that's in America, right?  [00:18:00] Tarik Brooks: In America in the US. It is gonna continue to be a leader in global cannabis. So a lot of countries look to see, you know, what the US is doing and how they're thinking about deregulation and how they shape their rules. And, for us it's a big part of what we do is helping people to see how the way things are set up negatively impacts our community. So when you look at, you know, the cannabis industry broadly working to change the way cannabis is scheduled by the federal government and how it's treated by the federal government and how banks are able to interact with cannabis companies. All of those things make it hard for the industry broadly, but it makes it extra hard for us because when you look at industries without those, We don't get the same access to capital, we don't get the same access to opportunities. So it's one of those things where, you know, once again, we're starting from behind the eight ball, but what our, you know, perspective allows us to do is start from a different vantage point, right? Like it is an extremely difficult time to raise money in cannabis. And so for us to be able to pull off something, this big speech. You know, the success and track record that Puff has had building quality grants, building quality companies, and being able to find the kinda talent you need to come in and create value. And so we're excited man. We think this is gonna be a huge event for the cannabis industry. We think it's gonna be a huge event for us to help our community create meaningful wealth. Cause ultimately, you know, as business people, we wanna use our skills and resources create wealth for our community. [00:19:36] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And like you said, definitely, you know, huge undertaking and make this happen. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the steps to get from the first idea, maybe it's you and Puff talking about, Hey, you know, we should do this, we should get into this business. Then boom, the announcement comes. Like, what were some of the steps to help make this happen?  [00:19:53] Tarik Brooks:  So we have been exploring the cannabis industry, you know, with different levels of intensity since looking at opportunities. Starting to understand how the industry works, getting closer and closer to the space, you know, building relationships with entrepreneurs and companies in the space to kinda understand how things develop. I joined the board of Cresco Labs, you know, one cause I wanted to learn more about the industry. I thought they were a great company. But two, from that vantage point, you were able to see how the industry works and how things develop. And so when this opportunity came along, which was really driven by Acquisition of Columbia Care by Cresco. They, by regulation, have to divest assets. This opportunity to look at a portfolio of assets that are good, you know, good, strong businesses. Generating revenue, generating cash flow today to be able to come, bring those into our portfolio and then do what we do to create meaningful brands around those assets seem like a phenomenal opportunity. And so, look, these things take time to develop and it's a long process of, you know, doing the due diligence, raising the capital, going through all the steps you have to do to actually close a deal. But we believe it's gonna be a phenomenal historic deal once it's closed and wherever operated. And we think, like, look, when you look at pub's track record of building brands in music, in fashion, in spirits, you know, should extend, we believe it's gonna extend itself to cannabis and meaningful given how influential and impactful cannabis is in culture. [00:21:28] Dan Runcie: And we definitely know that there are a lot of regulatory challenges in this space for sure. And I also know that there are several other celebrity investors, even some in hip hop that have started businesses in this space and haven't necessarily been able to help take them to the next level. Do you have thoughts about some of those, I guess how business now moving forward can help address and overcome some of those hurdles that maybe some others weren't quite able to get past. [00:21:58] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, so I take those in pieces. What I would say is, you know, we believe over the long term, the federal view on cannabis will change. We believe cannabis will ultimately, eventually be legal, you know, throughout the United States and in all 50 States. But we don't know when that's gonna happen. And so none of our investment thesis, none of our modeling, none of our business case was built on imminent regulatory relief. And so while, you know, we hope for it and we wanna help shape how lawmakers think about it the same way the rest of the issue does. Nothing in our core premise for doing this deal was built on the expectation of regulatory relief this year, next year, five years from now. Right. So that's the one thing I would do. That said, we wanna be immediately a part of the conversation cause cannabis is so connected to our community. And so we're gonna jump into that conversation at the state level. We're gonna jump into that conversation at the national level. Now going to the second part of your question. You know, one of the things I think is the biggest, you know, misnomer when people think about, you know, Sean comes entering cannabis, is thinking about this as a celebrity cannabis deal, right? When I think about this and when Puff and I have always talked about it. What we think about. A guy with an amazing track record of building culturally relevant brands. Is that relevant in cannabis? Yes. Check, right. You know, does he have resources and the platform to be able to raise the capital to do a deal like this. Check. Does he have the ability to attract the kind of talent you need? Check right. Now. You also then say, is this celebrity extremely valuable in getting the word out? Brilliant. Absolutely. But that's not the core premise of what we're trying to do, right? Like we will get as much value through all the things we can learn throughout our ecosystem and how our customers and all of our other businesses think about. As we'll get from Sean Holmes, the celebrity. Right? And so from that perspective, you know, we don't expect to have our business be a celebrity driven brand per se. It's gonna be built on the back of great brand building, great marketing, and very strategic and efficient operations. [00:24:07] Dan Runcie: And I think that ties into something you had said in a recent interview about how insights from Revolt, for instance, can inform some of the decisions that you make with the cannabis business. [00:24:18] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. I mean, look, when you think about an ecosystem like ours that spans from spirits, music, media, fashion, with every interaction with our audience, you create. So every time posts go up from their social media, you know, there's data that comes back. Every Ciroc transaction generates data when Revolt has shows on all the different platforms that has shows on cable, YouTube, In app, all those different platforms generate data. As you compile that data, you're able to kinda look at it with a different lens and pull insights from that. What we're then able to do is take the data that we get from the cannabis industry that everybody else in cannabis is getting. But when you start putting those things together in unique ways, that's how you start to generate interesting insights that everybody's just not gonna have access to 'em. So that's where we think, again, we have a real competitive advantage in how we think about what we do in the space. That'll impact everything from, you know, how our stores look and feel, and what that experience will be what products we lead with how we think about price points, how we change things from state to state. A lot of that will be driven by insights that not only come from the cannabis industry, but that are informed by the other businesses in our portfolio as well.  [00:25:32] Dan Runcie: And this steps into, I think, a broader conversation of some of the categorization of someone like Puff and the work that he does in that the media can often put him alongside other people who have happened to be a recording artist on a track and compare their business ventures in the same way. And what you're essentially saying is, You can't compare us all the same way. Did they build a revolt? [00:26:01] Tarik Brooks: It's so hard cause it's like, I don't wanna deny how impactful he is as an entertainer. Epic performances. When you think about, and not just performances in music, performances in movies, performances on Broadway. Like the guy is quintessential, entertaining. You know, by all means, like you can't argue that. But I think when you try to look at him narrowly as just that you are really missing the picture. Cause I think that underestimates or understates, how difficult, it’s to build a bad boy into a success, to build a success, build a revolt, to build us rock, to build a Deleon, to build three schools, like that, that's not just on the back of him. An amazing entertainer, right? Like that speaks to his business instincts, his ability to spot trends, his ability to kinda find and cultivate talent, like those are all things that are universal in business. Leave aside what he's been able to do as an entertainer, I would argue, had he never got on the mic or touched the stage, he would've been just that successful business person just on the back. His business, you know, acumen and abilities. And so that's where, when we're in these conversations and people think about, you know, in cannabis this came up recently, people say like, well, you know, celebrity brands haven't really worked. And I'm like, lemme take a second to help you understand why this is different from a celebrity brand opportunity. The other thing that's different that I think is important for people to understand is when we take control of these assets, we'll be fully vertically integrated in the States that we operate, which, we are gonna cultivate, we are a process. We are gonna manufacture, we're gonna distribute, we're gonna sell. So these are all pieces of the business value chain that we'll operate. Again, not so relevant from the celebrity space. This is all around how do you build and run high quality businesses? And that's where I think you have to look at our business portfolio to understand how impactful Puff is throughout his career. And you just don't see those things that the only lens you're looking at is through him as the celebrity.  [00:28:10] Dan Runcie: I could see this topic also coming up in some ways, potentially from an investment perspective, where you all have companies that are trying to either get you to invest or you're evaluating them and at some point someone on the other side of the table may come to you and be like, Hey, well if you invest in us, can we get a shout out in a song? Can we get an Instagram post? Can we do this? Like these things that view Puff as the influencer as opposed to the business leader that has all of these things. [00:28:39] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. What I found just in my experience and I've been working with Puff almost six years now. Most of it typically comes with how people were introduced to them and the depth or lack thereof of their understanding of what he's been able to do throughout his career. There's a lot of stuff, you know, people just don't necessarily, you know, attribute to him in the way they should. So usually that journey is one where it's about informing people to say things like, let's make sure you have all the perspective and then think about kinda how this can make sense. Cause again, there's no denying his impact and influence as a celebrity. He's huge. Like, he's a big name, he's an iconic person in culture. But I think to only think about him that way now, I think when people start to understand, you know, what working with Combs Enterprises means more broadly, you start to understand the power of the platform that we really have. And that's where I think it gets really exciting for the people.  [00:29:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I agree. That makes sense. From an investment perspective specifically though, do you feel like, is that something that often needs to be addressed with startups or with founders or others that may be whether deep down they may be looking for something and I'm more so asking that in a way because I've seen it happen to others and given this conversation, I can see that especially being somewhat frustrating where it's like, Hey, I hope you're not just interested in this to think you're gonna get a shout out. [00:30:03] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. I mean, so look, I'll tell you when we are evaluating investment opportunities and people are looking at ideals, I don't think that is a thing that people are using as their primary driver. Do I think there are people who will be like nice to have, do they hope to get to meet them? Do they hope to get all those? Sure. Right. Like, again, all 'em, all those kinds of things. But I think when we get, you know, evaluating real deals. I think one thing that surprises people is the rigor with which we do our due diligence and our analysis, right? And so that's the first thing you see to say like, well this is not just, you know, high level celebrity thing. This is being looked at with real deep due diligence and real deep analysis. And I think from there it starts to shake away that kinda filter of, oh, oh, I'm gonna try to just get a celebrity deal done. Cause it's just not the way we do business. And I think people get that.  [00:31:02] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. Leslie. Yeah. Especially if there's a due diligence process that they're seeing on their side. And maybe we could talk a little bit more about that, like from a high level, for a lot of the investments you do, maybe less like the cannabis deals, but more on the venture side, do you have a particular sweet spot in terms of, you know, this is normally the dollar amount range, or this is normally what we put in, or this is normally what we are looking for? [00:31:26] Tarik Brooks: So, we have, you know, flexibility, right? We're not a fund that has to, you know, stick to a certain sector or a certain stage of growth the way, you know, funds are typically mandated to do so. We do have flexibility, but that said, going back to the earlier comment I was making, we tend to look at businesses where we see some application. At places within our current portfolio. Right? So like, I don't know that you'll ever see us do like, you know, some like heavy machinery deals or you know, enterprise software, things like that. Cause that's not natural, when you look at interface with the businesses we operate in, it becomes a lot more interesting for us. And so while we apply, you know, the very standard kinda ways of assessing, you know, the quality of the leadership team, the uniqueness of the opportunity, how opportunity is the total addressable market opportunity. Ultimately, we look at all those things just like every other, you know, person who investigates an opportunity. I think where it gets unique is for us, once we've gone through all that, we then sit back and say, okay, you know, how many of our businesses could actually utilize this offering? You know, how many different places do we think we can use this throughout our portfolio? And then it starts to become even more interesting. So, that's kinda how we get there. Now, to be clear, like we don't have a hard mandate or a set of funds. We have to put the work in the way the fund does, and so we tend to be very, very opportunistic. We pick what we do very carefully to be investing. So as we see economic conditions change as we see market conditions. We're able to just say like, all right, let's take a step back. Let's wait and see how things play out. And I think that helped. I mean, it helped us avoid, you know, some of the frustrations some folks are seeing in the web and cryptocurrency world. Cause we weren't forced to go aggressively and do something too fast. We saw the market was evolving and so we were able to take a step back, and continue to evaluate it. So from that perspective, there's a lot of flex.  [00:33:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense, especially given that, yeah, there's no fun mandates though. It's not like you're burned because there's a winter or something like that. [00:33:44] Tarik Brooks: Absolutely, and the reality is we're always investing in our core portfolio as well, right? So we think about whether we wanna put millions into, you know, a startup passively. Part of the kinda analysis is to know where we could deploy in our current portfolio and does that make more sense? Right? And so there's that kinda flow of how we think about deals as well. [00:34:07] Dan Runcie:  Yeah, that makes sense. A couple months ago, there were headlines that Puff had apparently done an investment in Twitter around the time that Elon Musk had. Was that actually a thing, or did that come through or? [00:34:21] Tarik Brooks: Look, so like Puff and Elon like have a relationship.You know, Twitter is a very interesting situation in that when you look at, you know, the side like Twitter's impact in society is certainly bigger than how it shows up from. You know, profit and loss and from a market cap perspective, and when you look at, you know, where Twitter is trading today is trading at a fraction of where like a Facebook or even like a Snapchat is I think, at this point. And so the question becomes, you know, from an investment perspective, like do you think, you know, with some changes you could create meaningful value in Twitter, that platform. And so I think while you know, the kind of, the kind of statements in the press were overstated. There was a small investment in Twitter, but it's nothing. People get pieces of information and run, so we just, you know, we gotta sit back. [00:35:17] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think the way you framed it is correct. Right? I think it's definitely one of the 40 billion companies that creates more headlines than most other 44 billion companies we could probably even think of. [00:35:29] Tarik Brooks: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, like with some decisions to be a much more viable company than today and the verdict's still out, like those changes happen in real time and cause of how, you know, big the platform is in society. You know, you're seeing those things play out in the press and, you know, I'm sure Elon's campus is trying to work as methodically as they can through those changes. As they figure out what is the right, you know, kind end state for, for that platform.  [00:36:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. The other side of the investment piece, of course, I think we talked a lot about Combs Enterprises point Capital, but on the other side of it too, thinking specifically about everything happening in music catalogs over the past couple of years, everyone wants these valuable catalogs with this timeless music. Combs has one of the most valuable hip hop, r&b black music catalogs of the past 30 years with Bad Boy Records. There hasn't been any public news about any sales, but I am sure that people must have been calling nonstop trying to at least see what they could get in there. What were those conversations like? I'm sure at some point it must have come up of Rick, whether it's running the bum numbers or even thinking through like, what would this look like?  [00:36:45] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. Well look, I think as you know, like part of the interest in these catalogs is driven by the fact that, you know, the returns they generate aren't really correlated to the market, right? Like they’re like if you have, you know, a high quality performing catalog, it's gonna generate returns and generate cash flow irrespective of the ups and downs of the markets. And so that's attractive to investors. That said, for those same reasons, it's attractive to us, right? Like it is a great quality, high performing catalog. And for us, part of how, you know, we think about things, we think about like Puff's long-term vision, right? Like we're getting back into how he's getting back into music now with Love Records. You know, he's gonna build that platform in the way that makes sense as you think about the way culture and the music industry continues to evolve. And for us, we're in no rush to get rid of a portfolio that could be a part of that. Like who knows how you think about those assets in the future. And so for us, we're spending a lot of time thinking about what the future of music is gonna look like. And you know how Puff is gonna participate in that, what that looks like. And so for us, you know, again, you don't have, you know, some of the time constraints that you get from being they're public company or you know, money at a certain time. So we had the benefit of being able to go slow and kinda take our time and basically run experiments at our own pace to figure out what we wanna do. And so from that perspective, people have, you know, continually come through with offers and with opportunities and things. And we've purposely taken our time as we've about what, you know, Puff's experience of music is gonna be over the next, you know, next years as he climbs when he talks about it's his second, right? Like he's at the point of his career where he's accomplished and he's thinking about what that second looks like. Music has always been a very important part of his life, and so music is gonna be a part of that. Second, we're shaping what that looks like. And so from our perspective, there was no reason to move.  [00:38:46] Dan Runcie:  That makes a lot of sense and I think for you, there's two things that are different with you all compared to some of the others. Two of them you touched on, but one of them is that you already have the infrastructure in place on how to do things that can help maximize the asset of the Bad Boy Records catalog. It isn't like one of these situations like where the Whitney Houston catalog, like it was dormant before Primary Wave came in and obviously they've like, you know, forseed it since they acquired it three years ago. And it isn't like one of these other legacy artists that, you know, the estate may be in shambles and things just aren't lined up. And yeah, for them it probably makes sense to just get a lump sum of money and be able to distribute that instead of hoping that your relatives who may not be trained in managing this type of asset can't continue doing it forward. Like you all have that. And I think that's part of it. [00:39:37] Tarik Brooks: Yeah. And I think there's a couple ways to think about it too, right? Like, cause these artists work so hard to create these assets. You know, why sell 'em? Why get rid of them? But I think there's a couple ways you can think about. You can say one, alright, we may be at peak pricing. And so it's like, you know what, lemme sell while things are hot. You know, take the cash, be able to take the money off the table and invest other ways. You also, particularly with younger artists to say, all right, I'll sell this catalog, but if I'm still creating, I can continue to create and you know, build new works that will create value as well. And so I think there's different logic for different artists in terms of, you know, why they think about selling and why they sell when they do that, you know, in some respect make, particularly if you're looking at it from a purely financial perspective. But again, we were unique in the way that we have an ecosystem that helps continue to keep catalog relevant. We're back in music now, and so again, that also helps to create the halo effect across all of our ecosystems. And so for us, there just really isn't a rush to move too quickly, like where we can think about what is the kinda value maximizing way to utilize the catalog and whatever else we're doing to create the best outcomes.  [00:40:54] Dan Runcie: Right. I think that's a good way to put it too, like you said, numbers are there and if you wanna sell, there are sound financial reasons that someone may choose to do so for you all, and given Puff's current goals in music, it just may not make the most sense, but with that though, shifting gears a bit, one business we haven't talked a lot about is Sean John and I know this is a business that the team had sold a couple years back. The company that bought it. Things didn't quite work out there. You all then bought it back recently. So where are things right now with Sean John? [00:41:32] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, Sean John is super exciting, right? So you first start with an iconic, you know, street brand, right? You know, this is again another example. Being able to see where fashion was going, seeing how, you know, folks in our community were wearing other brands to get particular silhouettes and have it, you know, look a certain way and feel a certain way, and then be able to build a brand. That became a real like a foundational piece of, you know, hip hop culture. And through that process, Puff was the first African American man to win the CFDA award, which is the biggest award you can win in fashion, right? So truly iconic sold the brand. The buyers at the time weren't able to figure out how to maximize it, so they created the opportunity for us to buy back. And so what we're excited to do now, and we're in this process with Puff of really reimagining what can and should be for this generation, right? Like as much as you know, we all love the iconic valore sweatsuits and all rest it like, maybe that's a part of the future. Maybe it's a different brand position, different way, but like spending time. Actually really ideate on that and get to the right concept to bring it back again. We have the benefit cause, you know, we operate this portfolio, we don't have the pressure to rush. Like we don't have to, you know, do something right away to be able to, you know, capture that value overnight. You know, we have the luxury of being able to take our time and what I found with Puff is he likes to be able to, one, work with the quality people he possibly can and really run ideas through the ringer in terms of, you know, having people question his logic, test the thinking. Really, really pressure test to see if it's the right way before we do something. So what I can say is, right now in the lab, like, you know, there's creative folks that are thinking through, you know, what Sean John could be and should be and isn't engaged in that process. And so it's exciting I think when we do hit on the market, we're gonna come back in a way that one pays homage to the legacy of John, but then isn't just caught in what to be, is really thinking about what the brand could mean and should mean to, you know, new generations. [00:43:41] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like when it happened too, it definitely generated some excitement. So I feel like there's some good momentum.  [00:43:47] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I think a lot of the folks who are dominating the fashion world now, were inspired, you know, by, you know, fans. So the fact that it's a brand is still, you know, relevant to people in different ways, gives us a great building. Like, I would rather be trying to kinda help people connect to this brand with so much history and legacy than trying to build a brand from scratch. You know? I think it provides a good foundation. Like's aspiration is to build iconic, long-lasting brands. So when you think about iconic brands that have been around for 55, you know, longer periods of time, that's what the goal is. And so, and those brands have gone through research, you know, any iconic brands gone off, of kinda laws and growth. And so for us, this is just really, you know, the second chapter of something that's gonna, you know, be a part of our community and our culture for years ago.  [00:44:45] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. And for you specifically, if we zoom out a bit, looking at the past six years since you've been there, we definitely talked a lot about wins, a lot of the successes. But are there any setbacks or are there any missed opportunities that you look back on, especially the past six years since you've been there being like, oh, I wonder if we did this differently with this brand. I wonder if we did that differently?  [00:45:07] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I think for us, one of the things I appreciate about Puff and it's a value that we both share, which you know, you look at everything as like a learning opportunity to say like maybe the outcome didn't go your way, but there was plenty of stuff you could learn from if you embrace the opportunity the right way. So like I look at the fact that it was back in was announced as an opportunity. We saw the value of the team and the value of the assets all around. You thought it was a great opportunity, pursued it. You know, the group that we were part of didn't win, but through that process, learned a ton about that space. You know, I met great people, you know, business partners and relationships that we still engaged with in different things today all came from that opportunity. So like, you know, while, look, I would've loved to be able to win that deal or bring that home, you know, I think there's a lot that comes from it. It sets us up for the things we do, you know, when I think about, David, we talked about the Revolt Summit earlier, right? Like, you know, as we were building the Revolt Summit, you know, we bring it back after, I think a year off. And then in 2020 the pandemic hit. So we gotta basically shut it down and go virtual. But like coming outta those were things we learned about how we're gonna in the future. So this year, you know, the biggest Revolt Summit ever, how's Metaverse versus online? Like all those things coming around. Again, learnings that you utilize going forward. And so, you know, whether it's you thinking through every single flavor in the portfolio or every single bab in the artist roster, even the ones that don't work out the way, you know, you want them to work out their stuff. You can learn from that help, impact and help you to be better as you move forward. That's the way we think. You know, and I talk all the time about just, you know, transparently looking at the things that go right and go wrong and making sure we're learning. [00:47:05] Dan Runcie: Can we actually talk a little bit about the Carolina Panthers one specifically? Because I know you all said that you didn't win the bid, but was it an aspect of being outbid or the owners or someone just choosing someone different? Like how did that all go down? Cause I remember the headlines about it. I remember that there were a few other prominent black public figures that were in that ownership group too. [00:47:27] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I mean, look, what I would say is, you know, the person that you know ended up winning the bid, I believe, if I remember correctly, had, you know, the highest bid relationship. I think from that perspective, he kinda knew the league, well, and, and was prepared in a number of different ways to be able to take it down. And I would just say the group that we were part of kinda fell short in that way. But what's interesting is, you know, the number, and I just can't remember real time, the exact number he ended up paying for. When you look at the number that people think that the Washington Commanders are gonna command, and the number that the Denver Barcos commanded. You know, while that number he paid was high at the time, you know, it's not even half what somebody might pay for the Washington Commanders. And so perspective, you're willing to pay for something. You gotta live with the fact that there's just maybe willing to pay more for it than you. Right. And so, you know, we ended up being a part of a really sharp group that, you know, had thought really hard about, you know, what was in this case. You know, we rounded. So, you know, again, it's one of those things you learn from, right? Like, you know, sports, entertainment, and business is very unique. You know, assets, you know, come available at different points in time. It's all about thinking about, you know, what do you think the asset is worth? What do you think you can do with it, you know, to translate to what you think it should be worth. And somewhere in that analysis you get to what you think you should pay for, right? And that's where you kinda make your move. And in that case, you know that there were just folks willing to pay for.  [00:49:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, I think that's a good point too. Cause I feel like I might be misquoting, but I feel like the Panther's bid was somewhere, I think it was under 3 billion at least. [00:49:20] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I believe you're right. I wanna be careful. I just don't remember exactly. But yeah, I remember it being less than 3 billion and I think the number they're saying for Washington Commanders now, like 7 billion and so I imagine, you know, like when you think about where the value of that Panthers is going, probably going. They probably did really well. So I mean, again, and we believed it was gonna do well and continue to do well. I mean, when you look at the size of the deal, I guess Google or YouTube just did it with the NFL. The NFL is a platform, right? When you look at, at least for the last couple years, I haven't seen 2022. When you look at the list of the top 50 watched things on television every year, 40 plus of them are football games. Right? Right. It's just that powerful of an entertainment platform, so therefore commands the prices of command.  [00:50:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Well, hopefully. Whether it's this group or some combination of others that we know we're interested in. Hopefully we see something happen soon in the sports ownership space. But this was great. I know we covered a bunch of topics in this one, and before we let you go though, is there anything that you didn't cover that the audience should stay looking out for or that we should be thinking about moving forward? [00:50:34] Tarik Brooks: Yeah, I think 23 is a year that the audience should look out for a lot from, from the Combs organization. You know, music out of Love Records, including album and power, global e-commerce platform. Kinda reimagining how, you know, black people circulate dollars in our community. You know, the cannabis venture closing and beginning to build brands and establish meaningful footprints in the markets that it's in. There's just a lot of new things in 23, so there will be a lot coming outta our camp that we're super excited about, and so it's gonna be big.  [00:51:08] Dan Runcie: We'll keep our lookout for that, man. All right. Appreciate you spending the time, man. [00:51:12] Tarik Brooks: Thanks so much, man.Take care. [00:51:14] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

What if the most important social network in the world isn’t a social network at all? In this episode, we explore how WhatsApp—often overlooked in the U.S.—has become a lifeline for families, businesses, artists, and economies worldwide. Join me and Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research as we break down whether WhatsApp is the closest thing to a true “everything app,” how it differs from iMessage and texting, and why Meta has struggled to monetize it despite its massive reach. 04:33 WhatsApp's Global Growth Strategy 17:07 WhatsApp's Advertising and Privacy Dilemma 21:34 WhatsApp's role in Meta l 24:22 Instagram DMs vs WhatsApp 29:38 WhatsApp's US Growth Prospects This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week. If you enjoy Trapital, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform!

I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at New York University’s Annual Alumni Event for its music business department. Big thanks to Larry Miller, a professor and director of the program, for inviting me.  It was a free-flowing conversation focused on how technology is reshaping the music industry from top-to-bottom. We’re well into the streaming era now, but some of the second-order effects are barely starting to ripple — particularly the oversaturation of content. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to release music, which explains how tens of thousands of new songs are uploaded to Spotify on a daily basis. On one hand, this has ushered in a golden era of independent artists making a career without the backing of a label. On the other hand, value is increasingly accruing to the superstar artists. Most of these superstars were “grandfathered” into this new era as they were already household names before streaming took off. Reaching that same superstar status is harder and harder for new artists due to the industry’s oversaturation.  Larry and I dove deeper into the issue during our conversation. Students also hit me with Q&A about burning topics such as ChatGPT, botted streaming numbers, and much more. Here’s what you can expect to hear on this episode:  [2:02] Introduction from Larry Miller  [5:09] Superstar artists like Taylor Swift and Drake shining brighter than ever [10:22] Too many hits, not enough superstars [17:23] How Curren$y “niched down” to break through [24:18] Tradeoffs of going independent or the major label route [26:47] Industry takeaways from Spotify and YouTube’s billions playlists [30:32] YouTube’s competitive advantage over Spotify [34:09] Evolving Trapital’s own business model [39:43] Music’s bot problem in streaming and ticketing [42:07] Is the music superstar dead? [44:19] Picking a platform(s) as a new artist [46:24] How oversaturated music landscape impacts listeners [49:03] Is New York drill music the next wave? [50:48] Pros and cons of AI music Trapital’s first-ever Cultural Report for 2022: https://trapital.co/culture-report/ Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co     Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Dan Runcie: Both Spotify and YouTube generated a tremendous amount of revenue for the music industry. I believe Spotify had last shared that they generated 7 billion for the industry. YouTube generates six or seven, I think it's 6 billion. The last thing that I had seen them put in. So that is a sign. Okay, great. You know, you tie that back into the numbers you shared before. You can do a little bit of backwards math to see how much of that is responsible for the overall industry with where it is now. So you see that, and then you also know that like anything else, the most popular songs drive most of that revenue. So you can kind of get a good idea to be like, okay, what are the songs that are driving? The music industry right now.  [00:00:46] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Ruey. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:01:04] (Intro) Dan Runcie: This episode is a fun one. We're sharing the audio from a talk that I recently gave at NYU. I was the keynote speaker at an event there for several hundred alumni and students. For the music business program, it starts off with a 10 minute talk by me where I'm giving an overview on the lay of the land with where things lay right now with streaming and music and social media, and how artists are doing their best to navigate all of the noise that's happening right now. And then it pivots into a conversation. Which is a fireside chat with me and Larry Miller, who's the head of the music program at N Y U, and we talk even more about what certain artists are doing, right? We talked about Currensy, who I recently had on the podcast a couple months ago. We also talk a little bit about me and Trapital and building this and where I see things going in the future. Really fun conversation. I really enjoyed doing this event and I hope you enjoyed this. Here it goes.  [00:02:02] Larry Miller: Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital. Trapital has become an amazing media platform and the quality and amount of content, really insightful content that Dan cranks out as remarkable. It's just remarkable. What it's about is the people who are taking hip hop and culture to the next level. That includes the artists who are becoming moguls, leaders who are reaching new heights and fans inspired by hip hop's growing influence. Dan, when he'd school, and I suppose even, you know, business school. This media company Trapital, because he wanted to see a change. The hip hop execs that he looked up to were becoming really successful business leaders, but he felt that they rarely got the coverage that they deserved. And he wanted to do something about it. So he launched Trapital in March of 2018, and the business has grown ever since. Tens of thousands of influential people read Trapital's weekly memos and listen to the Trapital Podcast every week to stay ahead of the latest trends. Trapital's been featured pretty much everywhere. Places like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the BBC and N P R,  C N B C and lots of other places are turning to Dan for insights on the business of hip hop. Dan's recent coverage has focused on lots of things. He's focused on the surprising differences between Spotify's and YouTube's. Billion stream playlists. Just looking at the ones that have done a billion on each platform. There are actually some pretty interesting differences between those two platforms. He's done significant work on how a venture capital fund from a 16 Z, Andreas and Horowitz invest money that is raised exclusively from black leaders in entertainment, sports, and business. He's done a report on the so-called decline in the influence of hip hop culture. He's done work on the future of ticketing. He's done a lot on DIY careers in hip hop, and done some really insightful reporting around Joe Kelli's amazing new book, Rap Capital, the Rise and Reign of Atlanta's hip hop culture, which if you haven't read it, get it. Dan got his MBA from a school in the Midwest, I think it's called Michigan, and he lives in San Francisco with his wife, and small child, daughter. Please give a warm NYU music biz welcome to Dan Runcie. [00:05:09] Dan Runcie: Larry, thank you to the entire faculty, alumni for having me. It's an honor to be here. And I guess to start things off, because she's been brought up a few times, Taylor Swift has been a topic I know a lot of you thought about. So just outta curiosity, how many of you tried to buy Taylor Swift tickets this week? Okay, a few hands. Keep those hands up if you actually got Taylor Swift tickets this week. Okay? All right. Well, people will have to follow up with you all after to figure out exactly how you did that, but I think that's an interesting place to start with so much of what's happening right now in the music industry, because Ticketmaster, as most of you know, the whole entire app and the site crash because of the high demand. Ticketmaster put out this blog post and they said that they had five times the amount of hits compared to the Super Bowl, compared to other high days worth of events for this concert alone for Taylor Swift, and she's someone that's been on tour before. She's someone that has done plenty of things in music, but to see this kind of demand is pretty surprising. But she also broke a bunch of records with the album that she just put out a couple weeks ago, Midnights, and it's made me think about something we've talked a lot about recently, in Trapital. Something we've done a lot of research on. Right now there is so much music coming. I see, I think a few of you probably saw that music business Worldwide article, Spotify releases it. A hundred thousand songs a day get uploaded to that service. Most of those songs don't get listened to, to be clear, but a hundred thousand songs a day is still something else. And then as Larry had mentioned as well, Live Nation and a lot of these other event promoters and ticketing companies are having their biggest quarters and biggest years. And artists like Taylor are probably going to be having record years. And on the flip side, you also look at someone like Drake. Him and 21 Savage recently just put out their album, Her Loss. I think Drake gave one week's notice on this album, fourth highest streaming week that an album has ever had, which is pretty impressive. I know that Drake's a superstar, but still, even his past albums before this had plenty of buildup before where if you think about what he did with Scorpion or even the long buildup for an album like Certified Lover Boy. But the fact that Drake can announce on short notice is pretty surprising because if you think about where things are in music, you have more artists than ever that wanna tour. You have more artists than ever that are releasing music, but it's the superstar artists that are still the ones that people are gravitating more towards and they're the ones that are still getting most of the profits. But on the other side of the spectrum, things are getting a little bit tougher because Larry mentioned it a little bit earlier, but a lot of artists are struggling to make toward profitable, especially post pandemic the way that things are right now. Inflation costs are rising. It's costing so much more from freight costs to be able to travel with an entire production set from city to city, hotel airfare. So certain artists are selling out their tours or selling out their concert tickets, but they still aren't able to generate profit unless they increase the ticket prices. But even if you do that to a certain extent, the customers are going to push back. I'm sure a lot of people have seen all the complaints that people have had about how high the prices are, all these hidden fees. So there's a little bit of a squeeze there. And I think what we're seeing now is something that we've seen happen in the media, something that we've seen happen in music, but the fact that the barriers to entry have made music more easy to access, and now that we're in a post pandemic world, more people wanna be outside than ever. It's a lot of the artists at the top that are doing extremely well. But on the other side of the spectrum, while you do have some folks struggling, there are artists who are doing extremely well on the independent side of things. These are artists oftentimes that are owning their masters. These are artists that own their publishing rights as well. And because they've been able to keep a low cost and they've been able to essentially build from the ground up and continue to do it almost the way that a CEO in the music industry will be building up their business. They've been able to build pretty successful businesses too, in many ways. Leveraging the power of the internet because whether it's through SoundCloud or using YouTube or any of these other platforms, they can use their content or they can use their content to be able to drive awareness to their music. And then with that, they can then build up their audience and ultimately, Do that more successfully than they might have otherwise if they were to join one of the major record labels. So it's in this interesting piece because a lot of those artists feel like they have to make a decision, and Larry and I are gonna talk a little bit about one of them in a bit, but it's making artists, and I think many people in the music industry kind of pause because of the amount of content that's coming out, because of the amount of music that's coming out, it's a little bit harder to be able to pierce through. How many of you remember about a month ago, there was a billboard article that came out that said too many hits, not enough superstars, there was named something around that. Does that ring a bell? Okay. I've seen a few folks nod their heads there, and there were a few quotes in that article that stuck out to me because you had a lot of folks that are A & R or other executives in the industry that would say, we're doing all the things that they're telling us to do. We’re doing all the TikTok campaigns, we're doing the same press runs, we are creating the content, we're putting it out there. But even if we do all those things, We still can't guarantee that an artist that we think is going to be successful can get there, and that's because at the end of the day, the record labels and the artists themselves don't have control over the TikTok algorithms. They don't have control over the Instagram feeds to be able to tell what specifically is going to rise to the top and how you can break through another piece from that same article that stuck out to me. How many are you familiar with Steve? Okay. Pretty familiar. And it stuck out because there was a recent concert that he did and he was singing his song at the concert. The audience, the voices, got quiet once it got past that TikTok moment of the song. And if you're an artist, you're putting everything into your album. Of course you know that your fans are probably gonna sing harder to the hit songs under the singles. But because through the TikTok piece. I mean, it's just a reminder of how things are coming and where things are going. Even the concept of a one hit wonder I think has changed quite a bit because back when a lot of us probably were growing up, even if an artist was a one hit wonder, you still probably knew something about that artist. I mean, we can go back years ago, but even someone like Lou Bega who had that song, Mambo Number Five, or even someone like Trinidad James who had all gold everything, you still remember the videos, if you saw them walking down the street, you could probably recognize them. Or I've still been to, you know, a few events where I've seen some of these folks at. But now a one hit wonder could have just a song that you may hear a bit often, but you're recognizing it from some meme that someone else did on their TikTok video or someone else did. So you're engaging a bit more with the viral hit itself than the actual person that's making the music. So it's making things a lot tougher for a lot of artists who I think are the majority of them, wanna be successful, wanna be known and wanna get a few looks. But that middle ground of just wanting to be able to feel like you have that moderate place, you're kind of in the middle of the industry. It's getting a little bit harder to continue to have that being viable because now as I mentioned, you're starting to see a bit of this path where you have the superstars who are just getting more and more recognition as there's more and more options than ever. Or the independent artists who, even though the economics work in their favor, even though they may be able to do even better financially than some artists who may get more exposure than them, they may not be getting looked at the same, as some of their peers are. So it's a very interesting place for the industry. I think with that, it presents a ton of opportunity, but I also think that for certain artists, especially hip hop artists, there's a little bit of a mindset shift in terms of how am I releasing music? What is it that I wanna release? Because I think for a while it seemed like there was a blueprint that generally most people do. You put your music out, maybe you have a following on social media, you share that. You share a little bit of your personality. Hopefully a good manager can come to you if you find one or vice versa. If you do well, you're able to break through. Then maybe a major record label can find you. There was a bit of a general path, but now you're starting to see more and more of that split, and it's making artists in a lot of ways, think a bit sooner about what that decision is when you're still figuring out where it is and where you honestly wanna be. Do you wanna try to become the next Taylor Swift or the next Drake, or do you wanna try to do this a bit more yourself and have a bit more control over what you do? Because the thing is, even things like that, like becoming the next Drake or becoming the next Taylor Swift, have plenty of nuance part of other things that people have been talking about is how much harder it is for a newer artist to be able to hit the same levels. The fact that, you know, we're still referencing whether it's your Adele's or Beyonce's or Taylor Swifts, or Drake's, a lot of these artists have been famous years before TikTok was ever a thing. They still had a lot of that monocultural benefit of when they blew up, they were the thing, and they were able to benefit from that and have a lot of exposure. So now any of the platforms they had, it's all gravy. Now it's all added. They can use that to their advantage, but you are now trying to rise up and do that same thing, it's harder. Even someone like Olivia Rodrigo. Any fans of Olivia Rodrigo? So she is someone who I think Driver's License in a lot of ways for some people felt like the song blew up overnight and it did extremely successful, as did her album. But she was a Disney kid. She had been famous for years before leading up to that. So even that isn't quite at that same level. So it's a very interesting time in the industry. It's been a really great time to working the work we're doing at Trapital specifically to understand what this means. We're talking to a lot of different artists. We're talking to a lot of their managers, and really just making sure that we can share the best stories that we can about what's working, what's not, and highlighting those things. Cuz I think at the end of the day, you wanna find a way for artists to be successful. You wanna find a way for the people that are trying to build companies in the space to be successful, but it's very important to with the way things are trending right now, and a lot of people are saying, oh, it's oversaturated. Oh, we hope that we can eventually get back to a place that is less saturated. I don't think that's happening. The cat's out of the box at this point. If anything, there's gonna be more and more exposure more and more platforms. You look at how quickly TikTok grew to be a platform that has 1 billion monthly active users at this rate. There could be another platform that hasn't even grown yet that by 2026 could be that big. That's just how big things are from a connectivity perspective. So you never know what things could look like, but I think for where things are heading in the music industry there, it's a really fascinating time and even there's a lot of the established superstars that have done extremely well. There's still a ton of potential opportunity. I'll pause there cuz I know that Larry and I can talk a little bit more about that. But it is such a unique time and I think it's probably a good time for us to continue having the conversation because one of the people I do wanna talk to you about is Currency, who is an artist there. So we can do that in a moment, but yeah. [00:17:23] Larry Miller: A New Orleans hip hop artist who's got a lot going, you guys know Currensy. Woo woo. So what's the deal and what made this especially noteworthy for you? [00:17:36] Dan Runcie: So Currensy is someone who I had interviewed about a month ago and it was a pleasure to have him on as a guest on a podcast. I talked to him and his long-time business manager and partner Musa, and Currensy is someone who has been through each aspect of the music industry and I think in capsules a lot of what we've been talking about here. He first got exposure about 20 years ago. He was signed to Masterpiece No Limit label, and of course there's the whole New Orleans connection there. He ended up leaving New No Limit, and then he eventually signed on with Cash, Money and Young Money specifically under Lil Wayne. The thing is though, he actually ended up leaving cash money right around the 2007-2008 timeframe, which was a bit unique because that was the time that Drake and Nicki Minaj ended up joining them as well. And that label went on a pretty high trajectory after that. So some of the young money fans may often be like, oh, what could have happened? Right. But I actually think it was probably the best thing for Currensy because he realized that he was speaking to a slightly different audience, and specifically he knew that there were certain things that he was gonna be able to share with them that would resonate. That probably may not make sense trying to be on the next Lil Wayne mixtape or trying to be on the next Young Money collection or whatever it is. So he's been able to continue his career since, but he has a bit more of an interesting model where you see artists like him, NBA Young Boys, another one, but these artists are releasing albums every other month or releasing mixtapes every other month on streaming. And it's one of these things whenever people talk about that, it often becomes a bit of this question, where is this quality that's being put out? Or is this just quantity? And I think it's a very real thing. I mean, as someone that grew up enjoying a lot of music, even the artists that are successful now, from a personal fan perspective, you know? Yeah. It means something that, yes, you know, Beyonce drops Renaissance. We haven't heard her do a solo album since 2016, and she did one this summer. Okay. I'm listening. Same thing with Adele when she had hers, but I think that for Currensy, I'm not in, I may not be in that fan base demographic specifically, but the people that are following him on a regular basis love him. So he is focused on his true fans, he's found them. And by being able to do that, ultimately these people are gonna wanna hear from you on a more regular basis. Even if it isn't your best stuff, it's what they're gonna want to hear and it speaks to the flexibility that is offered now with streaming because before, just with how much it cost to release an album, yeah, it made perfect sense why you would wait and wanna save your best stuff for it. But if an artist wants to have the model where they wanna release frequency frequently and drop as often as they can, they can do that. And the platforms give them the flexibility. And someone like Currensy, the way he put it to me was, you know, there's certain artists that are gonna get 80 million streams a day. They're more popular than I am, but they don't drop as often as I do. And I'm gonna get my 80 million streams as well, even if I'm putting out much more music than they are. And for a lot of artists, they're still recording the same amount of music. They're just shit picking the best ones to pick for the album versus someone like Currensy's like, no, let me share most of it and share it with the fans. So it's very interesting to hear that. And then specifically since then, he's been able to take a lot of that money. He is solely focused, for the most part on tours. Really doesn't do too many festivals because he doesn't feel like that is where his true fans are. So leaning even more so into the true fan piece, been able to build up and create a few different nightclubs and places like that in New Orleans. He has an apparel company, Jet Life, so it's been a really interesting model for someone to leverage the tools that are available. And even though he may not speak to me or you specifically, he has his people. That to me shows the power of artists being able to focus on their niche and being able to build from there. [00:21:38] Larry Miller: How broad do you think this, you know, phenomenon is? I mean, you made a point a couple of minutes ago that it's only gonna get bigger. There's only going to be more of this. And I think that the inference for the incumbents for, you know, the majors in particular is that they need to, you know, continue to, you know, innovate and unbundle the thing that they do and be really good and, and competitive at it. You know, the leverage seems to be moving overwhelmingly toward the side of the individual music creator. You seeing more of that? [00:22:16] Dan Runcie: I think there's nuance there, and it's something I've thought a lot about because on one hand you do see the overall revenue share numbers, where the share of at least recorded music revenue from independent artists is continuing to grow, and I believe now it's over 30% and has continued to grow year over year, the past couple of years. On the other side of it though, if you're looking at the top artists on the Spotify charts or the top artists on any of these other charts, it's still mostly signed artists that are there. Those signed artists may not necessarily, let's see, be as many new names. Like it's gonna be harder for someone to dominate the entire list the way that Taylor or Drake do when they release an album. But most of the ones that are still there are still the signed folks. So I do feel like a lot of at least for the folks on the record label specifically and the people that are working there or the people that are working at publishing companies, they still are working with the majority of the most popular artists. I know there was a quote recently from Steven Cooper from Warner Music Group and he said, our record label is less dependent on superstars than it has been in the past. And I think there's a lot of truth to that just because you can see who's being signed to wear, you can see how many stars they've been able to develop ever since. And even though there may be less big names that they may have had. There's still a higher likelihood that a big name is gonna come from them than it would be from, you know, an independent group, from an independent artist. I would say, especially at the top level. Mm-hmm. I would say. Yeah. [00:23:51] Larry Miller: Right. And so for an individual artist, they may need to go through a, you know, calculation that evolves over a period of time about whether they have the ambition. and the drive to become Drake or Taylor Swift, or if they can make, you know, just as much or maybe more on a probability adjusted basis doing it for themselves.  [00:24:18] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I do think that. If you're an artist and you wanna shoot for the stars, I think that even though there's a ton more platforms and there's many other tools out there that are making it easier for you to own your masters and own the rights to everything that you have, even the artists that have ended their deals, they're much more likely to resign with the major record labels or resign with the publishing companies, but having you know better terms than they did before. You've seen that with the weekend, and you've seen that with a few of the artists, specifically, a lot of the ones signed to Republic Records, they've, you know, de-risk themselves essentially as assets so they're able to get better terms. And they may have gotten on that first deal many years ago, but I do think that that means a few things, right? That means that those artists themselves that are already established, they're more likely to wanna stay there. But I do think for the newer artists, there's still plenty of opportunity because there are still a number of companies that wanna be able to partner with them and help them build. Right. You were just referencing Downtown and one of their key tenants of their mission is, let's help you become a superstar where you can continue to own the assets that you have. And there's a tremendous team there that has a tremendous amount of backing and tools to be able to make that happen. So I think things like that are really, really interesting. I think we'll have to continue to see how it plays out to see if we can see someone that can continue to go that route without ever having to given it up. Cuz I think right now you've seen a lot of folks were traded in at least, you know, some ownership for their rights early on. But then once they got enough leverage, they were able to get them back, which I think is powerful and in their own right. But have we seen it the other way where they started off owning everything and they've continued to own throughout their career? I think naturally there's any type of trade off you have to do when you have a business partnership. So part of that comes with the territory. But with so much flexibility and so many more options, it's gonna be interesting to watch. And that's one thing I'm interested in. [00:26:23] Larry Miller: You just mentioned the charts a minute ago, and I know that you just did a pretty deep dive on a comparison, of the billion stream or billion view charts that YouTube and Spotify separately came out with, that revealed some sort of interesting, you know, nuanced insights about what is similar but different about those platforms. What did you find?  [00:26:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I guess first for a little bit of context there, one of the drivers for this analysis was because, both Spotify and YouTube generated a tremendous amount of revenue for the music industry. I believe Spotify had last shared that they generated 7 billion for the industry. YouTube generates six or seven, I think it's 6 billion. The last thing that I had seen them put in, so, that is a sign. Okay, great. You know, you tie that back into the numbers you shared before. You can do a little bit of backwards math to see how much of that is responsible for the overall industry with where it is now. So you see that, and then you also know that like anything else, the most popular songs drive most of that revenue. So you can kind of get a good idea to be like, okay, what are the songs that are driving The music industry right now, and if you're looking at those two platforms specifically, a lot of similarities because I think some songs are hits regardless of the platform, but a lot of differences too. I think there are a few things that stuck out. Spotify specifically is a bit more leaned, at least as of right now. It's a bit more skewed towards English speaking music. I think that's just given where it's got a lot of exposure. In the earlier years, Spotify, a Swedish company, had a lot of exposure specifically in Western Europe, and then we're seeing it now with a bit more of a saturated market now in North America, but YouTube has been much more international. As a, you know, result. And in many ways, as a compliment, it was a free service and a lot of times it was able to reach and help and make sure that people could upload and reach people all across the world. And I think with that, we've seen a lot more artists from Latin America that have been able to excel quite far on spot on YouTube's list specifically. And we may not see them as high on Spotify's list. So that's something that was definitely a bit unique. With Spotify specifically, it aligns a bit more towards radio hits in general because you think about music itself, it is a very flexible type of thing that people wanna consume. You can listen to something on Spotify while you're at a friend's party. You can listen to it while you're, you know, on, on yourself, demand. You're hearing music on the radio, the grocery store. There's so many ways where the same song can resonate in a way that watching the music video, it's a little. Right, like it's a much more active thing. You're gonna probably wanna sit here and have this more visual engagement and experience with it. So with that, it highlights a few things. One, YouTube is probably gonna be a bit more aligned to what someone may actively choose to wanna listen to. So there's some insights there. But YouTube's also a bit specific because. The platform is a bit more driven by memes and things like that, that probably just don't get as much notoriety or become as relevant as they would be on Spotify. Like for instance, are you all familiar with the song?, Nelly and Kelly Rowland, Dilemma. So there's this iconic scene in that music video where Kelly is texting someone and she's using Microsoft Excel to text the person . And it's bizarre because it's something that probably didn't get that much, you know, attention at the time it came out. But now that people can rewind and look at stuff, it's fascinating. So things like that, you know, just don't translate the same way. [00:30:15] Larry Miller: What about the community building and just the community-esque  interaction that has been natively part of YouTube for really quite a long time now that is still kind of blacking at Spotify? Is that a factor? [00:30:32] Dan Runcie: I think so. And I'm glad you brought that up because I think YouTube's power in a lot of ways is, you can look at the comment section of a lot of these songs, and it's almost like a trip down memory lane, especially for some of these songs that you may not have visited in a little bit of time. And artists can see the name of their fan, they can interact with them, they can find a way to be able to try to build a bit of a community there. You can't necessarily do that on the same platform on Spotify. I think in a lot of ways, Spotify and maybe some of the other digital streaming providers from a strategic perspective didn't necessarily give artists the option to be able to see who their fans were, because I think in some ways that data has so much value, right? Spotify may share it as a flex every now and then through Spotify wrapped and things like that, where you can be like, oh, I'm in the 0.4% of Travis Scott fans. You know, I guess I listen to, you know, whatever song too often. But besides that, you don't really have that. But think about the power that an artist could have if they could do that themselves on YouTube. Even though you don't get that data, you can still see some familiar people. You can, you know, find some way to connect or go off platform if you can. And that creates the ability to build a niche. And I think in some ways it helps you have the algorithm just work in your favor, right? Like I think YouTube just being based in general off of, you know, it's the second biggest search engine, so you're leveraging everything from Google's power to be able to help power that. It just helps you as an artist be able to connect directly. So someone I mentioned earlier, NBA young boy. The way that he's used YouTube has been pretty fascinating because he releases his music first on that platform and he's someone that's releasing music every time. And the way that he's been so focused on it, it's almost similar to someone like, do you all know who Mr. Beast is? The YouTuber? Yeah. I heard a few laughs there, but it's almost a bit of a similar mentality to that where he understands that this is his audience. He sees what's working in the algorithm  may continue to serve them, and because of the success from YouTube, he's been able to translate that to other platforms. So I do think that that's a platform, and I think there's a few of them, but artists being able to find a platform that allows them to connect with fans, and especially if fans in their niche or in their base happen to be there. It can be really powerfu. [00:33:04] Larry Miller: I want to remind you that we're gonna have a couple of minutes for questions from you and you know, please figure out what you'd like to ask Dan. And I'm not sure exactly where we're gonna have a mic set up, but I know it's gonna be somewhere. It's walking around the back of the room right now. But first I have another question. When we were talking earlier, we had talked a little bit about the shift in capital business model and that where you had started out as a subscription based business and now that it is, you know, entirely sponsorship driven and that one of the things that that has afforded you is the ability to help build deal flow as the result of the subject matter and the segment of the business that you're in as an angel investor. And I wonder if you can say more about that, about what your experience has been and what your aspirations are.  [00:34:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No, thanks for asking that for me. Going back a little bit. When I initially started Trapital, the thought was to have this as a paid subscription service model where I would have a free piece that went out every week, and then if you wanted to have additional pieces written, and it would be specifically for the people that were most interested, and it would be $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year, and I did that a little under a year and things were working and I mean, things were growing. I took a step back because I felt like what was most effective for me and what was most effective for the type of things I'm doing was I wanted as many people as possible to be able to be able to either read or listen to the stuff that we're sharing because I felt like this wasn't like I was writing about tech or finance where there were plenty of people that had been writing about this, but there was something that, you know, you were gonna get like a trade secret or some insights from me that you wouldn't necessarily get elsewhere like you had shared in the intro in the beginning. I largely wanted to start this to be able to elevate and hopefully change the discussion so that when people talk about whether it's the business leaders and the strategic moves that are happening, your names like your Rihannas and your Jay-Z's can be mentioned in, you know, in the same breaths as your Jack Dorsey's or your Jack Welch's or other people like that. There are successful people in this industry that are doing this, and being able to highlight that was effective. So the more that I could broaden who could have access to it and who could read it, the more that that would be possible. And I felt that there was opportunity from a sponsorship perspective, from other companies in this space, or even tangentially outside of the space that wanted to align with this type of content and the type of people that were reading it, that I knew that not only could it match the revenue that was coming in from the subscription, it could likely be even larger. And with that, the more people it reaches, the more that it helps everything else grow. And one of the things that it's afforded me is the ability to not just be able to, you know, write and share insights about the strategy of what's happening, not just from the artist level, but from the companies that are in the space and technology, where a lot of them started to reach out to me and wanted to get my advice on, hey, this is what we're building. What do you think of X, Y, and Z? But what that specifically offered then was leading to the next conversation where, hey, we're gonna be raising. And we would love to have you on as an investor specifically because we think you have the insights and we think that you could be a value add to what we're building. And you know, after I think, you know, a few of those conversations, that's where I say, you know, this is something that can be taken more seriously because the insights are here and the spaces here are obvious. And I think that it became more and more clear that I could use this as an opportunity to, you know, back and support a lot of the companies in the space, specifically the ones that were aligned with the way that I had seen clearly what was working and what wasn't. So it's afforded me the opportunity to make angel investments in several of these companies and something that I'll continue to do through the work that I do here. And I think having a podcast, having a newsletter has been a great way to do that. And ultimately just continuing to, not just me, but other folks on the team with their help as well, to make sure that the content and the insights that we're sharing is as helpful as possible. Cuz at the end of the day, this is research that we wanna be able to make it reach as many people as possible that are interested. And then with that, knowing that it's not just the content and the insights that are helpful, but actually being able to provide, you know, financial backing and support to the companies in this space that can help, you know, make it, you know, as strong as it can be, not just for them, but for the other companies. I mean, it's a space that has had so much innovation and I think one of the things that's been a bit frustrating to see at particular points is that a lot of the newer companies in this space have had a PR, and had a pattern of asking for forgiveness instead of permission from the music industry. Yeah. To be able to use the rights of a lot of the songs, to be able to have a lot of the partnerships that they should have in place. And it doesn't have to be that way. I think there are great people out there that are building companies the right way. They're having the conversations early on and being able to help be part of that movement has been really fascinating and inspiring to see as well. [00:38:44] Larry Miller: Great. Thanks for sharing that, Dan. Let's go to your questions. I know that some of you have questions for Dan. If you do have one, there's an open mic in the middle of the floor and we'll give you a moment. Step right up. There is a questioner. [00:39:00] Audience 1: Hey, how are you doing? I just have a quick question. I'm really curious on how you feel about just botting in the industry in general, because I feel like when you were talking about the YouTube charts compared to Spotify, there could be some discrepancies in the data just because it's a lot easier to bot on YouTube versus Spotify you can get flagged. So I'm just kind of curious to know what your thoughts are around those charts. You know how accurate the data is and also what you think about that in general. Because I feel like, especially in hip hop too, it's really prevalent and it's definitely a lot about getting the numbers and stuff like that. And a lot of my clients have, you know, similar thoughts about that. So I'm just curious to know what your thoughts are on the morality of that. Is it worth it? Is it not? All those things. So yeah. Thank you. [00:39:43] Dan Runcie: Yep. Great question. I think I'll take it in two parts cuz I think there's issues with bots on streaming sites that are issues with bots on the ticketing side too. As you know, a lot of people have probably experienced it, but on the streaming side of it, it's something that I've looked at and thought it's frustrating and it's wrong because a lot of people are just gaming the system because I think that the technology has improved where a lot of things like streaming farms and things like that have been able to, it's become a little bit easier to be able to figure out like what to ignore, what not to include from a data perspective, where I think a lot of that's been ignored. But I think a few people, I don't know if anyone saw, but there was this video going around about how I don't know if it's true a hundred percent or not, but like Travis Scott's team, like gaming the system to be able to, you know what I'm referring to? Like, to be able to help boost the sales for Astro World. And it's one of these things where, okay, you could, if I'm taking a step back, directionally speaking, do I still think that he would've been as popular as he is without that happening? I still do. I mean, I think that there were so many things treading in that direction, but did that help? I'm sure it did. You know, so I still do think that it is something that is directionally, it can still give you a pretty clear idea over what's accurate and what's not. I think it's really hard to pierce through the top and be there consistently if it's purely driven by bots. But I do think that more likely than those things come to the surface in some way. Whether it's an artist that is streaming or they have tons of  social media followers, but then when it becomes time to try to sell a concert ticket, The tickets can't sell, and then that artist then has to downgrade a venue or they have to cancel the show because of things like that. These things always find a way to come to head. So I do think that in some cases, some type of retribution does often happen for artists specifically with streaming, just to get other questions in. I won't go into the ticketing piece of it. I think we all know how, you know, you know, horrible that that can be, but yeah. [00:41:52] Larry Miller: Do we have another question? Oh, good. Hi. Welcome back. [00:41:57] Audience 2: Who decided this way of asking questions? This is really weird. Hi Dan. Is the superstar dead? And if so, is that necessarily a bad thing?  [00:42:07] Dan Runcie: Good question. I don't think superstars are dead, but I do think the definition of what we describe them as has shifted and it continues to shift over time. Right, because. Let's say we go back to the sixties or even, let's take a step back. Even if you go back to the nineties and say, okay, our superstar's dead. No one is as big as Beatlemania was before people would say, you're right. No one's as big as Beatlemania, but Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey are still very popular as our Boys 2 Men are whoever else. And I think that's kind of shifted now to someone being like, okay, well our superstar's dead. Can someone be as big as Beyonce? They may not necessarily be as big as Beyonce in that same type of way, but I mean, Billie Eilish had a pretty good year. I think even though I think she came out in the late 2010s, she still had her, you know, big moment 2019. I think we're also seeing, I think if anything, the biggest superstar potential now, just given the way that things have expanded, is on the international side too. You look at what Bad Bunny’s doing. I mean, that is a superstar at every definition. The fact that a non-US album or a non-English speaking album has been on the top of the billboard list for almost the entire year is incredible and the billboard is really just capturing what's happening in the US. So imagine if that was a worldwide list. So, yeah, so I think it shifts in that way where I think, you know, 20 years from now, people will be saying, oh, is so-and-so, you know, or a superstar's dead because no one will be as Bad Bunny be as big as Bad Bunny. So I think it continues to evolve. [00:43:48] Larry Miller: Great. Hi, Max. [00:43:50] Audience 3: Hi. How's it going everybody? First off, I just want to say, I can't believe you started this speaking about Currensy. I'm a huge fan of his and he has a lot of unique ways of releasing music. And so my question is, if you're a burgeoning new artist who's trying to get as many listens as possible, would you suggest trying to move forward in platforms that are really big right now? Or finding platforms that are emerging, trying to develop a fan base there where there's less competition? [00:44:19] Dan Runcie: I think it's a mix, but I think, and maybe instead of the last piece of it in terms of finding platforms that are emerging, I think it's more so finding a platform that may seem less quote unquote sexy. But is that gonna be more so where your fans are where your folks like to be. Like for instance, I think a platform like Audio Mac has been doing pretty well over the past couple of years, and they may not get the same level of headlines that Spotify is, but if you are an artist that has a strong following in West Africa or in other parts of Africa, and you know that Audio Mac is one of the leading streaming platforms there. And then that's gonna work out tremendously in your advantage. And I don't know if I necessarily consider them like newer emerging, but I think it works out there. But on the other side of it too, still having exposure o on your Spotifys and your YouTubes and your Apple musics is still good as well because you want to, you don't know when that moment may be that you, for lack of a better word, like breakthrough and have that hit. And when you do, you wanna be able to still have something in those other places. Even if you had your home base on, you know, one of the platforms that may not get as much exposure but for the people you're trying to reach may be the best thing. [00:45:38] Larry Miller: What do you got? [00:45:40] Audience 4:  Hey. So, in a conversation of superstars, you know, you talked about the notion, the billboard, headline, you know, too many hits starting up superstars. The platformization of music where it is right now. Maybe it's a little bit harder for superstars to kind of come up and cut through the noise, but the potential, like you mentioned, to be a superstar is never any bigger in that sort of way. You mentioned the implications on, you know, from like the label side of things, from the other side of things a bit. In your opinion, what are the implications from a music consumption standpoint? You know, the average listener, people that listen to music in terms of the implications for music discovery, how music is in people's lifestyles and the way that it is now with platforms and just the superstar conversation as a whole? [00:46:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I thought about this a few ways because I think that one of the things that we're missing a bit because of the way things are now, is that someone can have a song that is topping the charts, but it's not the way that it was maybe like 10, 20 years ago where, oh, if the song is the number one song in the country, oh, like I heard it on the way to the grocery store and then I heard it on the radio and then my friend was probably playing it when I went over their house in the afternoon. No, it's more likely to be that the super fans of this song have been like, you know, streaming the hell out of it and they just have been going nonstop and I may not even know who that person is. So a bit of that water aspect isn't necessarily there as much from a fan perspective. I think the other piece of it is the algorithm of the streaming services double down on this more because at least when I log into Spotify or if I log into one of the streaming services, I'm more likely to see the songs that I've been listening to before. I'm more likely to get some type of daily mix that is based on what I've been listening to before. It's harder for me to be able to see. If I actually wanna see, okay, what are the new top hits? Like I have to search for that to some extent and go out of the algorithmic feed. That's already been tailored to me. So I think it makes it harder for me to go search for those things. And in some ways, the platforms kind of design it that way because they're like, okay, if they know that I am Rihanna fan. They're more likely to want to share with me more Rihanna songs I haven't listened to than assuming that I'm gonna like whoever may be the rising artist right now. So I think it makes it tougher from that perspective. And I think a bit of that shared community isn't, isn't there as much. So I think from a fan perspective, I've kind of had a bit of a double-edged sword because while I think part of what attracted me to so much music and memories is being able to have those shared experiences with people as opposed to now it's like, you may have like these super fandom experiences, but it's with these people that may not necessarily be in your direct area, but you're all connecting online in this way that you may not have. [00:48:33] Larry Miller: Okay, good. I think we have time for, well, let's ask this question and see how we're doing for time. Go ahead. [00:48:39] Dan Runcie: Maybe you could do like a rapid round, we could get through. [00:48:41] Audience 5:  Just really quick then, what are your thoughts on like NYC Drill? I know artists like Dio Sama are huge. Just on the data side like TikTok and YouTube, so what are your thoughts on it? Sort of, cuz I'm a little skeptical on it going really mass. Like, cuz we're really super focused on NYC. Just how big can Drill really get?  [00:49:03] Dan Runcie: Well, I think we've seen, you know, the growth and exposure in the Midwest specifically. I think so you've definitely seen it there. I think you've seen artists kind of having their own moment, whether it's someone like Ice Spice, who I think has blown up pretty recently. But I also think that moments of it hurt, right? I think it really would've been cool to see someone like Pop Smoke be able to have the moment and the rise that I think he was going to have. But even that, I think it's kind of interesting the way you phrased the question, because I think even for something like Drill music, there's probably certain people that, like the concept of Drill music, don't like to reach them in the same way. But if you're in it, you probably already think that it's overexposed to some extent, which I think kind of speaks to this like broader dynamic that we're in, where if you're in something, it can feel like if you're in that niche and you're focus, and I know it may sound awkward to call Drill music niche in that way, but if you're in that group, then yeah, it can seem like, oh wow, this thing has been going on for a while, and now it feels like it's everywhere. But if you don't really tap into Drill like that, someone could be like, oh, what's this thing? So I think that's something I keep in mind with it as well. Like there's still so much more exposure out there. So I don't necessarily have those concerns for Drill music. If anything, I think we'll probably see other regions, especially in the US, continue to adopt it more the way that we've seen New York and the Midwest, specifically Chicago. [00:50:26] Larry Miller: Let's go to what I think is gonna be a final question. Go ahead. [00:50:30] Audience 6: Okay. I just had a question about your thoughts and involvement in like A.I involvement in the music industry. You know, just like in terms of the recording side.  perhaps may potentially be in the Live side of the music industry as well. I don't know if there's any applications for that? But just your thoughts on that. [00:50:48] Dan Runcie: I'll keep this quick. It's funny, I was talking to someone about this earlier today. A.I and anything based on like GPT Three in general is fascinating because I do think it can be addictive for artists, but I feel like I can already see the headaches that are there with so many things, right? Because if it's based off existing content, and of course those content owners are rightfully gonna have certain issues about who's basing these A.I lyrics or songs off of things. I do think, though, that for certain artists it can be fascinating. I don't think it'll get to the point where someone could have like a song that they actually wanna release at a top level that is created by A.I. At least not now. The technology isn't there, but could it help with an artist that is having writer's block about a particular thing? I think it was interesting. There's a conversation. Bruce Springsteen was on an Interview and he was saying how like for him with A.I. he's looking at it as something where, you know, he's like, I've had months where I just didn't write cuz I essentially had writer's block. I just couldn't think of something to be able to put out there. But could A.I. just help jog my memory and even as someone that I am not a songwriter or a musician, but as a writer, I've been seeing these tools and the things they can do, and just being able to plus, you know, sign and then them being able to generate some thoughts, or at least a potential outline of, okay, what could this topic look like? It does at least help jog the memory in the way that reading an article or something like that can be such a fascinating space. I know we're over time, but yeah. Fascinating space.  [00:52:31] Larry Miller: Thank you. We're gonna have to leave this here for now, but you can hang out for a while and chat with everybody as we run through the rest of our program and maybe even a little bit afterward. And so let's thank Dan for a really thoughtful discussion. [00:52:50] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat. Post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how capital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcast, go ahead. Rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast. That helps more people. Discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

I’m digging into the mailbag for today’s episode. For the first time in over a year, I asked Trapital listeners and readers to send me their most burning questions about the music industry. I’ve pulled out nine questions from the bunch to cover on the show.  We’re covering everything from NFTs to artificial-intelligence-assisted music creation to investing in music catalogs going forward and a whole lot more. I’m hitting you with my honest thoughts on each. Here’s a look at the topics: [0:54] State of music NFTs  [4:40] Customer problems as a music startup [8:35] Lack of new music superstars  [12:07] Future of AI-assisted music creation  [17:00] Tradeoff for artists wanting ownership  [22:11] Hasbro selling eOne [26:16] Music catalog investing in 2023 [29:41] Globalization of hip-hop  [33:21] Emerging artists as startup founders  Trapital’s first-ever Cultural Report for 2022: https://trapital.co/culture-report/ Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Check out The Drop, REVOLT's weekly newsletter to stay ahead of the latest news in hip-hop and Black culture. To learn more, visit revolt.tv   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital’s free memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Dan Runcie: If you're an owner of I.P., often times that I.P. may be the most valuable thing that you have. But does it always make sense for you to then be the ones that produce it? Of course, there's unique examples of this, right? I think Disney is a company that clearly does both, but Disney is such a unicorn in what it does in so many ways, and we've all seen that flywheel of what they've done, and that flywheel is so relevant because it's hard to see another company that could really do that to that level. But it's more likely than not that if you are an I.P. owner or it's probably in your best financial interest to partner with a company that you can leverage their production because they are skilled at being a production company to do that thing. [00:00:46] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:01:04] (Intro) Dan Runcie: From you, the listeners who make Trapital, exactly what it is. So this is a mailbag question where you all sent in your best questions. Some of you emailed them, some of you posted them on socials, but I looked at the questions and picked the best ones, and this is a mailbag episode. It's been a while since we did one of these, so it felt good to do one. I actually wanna do these more often just because I think the questions were really great and we're able to address a bunch of topics that we'll get into A.I, the future of music, globalization, ownership, and all the topics that we love to break down on capital and a few ones. So let's jump in. [00:01:41] (Pre Roll Ad Moonpay)  [00:02:11] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have our one and only Mailbag episode from Trapital. It's been a while since we did one of these. I feel, maybe at some point earlier this year we did a mailbag, so it was finally good to dig back in, hear from folks and be able to answer the questions that a lot of you have been thinking. This podcast has grown quite a bit this past year and was in the 1% for the most shared podcast according to Spotify wrap, so that was pretty good. Some applause for that. And I wanted to bring in some of the questions from some of the avid listeners and readers we have. So I posted in social media, posted in the newsletter, and this is a roundup of the best ones. Covered a bunch of topics. We're gonna talk about the future of A.I and music, the state of NFTs, globalization, ownership, and a whole lot more. So let's dive into the first question we have here. So, Ken Penn wants to know what is the current state of music NFTs and our major labels as interested in them as they were? So first for some clear context, a lot of people have been asking questions about this because the general trends of N F T discussions from last year to this year is not quite what you would expect. A lot of people saw that Bloomberg report that came out earlier in 2022, I think they said, N F T transactions were down 97% from the peak that they were at in 2021. And if you type in the word NFTs in Google Trends, you'll probably see a slope that looks quite downward. That is very true, and that's clearly where that is. But I think there's a big difference between that, which I think 97% of that was the hype and a lot of the crap that you likely would only see at the height of the pandemic when money was flowing like crazy. Think about the time when like Pet rocks were being sold and Logan Paul was buying his NFTs or trying to sell his NFTs for whatever. If that was the top of the market, then I think we're seeing things level off a bit more now because you are still seeing partnerships from the major labels and from a lot of artists. I look at Warner Music Group. Warner's been active, more active than any other major label, I think, when it comes to active investments and being forward-looking and being public about those investments. And it was just six, seven weeks ago that they had formed a partnership with Open Sea, which is one of the largest platforms out there to be able to trade in as a marketplace to be able to buy and sell NFTs. So you also have other deals that we've seen. Universal Music Group recently hired two SVPs that are focused on web three with a pretty strong focus on NFTs themselves. And more broadly, you have companies like Public Pressure that just raised $6 million to continue to build in this space. I have said this a few times in this podcast, but I think that Web three and NFT specifically, you had to get through the.com era. You had to get through that heads.com phase of people just starting shit because it sounded like it was something that was gonna resonate, but after a lot of that didn't work out. You obviously had the.com bubble burst. That era still gave us Google, it still gave us Amazon and all these other companies that have still continued to be successful and be some of the biggest companies in the world today. And I think there was a very strong chance that we will still have that with this current wave. It may look slightly different in music, but I still think that we're gonna see, and we have seen more of the true opportunities, whether it's on the artist side of artists that are selling actual NFTs that their fans would find valuable and that others will wanna buy into as well. And I think you'll see this on the major label side with more investment going into acts that can actually reap the rewards from it. One of the biggest deals of 2022 when it comes to N F T sales was Snoop. and what he was able to do, just capturing that momentum. After the Super Bowl. We wrote, or I covered a lot of this in the culture report that Trapital put out will include a link to it in the show notes if you haven't checked it out yet, but still a lot of upside on NFTs. I do not see it quite as much as the bubble that I think was clearly there in 2021. A lot of that quarantine rapid growth needed to calm back down a bit, and I think NFTs are one of the areas that were hit a lot harder than others, but I still think that there's plenty of upside for people that actually wanna build and don't just wanna do grifter, whatever the hell else people were trying to buy itself time. Another question here is from David from Santa Monica, and this was actually a reply to a newsletter that I recently put out where I was talking about some of the cost challenges that music startups and music tech companies will face as in regards to working with customers and customer service and working and dealing with unprofitable customers and wanting to move further up. Mark's question was whether or not I had any data on the customer service costs that these companies have. And I wanna answer that question in a slightly different way. It's less about customer service in the same way that you know, you or I may go call Comcast or may call Xfinity when we're having an issue with our cable or our internet, but it's more so you are a client or customer that is trying to use this particular service, whether it's free or you're relying on it to grow your own business, and you are now having some challenges, you're having some type of question. The thing is a lot of the companies, especially a lot of the distribution platforms, started off being available to everyone, but I think they realized how expensive it is to serve the clients and to serve the customers who are not driving the most business possible. It's no different than a lot of people see when they're working with client services. Overall, your $2 million clients in a lot of ways can be so much more enjoyable to deal with and work with than your $2,000 clients or $2,000 clients will chat a nickel and a dime. They have a bunch of questions about this, that, and the third, but your clients that have a bit more money, they normally come in a bit more clear and confident with what they're looking for, and it can lead to better business in the long run. And I think to a lot of extent, the same is true with a lot of the artists that you end up serving or a lot of the customers that a lot of these platforms end up serving because a lot of their time gets spent with customers that just don't justify the ROI of how much it costs to have that person on staff continue to work and continue to coach and work directly with someone who's just not generating enough revenue to be able to justify the spend. And if you think about how a lot of the companies focus on these things, especially if you're being built out like a tech customer success. This is a role where whether even at the high individual contributor, or the middle level manager role, you're talking, you know, $150, $200,000 plus for someone that can do that roll on annual basis. I mean, I'm thinking of myself, it was six years ago at this point, I was offered a customer success role from a startup that has, you know, now been acquired. I believe the offer was right around that $150, or maybe it was a little bit more than that K range. And that's how much you're paying to have one person that is dedicated to not just you, but to other clients. But if you were to fractionize my time, let's say that, you know, I was someone that was making $160k a year and I had 12 to 16 clients per year that I was serving, you have to justify, okay, is it worth $10k of the company's time to be able to continue to serve this person if that's what I'm spending my timeline, and we all know that it's less likely that it's gonna be an even split. So that's where these things I think, can often come into play, which is why I think you've seen a lot of the distribution services and a lot of the others start to be more selective over time. And they start to have cut-offs in terms of who they're willing to serve and who they're not willing to serve. And that's one of the reasons why I think we see that shift where, especially in music distribution, it ends up leaning itself towards just having a low cost option, like Distrokid or a tunecore where it essentially doesn't cost much at all to upload the services, but it's a bit more do it yourself or you get something that is a bit more boutique. But by being able to join the boutique offering, it's much more selective as a result. So the next question here is from Arthur from Twitter. He didn't specifically say his name, but it was a good question here. He asked, who gets more blame for the lack of consistent superstar X, labels or customers? The answer is neither. The answer is technology. If you're trying to blame anyone, I personally don't call it blame. I more so call it the driving factor, but this is more about technology. Technology was the driving force that lowered the barriers to entry for artists to be able to create more music than they've ever created, and to be able to release it the way that they've done it. And because they're releasing music the way that they've done it, it then becomes harder and much more noisier for new artists to be able to enter the scene and be able to hit the same heights that they did. And because of the increased number of options that are there, it makes it even easier for powers that be to continue to invest more in what they already see proven. Whether that is your superstar artist or ones who have already proven themselves that seem like they'd be most likely to be the next next bets, whether that's your Taylor Swift or your Adele, or your Beyonce on the proven side or on the artist coming up, whether it's someone like, Olivia Rodrigo, or like Blast, or Billie Eilish or someone like that. So these things that are, I think, a big factor just based on where things are and barriers continuing to be lower and lower. And there's been countless reports on just how difficult it is and how record labels are starting to feel like it's having a harder time to break new stars in the way that they once did. It's harder to have new superstars reach the levels that they did. I think you see this in some of the analysis that's been done on charts and stuff like that too. It's a lot of the same names that have been household names for over a decade that are continuing to stay there and it's harder for the new artists to really come through. So I guess if there's anyone to blame for that, we can blame the founders and the product managers from the companies that enabled the barriers actually to happen in the first place. I know a lot of people disagree. I do think it's a good thing that people have more options than ever just in terms of the artist's perspective, but just because I think that it brought a lot of flexibility. But with that, there's always trade-offs like any new technology brings. There's good with that. There's bad that comes with that. I do think that the pros and the cons outweigh them. I do think that the pros do outweigh the cons with that, but still very aware of the downsides of the current timing. This next question is from Joe Edwards and he asked, what is the ultimate potential of GPT-3? This is a hot topic right now, I think for a lot of folks, and it's a question that I think everyone from record labels to attorneys, to emerging artists are trying to figure out, but here's my perspective. I think that GPT-3 is a great tool that will be able to give songwriters an extra tool that they can have by their side. I think we recently heard Bruce Springsteen on a podcast talk about how he could use A.I., whether it's something like something that can help jog his memory or jog his thoughts, specifically if he's having a better writer's block and how difficult that can be for a songwriter. You just wanna be able to have a few things that can aid your process of bringing thoughts together. The pen that comes from that would ever truly replicate something that Bruce Springsteen would wanna put out himself. But just give it how advanced these tools get and how better and better they get. It's likely gonna provide some inspiration that can be helpful. That said, I think it would be more helpful to help existing artists, and I'm a bit less bullish right now on new artists coming up. I think we all saw what happened with Capitol Records and FN Meka and that whole mess, while I don't think that that's all A.I. driven, part of that's driven by the people that were running it. I do think that that is an inherent challenge that some people may be a bit weary of, at least for now. But one place that I do think A.I. and GPT-3 specifically could be unique for is for giving certain artists or certain people the ability to access a sound catalog or an ability to access a group of songs that they can use to then scour to figure out what they can then glean from that to be able to create the new songs that are able to create lyrics that they could use in the future. The reason I highlight this is because I'm sure if you're trying to use a song that is based on a song that is owned by a major record label, the record labels and their lawyers will come after you, and it is something that I know that is already top of mind for. But there's a lot of music out there, a lot of music that people would want to hear that isn't owned or controlled by the major record labels. And I think in the same way that you saw platforms like Epidemic Sound or Splice and others be able to create, whether it's monthly subscriptions or other types of opportunities to buy access to a right to use any of the songs in the catalog. I think you could see something very similar to that happening with A.I. and GPT-3 specifically, because yes, if GPT-3 tries to scour all of the songs available, that is a legal nightmare. But if you're an artist and you wanna be able to pay $10.99 a month or whatever it is, to be able to access this tool where you could type. Any prompt that could help spur your thought, that could be a very great use of $10.99, especially if that gives you the ability to make the next album from your bedroom that could be nominated and win a bunch of Grammys or sell, or, you know, do a bunch of commercial success or just have enough success for you to be a standalone successful musician in your own right. Because I do think a lot of those things are likely to appeal more so to independent artists. I also think that we'll see some potential with GPT-3 with an artist that breaks out on TikTok in general, I almost feel like it's inevitable that there's gonna be some artist in 2023 that has some song that goes viral on TikTok, and people are gonna be like, oh, where did the idea for the song come come from? And the artist is gonna say, oh, I just typed in a prompt. Write me a song about X, Y, Z. And here's what came up. Because we already started to see little hints of how artists would use name generation or using tools to come up with things, right? You've all heard the story about how Lil Nas X used insights from Reddit and insights from Twitter to create Old Town Road and how he essentially engineered that song to reach a type of success that it did grant. A lot of that was outside of his influence, just given things going viral after the whole country music controversy. But a lot of the things leading up to that point were influenced by him. And I think even on a more simpler side, artists like Childish Gambino and Post Malone, I'm pretty sure that both of them got their names from some random computer generators. So there's been things like that that we've seen and I think we'll continue to see more of that. And I think even the answer to this question is gonna continue to evolve. So you could ask me this question in a year. I think I could probably have this as an end of the year podcast question for some time now. And their law used to be something new to glean. The next question here is from Mercedes G. She wants to know why don't artists prioritize ownership even though artists have been pushing ownership for decades? So this question is a bit nuanced because I do think that there are a lot of artists out there that do push ownership, and they are clear that they wanna be able to own their masters and own their publishing and understand the value. I think the challenge comes though, when it becomes a trade off and that trade off is likely offering the artist something that they couldn't have otherwise had because owning your masters and owning all those things sounds great and it sounds great if we assume that the artist could have reached the same heights that they could without giving up something in exchange. The thing is, when an artist is starting to pop and they are already experiencing what some of the challenges are, being able to really hit that next level and whether that is something that they want to do because of some of the things I answered with earlier questions. With more and more music coming out, it's harder for everyone to break out. It's especially harder for artists that are already signed to two record labels to break through. That means it's gonna be even hard for an artist that doesn't have the major label resources behind them to break out as well, which could make them even more likely to wanna then sign with the major record label, especially if they are cutting you a check. I'll look at a few examples of younger artists as well. Look at an artist like Lil Dirk or even NBA Young Boy, I'm pretty sure little Dirk. Posted that he had gotten a 40 million deal recently this year. And I think Dirk is someone that has been popular. I mean, it's several years ago at this point that he was on double XLS freshman list, but even as an independent artist, it could have taken him quite a bit of time to ever hit that amount of money, especially if he's trying to cash it in on the moment that he has. So it's one thing to push ownership and it's another thing to still be able to say, you know what, no, I'm good. I don't want that check. Let me continue to do what I'm doing. When someone offers you an eight figure check that's right in front of you. And I think there's a bit of that human element that can sometimes get a bit lost cuz it's easy for the people in the pita gallery playing Monday morning quarterback to go say, oh, why would you do that deal? Or us to focus on some of the survivorship stories of Master P turning down a million dollar record label deal. Different people that may have offered it to him. Because for every success story like Master P, there are other people that turned those same type of deals down but it didn't take off the way it did for P and then they go back to the record label and being like, oh, hey, could I still get that deal? And the record label's like, no, like the moment passed and the only reason you're coming to me is because you don't feel like you have the momentum that you had before. So there's a few factors here that I think are important to consider, and there is that human element that I think just changes. It's one thing to be a Twitter pundit and put your thoughts out there, but it's another thing to really still say no when a company that you know, they're rolling out the red carpet for you their show, they're presenting the seven, eight figure check, whatever it is, and then you still saying, no, I'm good. And then I think you even see us at the highest levels as well. You look at the deals that you know, someone like Drake or the weekend, you're more so hitting now into the nine figure deals and these artists are more likely to be able to continue to have ownership, but they're still licensing their masters or licensing their music out to the major company. So there's still some trade off there. It's very rare that you ever are really seeing superstar artists that still are hitting those superstar artists levels that is like, you know what? I'm good. Let me just go release everything independently. Cause I think at the end of the day, if you are a priority on these labels, and if you are still getting the best that you can get, you're more likely to figure out, okay, what trade-off is commensurate at what level? And that doesn't mean there wasn't a better way that could be done optimally. My explanation here is more of an explanation of the entire landscape of less of an advocacy for one position or another. But I do think in general, just given how much harder it is for record labels to be able to truly, I think, focus and invest on that artist development piece because they're expecting artists to come to them when they've already hit zero to 60. I think it really puts the onus on the artist to be like, okay, are you happy at 60? Because if you're happy at 60, you may not need the record label, and maybe you think you could get to 70 or 80 yourself, but it may take some time. But if you're trying to get to a hundred, it's gonna be really hard for you to do that independently. So a lot of it requires some questioning on where you wanna go, how far you wanna go, and why that may or may not be as important to you.  [00:22:52] (Mid Ad): Today's episode of The Trapital Podcast was brought to you by Revolt. Revolt is on a mission to curate and share the best of the best in hip hop culture and social justice. You may remember a couple months back I had the CEO of Revolt, Detavio Samuels on the podcast scene. He talked all about the mission and where things are going, and I think this is one leading company that is elevating what's happening in black culture. It was launched by Sean Diddy Combs back in 2013, and the multi-platform Network offers breaking news videos, artist interviews, exclusive performances, and original programming. They have content for everyone, like Asset over liabilities and original podcast with the host of Earn Your Leisure that gives you a behind the scenes look into the business investments of artists like Soulja Boy and Rick Ross. They also have the Drop Revolts weekly newsletter and curation of the latest in hip hop and black news, and they have the black print where sits down with innovators and change makers laying the ground up for the next generation for the culture. You can learn more and sign up for Revolt's newsletter, the drop@revolt.tv. [00:24:00] Dan Runcie: All right, this next question here is about a specific deal that's going on, but it's gonna be a good one to answer. JB from Atlanta asked, now that Hasbro has sold E-One's TV and film division, could quality control be a potential buyer? So a few things to unpack here. Earlier in November, Hasbro announced that it will be selling its TV and filled divisions of the comp company. Note that this news, three years after Hasbro had initially acquired all of Entertainment One, which included its music division. And then I think it's been about a year now. My time may be off, but it's been about a year plus now that it had rolled off its music division, which then became Monarch, which is run by Chris Taylor and that team. You may remember them because they were the team that was involved with the selling and the acquisition of Death Row records and then that deal with Snoop Dog. But Hasbro overall has kind of been in this, oops, maybe we should have done this deal when they went and bought E-One. And I think the big takeaway away for Hasbro has been that if we want to leverage the IP that we have, and as many of you know, Hasbro toy companies, so it has the IP there, but it also has some brands that were in that production, like Peppa Pig and things like that. They can still own the IP, but they don't have to own the in-house production to be able to then leverage that IP and make it happen, and then when you own those divisions, it just can be so costly to try to do that. So they got a lot of pressure from Wall Street and other analysts to sell that division and focus on what they do. If you're an owner of an IP, Oftentimes that IP may be the most valuable thing that you then have, but does it always make sense for you to then be the ones that produce it? Of course, there's unique examples of this, right? I think Disney is a company that clearly does both, but Disney is such a unicorn in what it does in so many ways, and we've all seen that flywheel what they've done, and that flywheel is so relevant because it's hard to see another company that could really do that to that level. But it's more likely than not that if you are an IP owner or it's probably in your best financial interest to partner with a company that you can leverage through their production because they are skilled at being a production company to do that thing. So that was a lot of the reason why that sale happened in the first place. Now let's talk about the QC part of this. I would be very surprised if Quality Control was to go on and buy a TV and film division because I also look at Quality Control as an IP. I mean just given the ownership structure, they may joint own some of that with Motown, give the joint venture there. But they are IP owners that can then use that to leverage, whether it's the brand or the story of your little baby Migos and even the rise of coach K and P and and things like that. And while QC does do investments, like I know they're involved with SoundCloud and they have a few other things going. I would be very surprised if they went on to acquire a type of, you know, studio themselves. I know that QC does have a film division, but my impression of that has always been more so, yeah, let's stay quiet, let's have that something that we could have that small and manageable in-house, but if they still have a big release, I think they would probably wanna go to shop that and market the same way that any other big time producer would want if they wanted to push something further. No different than, I think you kind of saw with the Little baby documentary that eventually went on, Amazon was released on Amazon Prime a couple of months ago. So I would be surprised there, if anything, I mean, I think QC is one of these record labels that may be looking for an outside investor itself, but I'm not quite sure what the Motown relationship, just given the joint venture ownership there and how that may look, whether or not who the actual company is that owns, whether it's the brand or the artist or anything like that. Moving forward from that. All right. Couple more questions here. So is music investing specifically, like in catalogs, is music investing still a good idea in 2023? And my answer is yes, but not in some of those 2021 pandemic era evaluations. And that's because I think what I liked about the catalog boom is that it brought awareness to something that I think a retail investors in the niche knew, but a lot of others weren't focusing on, is that there's a lot of value to be had with owning some of these catalogs because there's certain artists that I think do have the potential to just feel similar to a evergreen stock or something like that continues. Provide consistent revenue that isn't correlated with the economy time and time again. But I think there's a few things that happened that people may have missed. One, there is a decay curve with all of those assets. And even as much as people wanna tell you that the Beach Boys or Michael Jackson or the Beatles are timeless, everything has a decay curve. I mean, you could even go back, you know, decades, even. Frank Sinatra or Elvis. I know that you know that the movie that came out recently, but even folks like that, the discussions that are happening now about those people aren't anywhere near the type of discussions that you may have heard, at least when I was growing up, and that just shows you how much has changed in several decades since then. So, and I think the music listening would've probably aligned with that as well. So there's that, and I just think that the valuations that were being paid for a lot of these things probably just wouldn't happen again. One, because interest rates are nowhere near as low as they were, but I think even regardless of interest rates, there was a lot of overpaying for those assets just given the excitement. So smart on a lot of the artists for cashing out when they did and getting a lot of those returns because at least from what we've seen from a lot of the reports, You've seen some of these financial time stories talking about Hypnosis. And Hypnosis has at least from what the returns have been from their catalog has not been able to generate returns that a lot of the investors feel satisfied with and feel are in line with what they had, which is why I think you started to see more challenges there. There was almost an entire year period where the company didn't make an investment, and I think you've seen a lot of things ring true for others. There are still catalog sales happening. It just may not happen at the particular dollar amount that people wanted. For instance, there was Pink Floyd deal that was being talked about for a while. It's still being talked about. I believe they wanted $500 million, but based on some of the recent findings that had come out, the offers that they started to get were much smaller than they would've liked. So people are still interested in buying Pink Floyd. It may not be for the amount of money that the rights holders wanna sell it for, but there's still interest there, and I think that rings true all the way up and down the board. Listen, it wasn't even just music investing. The quarantine era of the pandemic led to a lot of sales for things happening that just probably wouldn't happen in the same way today. All right. Another question here is how does the globalization of hip hop Influence its business and cultural impact? And this question came from chat GPT. Someone had submitted this question and then it came back as, oh, what do you think is a good question to ask about the business of music or the business of hip hop? So this is a fun one. I know I've written about it a few times, but for the sake of brevity, I'll tackle it in two ways. First, A lot of the Western hip hop artists were able to reach a much bigger audience as a result of globalization, and I think it made it easier for some of them to launch global brands as a result. I look at folks like Rihanna and folks like Jay-Z. Look at some of the deals they've done with, whether it's ACE of Spades for Jay-Z, or the Fenty partnerships with Rihanna. These partnerships are tied in with European companies and there has to be some relevance for how big you are seen in Europe and other areas for those things to really have an impact. And I think you saw that compound as well. When you look at someone like Rihanna and Fenty Beauty, being able to enter Africa and just given the ethos of that brand being able to be inclusive and have shades for all skin tones, it makes perfect sense to be able to do it in Africa, which you just think about the beauty industry. This is an entire continent of people, especially women. Different complexion and skin tones that were largely overlooked by the many other major brands. So being able to have that influence there directly ties into an artist like Rihanna, you know, years, decades earlier, being able to tour in these places and being able to have her name out there, being able to be seen in that way. So I think it affects it from that perspective. And of course, Jay-Z, Rihanna are more so people at the top of that chain that are billionaires, but I think it really made a large impact on everyone else on the other side, I think it's made a huge impact on international artists too, because we've seen in so many other places that hip hop has truly been that connective tissue. It's really been that gateway that can help. Raise and elevate the voice of the unheard or elevate the voice of the people that may not have either gotten a chance to get their word out there or can really speak to some of the challenges that are happening. And that's the way that hip hop started. You look at Public Enemy, they saw themselves as the black CNN. They were trying to voice what's really happening. You listen to songs like Grandmaster Flash, The Message. This is what's going on in the streets of New York right now. And I think that if you listen to a lot of hip hop from other areas and you hear things translated, you're hearing a lot of that. And even someone like Bad Bunny, how he speaks about some of the challenges and the oppression that's happening in Latin America, or even things that are happening in Puerto Rico specifically, or even how we spoke out about disaster relief and even L G B T Q issues. It's not a coincidence that this is a hip hop artist that is doing this in their own language and that's happening. So I think we've just continued to see more and more influence and we'll continue to see how hip hop continues to be such a big driver. And it's not just Latin America. You're seeing it in France and you're seeing it elsewhere. And as globalization of music more broadly has made it more possible for artists in local languages to truly rise up. I think you're gonna see more and more of that coming from hip hop in a lot of those local language areas. All right. And the last question we have here is from Quai Bangs who asks, do I notice similarities in emerging artists that follow the start-up path to start-ups themselves? And I definitely do see a lot of those. And I like the question because I've been hearing so much from founders in the space and start-ups in other companies about two things. Truly identifying and seeing artists as founders, not just as the creative talent behind what they're doing, but they are the ones that are the founding person of this company that if successful as it can be, it'll be a company built around them to then help focus and really benefit and speak to their strengths and address their weaknesses as well. No different than a start-up would be who is that? Who are your co-founders that you're gonna find that may not be on the talent side, but can help with the business? Or if you wanna do it all yourself, who are the people that can be around you to at least help support in that way? And I think that you've seen some of those things happen, from time and time again. You look at the start of Dreamville, I very much do. Ibrahim Hamad and Jay Cole as two people that are in line with being able to do that and continuing to push forward, which I think has been pretty strong, seeing how they've been able to do that over the past decade. Plus, you look at any of these record labels and I think you're more likely than not going to see some type of tandem there. We talked about Quality Control. I think you see a lot of that too, and I think no different than a start-up may try to get equity for what they're doing. I think you're seeing certain artists start to explore this as well, whether they're trying to explore on chain, we're trying to sell tokens or they're trying to get a more formal structure in place. I recently had the investor, Cooper Turley, Cooper Tupa on the podcast, and he was talking about this as well, and how he's investing in companies that are looking at this investing artist specifically so that he can take an equity stake out of the artists themselves and be a bit, you know, less dilutive than a record label that may wanna take 80% of the cut moving forward in exchange for in advance. So there's plenty of trade-offs there. I think it's an interesting thing to continue to explore, but I think that it is a sign of what that path to the future looks like. Cuz I think that artists, our founders, at the end of the day, how they go about that, you know, is one thing or another. And who wears that CEO hat. Whether it's someone that artist proactively puts in place or it's someone. It ends up being at the record label that they signed to, or it's their manager. There's so many ways that these hats can be worn, so you'll be interested to see how it plays out. But wow, that was fun. That was a quick bunch of rapid fire questions there, but this was really great. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoyed the podcast this year as well. Definitely continue to share it with anyone that you think would be in. And let me know if you have any other questions. We can keep this in mind. I wanna do these more regularly in general. So, yeah, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, send us a quick note, whether it's, you know, on social media or email. And then we'll keep them rolling so that the next time we do a mail bag podcast, we can keep it rolling.

This episode is a two-parter. At the top, I talk about the news at Motown Records with Ethiopia Habtemariam stepping down from her role as CEO and Chairwoman. After that, I talked to Zack O’Malley Greenburg about Hip-Hop’s wealthiest artists of 2022.  After years of compiling the list for Forbes, Zack O’Malley Greenburg released the 2022 edition independently. This time around, he used insights from Columbia Business School to better grasp on the wealth of the industry’s biggest moguls. Jay-Z tops the updated list with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. In second is the newly-minted billionaire Sean “Diddy” Combs. The rankings are rounded out by Ye ($500 million), Berner ($410 million), and Dr. Dre ($400 million).  Zack joined me on the episode to discuss the rankings, and two artists in particular — Diddy and Berner. Diddy has a portfolio of diversified assets that include media, music, spirits, and now cannabis. Berner is the biggest surprise of the top 5 but has quietly built a cannabis empire with a large runway for further growth. Here’s everything Zack and I covered on the show:  [13:56] Zack’s process behind putting the list together   [15:40] The newest billionaire on the list [16:41] The growth of Diddy’s DeLeon tequila brand [29:02] Sean John’s place in Diddy’s portfolio  [30:28] Diddy’s latest moves in cannabis and possibly Twitter  [32:45] The evolving business of REVOLT [36:19] Berner’s “surprise” $410 million net worth [31:50] High potential for Berner’s business [34:52] Berner’s business success supersedes his music fame  [39:50] Drake moving up the ranks  [43:50] Girl Dad stories Zack’s Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists list for 2022: https://zogblog.substack.com/p/hip-hops-wealthiest-artists-2022 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Zack O’Malley Greenburg, @zogblog   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:23] Dan Runcie: Hey, today's episode is a two parter. The first part of the episode, we're gonna do a breakdown on one of the more recent news that happened in the music industry. Motown Records CEO and Chairwoman Ethiopia Habtemariam has stepped down and there is a lot to unpack there. So we're gonna talk about that. And in the second half of this episode, we're joined by my guy Zack O'Malley Greenburg, and we are gonna talk about the recent list that he put out, which is his hip hop's 2022 list for the wealthiest artist. He has some new announcements, some usual names, and we break it all down. But first, let's start with the news at Motown. So it was last week, shortly after Thanksgiving. Ethiopia and Universal, and Motown announced that she will be stepping down from her role. This is a role that she has officially had at this level for just over a year and a half. I think it was March, 2021 that the role was announced, but she's essentially been the face of Motown from a leadership perspective for over a decade now and when the move happened, I think that there were a fair amount of people I could understand that could have been caught off guard by it. But when I start asking around, asking a few people questions who I know understand the situation pretty well, it's quick to see that what's being pushed publicly isn't quite reflecting what's actually happening behind closed doors. But before we get to all that, let's talk about some of the wins that I think Motown and Ethiopia have accomplished over the past decade, because I think these stand out and they're really important. I look at the 2015 joint venture deal that she did with quality control music, as one of those deals that can ultimately help bring a record label from its days of resting on its laurels to being able to get a bit more current. We've seen this happen time and time again. You look at Interscope in the early nineties. Interscope was a legacy rock and roll label. Jimmy Iovine was trying to figure out the next thing and then boom. Here comes Suge Knight. Here comes Dr. Dre and Death Row records comes through. Not only does Death Row continue to rise up with the supportive Interscope, but you also see Interscope adopt a bit of that cool factor and really revive itself, and now Interscope is continuing to be one of the strongest record labels that we have. You also saw that a few years later happened with Republic records and with cash money signs. The deal that I've talked about plenty of times on this podcast, that 1998 distribution deal and that deal did a lot for Baby and Slim, but it arguably did even more for Republic Records, which now I believe it's in its fourth year in a row, the leading industry or the leading record label in the industry when it comes to overall market share. And I do think that what quality control and Motown were able to do, do deserve some similar praise. But the slight difference here is that Motown for a lot of its time and even more so as we continue to learn, was saddled under the Capitol Music Group umbrella and didn't really have the opportunity to standalone as a true record label that could run on its own and be a standalone entity. The same way that we see with Interscope, the same way that you see with Republic. And some of the other record labels that are under the Universal Music Group umbrella. When the news first announced though, there wasn't as much chatter about Ethiopia's departure. You think about the times that Def Jam has turned over CEOs. There are think pieces on think piece. You can't get people to stop talking and sharing their opinions, and some of them on base, but people sharing their opinions about what Def Jam did and didn't do wrong, but there wasn't as much here. You saw a little bit in piece that Gail Mitchell at Billboard had done where I think she did a good breakdown. You could definitely read between the lines a little bit of some of the things that necessarily weren't being said, but what I think we started to unpack and what we started to get a sense for was, even though Motown had increased its market share considerably under Ethiopia's tenure, I believe back in 2017, it was around 0.4%. And as of most recently from what Billboard reported in 2022, it's at 0.95%. And that's great, more than double. And you think about how much more recorded music has grown from 2017 to 2022 now as well, that's a pretty huge growth and that's nothing to shy away from. The thing is, record label executives and the music industry aren't just judged on market share. You're judged on how efficient you are with what you do to acquire that market share. You're also judged on your ability to score deals and your ability to do it in a way that's efficient. Everyone still has a PNL at the end of the day. But I think the slight difference for some of these companies is that because they sit under the Universal Music Group umbrella, you may not necessarily know what's really happening unless you have a really discerning eye and you can put two and two together. And if you look at some of the moves that Motown has made over the years, there have been a number of big signings. But have those big signings always necessarily led to the type of results? You know, someone like Universal CEO, Lucian Green wants to see from a record label that now would be standing alone and no longer under the Capitol Music Group umbrella. You look at an artist like Lil Baby, who you know, through quality control, is part of that Motown collective. But, you needed a few more artists at that level and you needed to get them at affordable rates. And I think the biggest win that we saw from Motown in recent years was they recently signed NBA Young Boy. This is about a year after he started working with his record label, but how much did it cost to get NBA Young Boy? He had just posted on Instagram, this is two months before this deal was made public. He had just posted on Instagram, this was in August, 2022, that he was a 60 million dollar dude. You're saying you're a 60 million dude. A lot of people thought that was a cash money deal. They thought that was probably what Baby and Slim offered, but you later find out that this is what was coming from Motown, and I don't know if that's the number or not, but you can just assume a few things. One, NBA Young Boy was someone that just got out of his deal at Atlantic Records and he's getting out of his deal. This is the second most streamed artist according to HITS Daily Double for year to date for 2022. But as we also know about streams, not all streams are necessarily weighted the same, and those YouTube streams may not necessarily lead to the same payouts that you may get from the digital streaming providers. Your Spotify, your Apple music, your titles, your Amazon, and so forth. So you have that. You also mix that in with NBA Young Boy's audience isn't necessarily the type to go buy up a bunch of vinyl. They're not the type to go buy up a bunch of digital copies or then necessarily sell out an arena. And it's great that he has those streams, but he has those streams because he is dropping an album every other month. It's not the same as Columbia having a big release from Harry Styles and then monetizing the shit out of that. Or Kendrick Lamar having a big release on Interscope, and then that continues to do numbers and numbers. It's not the same type of thing in that way. So I think, even if you were able to win a bidding war, which is great, obviously a number of labels would've wanted to get NBA Young Boy. There's a certain price to everything, and even though we may not know the specific details, we can put two and two together. There are also a few other recent signings that could be called a bit into question. There were signings of Diddy and Brandy, and these are names that I think a lot of people, especially millennials and Gen X folks grew up with, and they're gonna be people who have done quite a bit in the music industry, but they're at a different stage in their career. They're hot. Their years of earning meaningful revenue for a record label aren't necessarily where they are at this particular point in their careers. That's okay. But does the price that was paid to get them, justify that. And I think there's kind of an unsaid thing where if you're signing someone who is already well off, they are likely doing this for their own choice, then it may cost a little bit more than an equivalent artist who could produce just as much from a revenue side as what you may expect from Diddy or Brandy moving forward if they don't have that name and that cache. And to be frank, the stability to not do a deal unless it's gonna be lucrative enough for them. And then you also have artists like Smino and Vince Staples who are talented at rap, and they definitely had the moment where you thought things were rising up, but they don't move units like that. And then it brings you back to the broader piece of what's happening, specifically with the JV, with quality control music. And I think that you've seen a lot of success there. Little Baby is one of the most successful artists that we've seen, but I think you just needed a few more artists, even Migos. I think that Migos in some ways from a commercial standpoint, peaked with that first culture album that came out. Culture two wasn't able to hit the same heights and Culture three definitely wasn't either. None of the solo artists were necessarily able to do that, and unfortunately there was some, you know, conflict between the Migos themselves. Takeoff is no longer with us. There's just a lot that just didn't exactly line up. It's really tough, and it's even tough to share it this way because I think one of the reasons you didn't hear a lot of chatter and discussion about this is a lot of people really wanted to see Ethiopia succeed, myself included. We wanna be able to see these black executives continue to reach the highest ranks that they can because we also wanna be able to see the same, whether it's toon feat at Def Jam or other. But the way that things are presented externally and this effort to necessarily hide things may have you thinking that these executives have more control and influence than they actually do. And they weren't necessarily given the same level of influence or control that John Janick may get at Interscope or that the Lipmans may have at Republic. So we really have to be honest when we're reporting these things and what we're showing and what we're not, because it does a disservice not only to the industry about, you know, trying to hide these things because listen. This is a place where there's plenty of people that are talented. People learn from where they can come through and it doesn't, and it isn't gonna hurt people the way that you think that it is. And one of the reasons that these things often can be controlled this way, the music's industry's PR machine can be so strong and it can have you having this, you know, Misconceived perception, and while I think insiders do know, there's a lot of folks who are on the outside that will eventually rise to those ranks who just don't necessarily have a clear picture. And anytime that there's that big of a delta, that's how information just doesn't necessarily get itself to the right people at once. And we wanna make sure that we're doing everything we can to empower the folks in the next generation. And I know a lot of this is swimming uphill. This is an industry that is controlled by a lot of lawyers, and it's an industry that really thrives on the PR of how things spin, but been behind closed doors. It's a very different situation. In some ways it's almost a stark difference to something like tech where so much of the drama and decisions that happen within big tech are happening. You know, out in the open you could see things and while some of that, you know, can be to a fault, I do think it leads in some ways to some better discussions around what success can look like and what opportunities can look like. So I hope we can all use this as a reminder to make sure that we're being transparent as we can. When we call things out, it helps more. Think and be able to have the right discussions about what success looks like, and the more that we can report on what success benchmarks actually are, so that you're not just relying on an imperfect key performance indicator like market share, and you're actually reporting on. Efficiency. It's great that someone landed a deal, but how much should it cost to get that artist assigned? And will that payout turn out the way that you think that it is? And at the end of the day, this is about PNLs. Are you bringing in enough profit to offset any of the loss? And is there future belief and potential in your ability to get the buy in, do it in an efficient way, and keep driving the business? Quite the buzz after Thanksgiving. We'll see what the rest of the year brings. I think things will be pretty quiet until things head into January. But with that, let's turn things over to the next part of the episode. Here's my conversation with Zach O'Malley Greenberg about the wealthiest hip hop artists in 2022. [00:13:06] Dan Runcie: All right. We have Zach O'Malley Greenberg back with us, who recently released Hip Hop's wealthiest List for 2020. Your second year doing this independently, by the way. So shout outs to you on that. And it was great to see the results. We had some expectations, Jay-Z, number one, but there's two people I really wanna dive into with this conversation. Let me just run through the list first. So you have Jay-Z, number one, one and a half billion. Diddy to newly minted billionaire, 1 billion. You have third, Yey at five hundred million dollars. 4th, Berner, 410 million. And then we have Dr. Dre at 400 million. So let's start at the top. What was it like for you, not just releasing this independently, but being able to put it out and as you were putting it together, what were some of the stuff that stuck out to you? [00:13:56] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. You know, first of all, this list is probably the thing that I put the most effort into every year. At the end of the day, you see these numbers, you know, 1.5 billion, they get reported. And it was the same in my days at Forbes, as doing it independently. People take the number, everyone with it. And I think a lot of times people just assume it's like, ah, somebody's pulling them, out of wherever. But you know, I would say I put more time into those numbers, than I have put into some cover stories, you know, that are several pages long. So it's going through each of these, you know, these superstars and figuring out, you know, what's in their portfolio. What is each asset worth calling? People, you know, who have knowledge, whether it's, you know, within the camps of the stars themselves, or industry experts that are covering, you know, the booze business or the weed business or something like that. Finding ways of valuing these assets. And, you know, and I think the new thing for me, aside from doing it independently was, I've been taking courses at Columbia Business School this year. I'm part of a fellowship where I sort of do my first year of business, school light, and get to bounce around and learn some of these concepts that, you know, maybe, I didn't know before I got to sharpen them. And it's given me some new tools for looking at things like Diddy, Ciroc Partnership and, you know, ways to value things that are a little bit weird and not sort of like a run of the mill asset. So, yeah, you know, I mean I think the big takeaway, the big surprise is probably Berner being on the list, being ahead of Dr. Dre. Like you said, I think Diddy being a billionaire, finally, you know, Diddy would say that's not news. You know, you would say that he should be higher. I'm sure it's been really cool to take a look at it, you know, independently and with some of these new tools in my toolkit to come up with, I would say my most active list. [00:15:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Well, that's good to hear. And I wanna talk about Diddy first because I feel like. That's the one. I'll be honest, the news there surprised me a bit, not because I didn't think that Diddy was a billionaire, but more so because of how his business is and how things are structured. And it made me wonder, okay, how much has changed? Because I knew that Ciroc was the main thing that he had, that was the one of the largest drivers of his net. But you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the sales had peaked around the mid 2010s and maybe there was a slight decline, but maybe, you might have more intel on that. And I know that revolt and I know that business there. And with Sean, Sean itself, I know he had sold it and bought it back. So I was a bit curious to see or maybe hear how much net worth changed as a result of something that had appreciated in value versus your calculations of how you'd be doing this now as opposed to maybe how you had done it years back? [00:16:41] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I think my methodology changed slightly. The breakdown isn't that much different. Ciroc is still the main component. You know, you could say safely, it's the slight majority of his 1 billion net worth. And it's a weird arrangement because he does not hold an equity stake. However, the deal is structured to emulate an equity stake because, you know, it wouldn't have worked as an equity stake cuz Ciroc is owned by Diageo, it's this giant public trade company. They couldn't really be like, Hey, here's, you know, a quarter of our company or something like that. There wasn't really anything to do with that. So it was more creating a framework around the Ciroc brand to function like an equity stake. So if Diageo were ever to sell Ciroc, Diddy would get, you know, let's say the proceeds after you back out the amount of money that Ciroc has put into the partnership. So, you know, it would be a lot. And there's no doubt that even if things have sort of flattened out a little, it's a multi-billion dollar brand. You know, I mean, if you look at something like Ketel One, you know, brands like that that have changed hands, you know, these are billion dollar brands and you know, Ciroc is I think number two behind Grey Goose. So it's up there. They're not gonna sell it, but if they did, you know, we're looking at a pretty big payday. So the question is how do you value something that isn't gonna get sold? And really, you know, you wanna really nerd out about it from sort of MBA type perspective. You know, thinking about valuing cash flow. That's, you know, one of the fundamentals of valuation in corporate finance and stuff like that. And, you know, there are formulas and without getting into like the, you know, sort of like more details of it where you can sort of enter assumptions into the formula and you can get a number. But basically what I did was I took the way I was doing it before I ran the numbers that way, and then I kind of did some pre cash analysis and kind of like average things out and any way you slice it, these Ciroc partnership is, you know, worth a little more than half of his, billion dollar valuation. The other things that, you know, I think perhaps I had been, you know, undercounted a little bit in the past or have appreciated. A lot since then, you know, revolt is still hanging around there. And that's another thing where the valuation could depend on you. Do you value it as, you know, sort of a, like a TV based entity, even though it's more digital? Do you value it as a news outlet? Do you value it as a tech startup? There are a bunch of different ways to look at it, but in any case, you know, he is the majority owner. Another thing that I think people sleep on is DeLeon tequila, that is really growing and he owns half of that. Actually. It's a 50-50 joint venture with the AIO and they're moving a hundred and something thousand cases a year now. Actually, you know, booze has done really well during the pandemic. You might imagine people, I don't know, I feel like we're back to, you know, some of our old ways of going out and doing things. People are drinking at home during the pandemic. So, you know, Ciroc and DeLeon didn't get hurt in the way that, let's say the live touring business did. So Diddy was pretty well slated there. And then you go through and he's got like a pretty immense art collection. He's got some real estate that's appreciated pretty rapidly over the past few years. You know, some of which he owns out, right? And, you know, you kind of add it all up. And, he's comfortably a billionaire. And yeah, I mean, if you notice like  you know, some folks when they hit that status or when they make the list or something, we'll kind of like to tweet about it. But, you know, I don't think I saw anything from Diddy because, you know, he's thought that he's a billionaire for, you know, years already. And, you know, maybe he was, but now I, I definitely think that he is and, I would expect, you know, to see other, let's say mainstream business outlets follow suit in, you know, kind of acknowledging what's definitely the attitude. [00:20:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah, appreciate the breakdown there and thinking about just like different categories there. If thinking about Ciroc itself, as you mentioned, maybe the sales flattened out a bit, but looking at revolts specifically, and I know that business has, you know, gone through some evolutions as well over the past few years, would it be safe to assume that the biggest valuation change here for Diddy's assets that maybe brought him to a billion is daily owned and some of the artwork in terms of like what's appreciated? If we assume that whether it's Ciroc or Revolt have flattened out a bit. Like would those be the ones you say that had put him over 1 billion?  [00:21:21] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, you know, he was pretty close before, last time I did it before was, I think it was three years ago. I think he was at 740. You know, personally, you know, without getting too deep into it, I would've put 'em a little higher. But, you know, you get your files. I did. And that spar deal and you know, you gotta create a consensus. And I think, you know, and Forbes always says it, it would rather be conservative about valuations that it would rather understand an overstate, but you know, so that's part of it too. Yeah, I think there's definitely been an appreciation in the value of DeLeon the real estate, you know, there's a lot of startup stakes, and he's not doing it as, let's say publicly as, Nas or Jay-Z, but, you know, he definitely hops in as an angel in a lot of, a lot of startups that, that have done well. So, but, you know, yeah, I think DeLeon doesn't get the glory of Ciroc, but you know, it's a younger company. There's more room to grow. And not to be a shit, but it actually tastes really good. I've tasted other, you know, celebrity tequilas and they're not good, but it is a tasty booze, if I may say so myself. And I think the way that he launched it was that he found this sort of, you know, like a boutique brand that had already won some awards and then he kind of got in with Diageo and, and they boosted. To where it is now. So I really think that's probably like where you could see a lot more growth, if he's gonna start to try to challenge Jay-Z for that. [00:22:53] Dan Runcie: Why do you think that DLleon hasn't gotten that same amount of love that Ciroc has gotten, at least publicly? [00:23:00] Zack Greenburg: I think a lot of attention was focused on, you know, like Casamigos or some of the other really big brands and it hadn't quite gotten to that level with the same, you know, distribution and mind share. And, you know, frankly, I mean, I think Diddy has been devoting more energy to Ciroc, but you know, you're starting to see it, you know, it's a little bit less in your base kind of vibe with the brand. it's like more of a sipping thing, less of the shots at the club kind of thing. Although I'm sure, you know, you could sit either or do shots at either at the club. But I think it's just not around as much. I mean, I think the case volume on Ciroc is still like 10 times more than 10 times as high as DeLeon. So, you're just not gonna see it around as much. And I think that's why. [00:23:51] Dan Runcie: And the other thing too, that you mentioned is that DeLeon itself is actually a joint venture with Diageo, unlike Ciroc Partnership. So of course I know that the Ciroc partnership, now we're talking 15 plus years ago at this point when things kicked off and different positions, different leverage and relationships. So I wonder if the relationship is part of the reason why Diddy was able to have the type of ownership. Partnership with DeLeon that he may not have, at least in writing with Ciroc?  [00:24:23] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, I think so. And I think that was part of his motivation, for how he structured DeLeon. He wanted to have that. Actual equity stake, you know, like ironclad 50-50 joint venture type thing, rather than an agreement that mimics a joint venture. So, you know, I think that the success of Ciroc definitely convinced Diageo like, all right,, we can do this with another brand. He's the guy. And, for my book, 3 Kings, I talked to some books over there and you know, I think I talked to the CEO at the time, and they couldn't have been more abusive about him. And of course, you know, like whatever, he's part of their team. Of course they're gonna say good things about him, but they were saying just like the attention to detail. Like he would, he would go to clubs and, you know, go to the bartender and be like, why is the Ciroc not on the top shelf? And what are you going to do? You're gonna be like, oh, sorry Mr. Coles gonna leave Joe here. You know, and they'll put it up on the top. I mean, it's sort of like a retail politics level of stuff. And you know, I always say that, that Diddy, you know, in a way, like you could argue. Who has had the most scheduled career and you know, who's the goat of, you know, on the business side. And you know, I think a lot of people would say Jay-Z, and they wouldn't be wrong. But, you know, I think Diddy in a way has done more with less because he hasn't been musically relevant in, you know, a really long time in that way. Still puts stuff out in whatever, but it's not like the anticipation that exists when Jay drops an album or even a verse on, you know, on a DJ Khaled song or something. And, you know, I always like to say that Diddy is kinda more like Richard Branson if he happened to just have had, you know, like a moment as like a big time rapper And you know, certainly as a producer, he's had ahead a lot of things. And not to diminish that, but he acknowledges himself. He says, I don't write rhymes, I write checks. And I think that's a strong student. I think it's especially impressive to see that he's done it without being particularly talented.  [00:26:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think that, His true line of being able to sell a lifestyle is what sets him apart in a lot of ways. He did it with his music. I think in a lot of ways. Bad Boys modeled after so much of what he learned at Uptown, and then you're able to transfer that lifestyle to, okay, this is the music that you listen to now. This is what you wear while you wear Sean John. This is what you drink while you're listening to this, right? Mm-hmm, you're gonna drink and this is the media that you're gonna watch. Now with the cannabis line that he just bought, this is what you're gonna smoke while you're enjoying this lifestyle too. Mm-hmm. And I think that a lot of those businesses have had varying success and we can go into that, but I do think that the ones that have been the most successful, Ciroc, Sean and the music, there's that tight connection and there's a key timing aspect that goes into all of it. [00:27:35] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, and it doesn't even need to be his music. Right? That is popular in order for the Ciroc Formula to work, it's the Ciroc Boys, it's DJ Khaled, Summer Watermelon, or whatever it is. You know, I think his ability to make those partnerships, to find other people you know, who are kind of doing now what he was doing then musically are, you know, I think that that's part of the formula and that's why it works so well. And you know, I mean, it's funny, like DJ Khaled, you know, something like Wild Thoughts was doing exactly what Diddy was doing a couple decades ago, right? He was taking a song from a couple decades, you know, one or two decades ago and putting, you know, some new voices, the modern voices on it. And it was a song that was great before and now it's got, you know, like more kind of a vibe to it and you know, goes off the chart, so I think Diddy is just very savvy with that kind of stuff, even if it's stuff.  [00:28:31] Dan Runcie: Let's talk about Sean John for a bit, cause I'm curious how that factored into your methodology with everything, because as many people know, he started the brand over 20 years ago and well, in 2016 he sold the brand, then the brand was up in auction, and then he bought it for public number I saw was 7.6 million. So now he has that back as an asset. How did that piece of it factor in for you and just the journey overall of Sean?  [00:29:02] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, and not much now. You know, I mean, I think what factored in more was, sort of like his cash pile. Like he sold it for. Like, whatever it was five years ago, something like that. I think he got, he got 30 million out, 40 million, something like that, that he then put into other things. And uh, you know, obviously without him it doesn't do well. And so he went bankrupt and I think it's really smart for him to buy it back. You know, who knows what he might end up doing with this, but, I think there's just,  you know, like a tremendous market for sort of like nineties nostalgia right now. You know, I think Sean John, or even a Rocawear, if they could have, I dunno, that's a little more complicated, but I think that, you know, if he's at the helm and his part as a lifestyle, Would never count him out. So, but yeah, as far as what it's worth right now, it's sort of more of a rounding error and overall number. But, you know, be interesting to see what comes. [00:30:04] Dan Runcie: And when you made your list around the same time, I believe that same week, there were two other announcements that came up. One was the cannabis company that he bought for, I believe it was 185 million. And the other one, I don't know if this one was a hundred percent confirmed, but did you see that thing floating around about him making an investment in Twitter along with Elon Musk's bid? [00:30:28] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, no, you know that was all after the numbers got finalized, so, you know, those weren't really factored into it. But you know, I mean, yeah, it all makes sense. It's all part of the lifestyle thing. It's all part of the Diddy empire, the Diddy MO, and you know, he's look, I mean, on the cannabis side, right? Like he's puff daddy, you know, like what are, what are you puffing? It's exactly, it makes sense. It's like part of the brand. And, you know, if he could do the same thing with cannabis leaders with vodka, Which is to say like, I mean, I don't know. I think when he started vodka was not, you know, it was not really seen as a stylish thing. It was more like, you do a shot to get drunk. I mean, I don't know, maybe that's physics. I was in college when that happened, and that's when, that's sort of the vibe on vodka. But he made it like the champagne of vodkas. He associated his lifestyle with it and similarly, I think with weed, it's like, you know, we're in this very nascent part of the canvas economy, you know, becoming legal and, and sort of how do you start to differentiate brands, you know, and when you have legalization you can have, you know, like. The champagne of weed, right? You can start to differentiate, you know, like what type of buzz you're gonna get because it's regulated and you can actually say like, this is the thing that has this much THC and it's gonna give you this kind of high, versus like, this is just gonna knock you on your ass. I think it's a great place for him to get into, but you know, at the same time it's like, It is a really hard place to do business still. And you know, it is not without risk. It, you know, because it is not federally legal yet. You have to do, you have to do most of your business in cash. You can't get loans in the same way, especially if you have a plant touching enterprise. You have to do all these, handle all these different state regulations, which are constantly changing and are subject to the whims of, you know, clinical races and you know, potentially gerrymandering, all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with Diddy. So, you know, I think that's the tricky part. And you know, also not being a first mover in the way that somebody like Berner is. But at the same time, it's like, you know, he fills a different niche in the mark potentially than Berner does.  [00:32:45] Dan Runcie: And yeah, no, that'll be fascinating to watch. Yeah. I think the thing about Revolt is a great concept in the vision, of course. Makes sense. Seeing how influential Diddy was with MTV and whether it's the voter die shirts that he would wear or some of the other programming, he leveraged it so well as a hip hop artist. So if you know you have that impact, why wouldn't you wanna go start your own company and go do the same? Right. I think some of the timing just became a little tough in that he started the cable network in 2013. People are already starting to cut the cord at that point. And then I know the company's transitioned much more into digital media, but even that, given that so much of it is social media based, relying on other platforms and their algorithms, I think we saw so many of those companies in that same timeframe, even the ones that were perceived as being successful, whether it's your Buzzfeed or your Huffington Post or your Complex, like all of those valuations came back down to earth. And you look at a company like Revolt, which I think was largely playing the same game, although I think they still make tons of great content and there are tons of great, brilliant people working there. I think that the digital media itself and where things transformed was a bit tough. Like let's say that Diddy had started let's say 2007 as opposed to 2013, I think we'd be having a very different conversation,  [00:34:03] Zack Greenburg: You know, or 1997 , you know, I mean, yeah. I think it could be a whole different conversation and, you know, yeah. That's one of the smaller pieces of the empire, and I think, like you would say, he would make a certain argument about it and, you know, valuing it more like on the line of being a tech company. But it's hard to escape the fact that it, you know, it still. I would say yeah, like primarily a media outlet point and whether it's, you know, via cable or the internet or whatever, it's like these are not, like, these are kind of tricky places to be, but you know, it does make sense. There is a demand for that kind of stuff and it's a crowded marketplace, but, you know, he does have something different to offer and, you know, I think that there's a reason why it's still around and, you know, it'll be interesting to see how it goes, how it proceeds as we enter like the next phase of this sort of media shake up in a amount of time. [00:35:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. And I think the other thing too, that I should have mentioned earlier is that given that this is a black owned media company, I know he's been vocal and Byron Allen and others have been vocal about advertisers not contributing the same level of money into black owned media companies that they would to, let's say, some of the Revolts competitors in the space that maybe started and run by white founders, white executives, but they're commanding more money from that perspective. So I think that's another tough thing there. But overall, like we said, this is a small piece of the overall pie. And yeah, it'd be interesting too. Especially the newer businesses, how many of them can continue that Ciroc magic, the bad boy flavor? And see? See where that lifestyle keeps going? Yeah. All right. Now let's talk about the other big one on the list, Berner. And based on the response that I saw from people sharing the list of people talking about it, this is the one that surprised a lot of people. But I know it didn't surprise you because you've been following this for a while. You've been talking to Berner, getting a better understanding of his business. So it'd be great to hear the breakdown because I think a lot of people out there may know Berner now more so for this product than they may actually know his music or anything else that he's done in hip hop up to now. [00:36:19] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think Berner is one of the most fascinating names on the list. Definitely the most surprising. But, you know, I've been following his work for a while and, you know, he is a master marketer and his whole journey about how he turned cookies, cannabis, You know, it is a billion dollar company and it's just a little tricky to value, but, it is a billion dollar company and the way he did it, you know, I would say it's a case study, but it's actually pretty hard to emulate. It is sort of like a singular way of doing things. So, you know, for the people who don't know the background, Bernard born in California and San Francisco grew up there, moved to Arizona as a teenager and, and would bring back good weed from California when, whenever, you know, would make trips back to his old stomping grounds. And that's how he kind of got his start. He moved back to San Francisco, during the early, you know, weed legalization gold. Worked at a dispensary and, you know, kind of popularized this Girl Scout cookie, strain of weed. And so his thing would, at the dispensary, he would, you know, they used to sell things. It was sort of like an index car with the name of the strain. It was very clinical. But he would sort of like do these doodles and cookies and, you know, these like bright colors and stuff. And, and it started to get some tension. He became, you know, Wiz Khalifa's weed man when he was in San Francisco. And on one occasion brought this fully butted six foot tall weed plant onto the stage at Khalifa's show. And, you know, I think it was sort of instrumental in that Khalifa had created the Khalifa kush and all this. And so Bernard ultimately parlayed this sort of underground, you know, weed connoisseur image that he had as both on the legal and illegal markets into this brand. Cookies started opening stores, created a clothing line that, you know, kind of goes along with it. But the thing that he did with the way he set up this company is pretty, pretty unusual and very hard to value, but I think is quite brilliant. He started striking these partnerships with dispensaries and, you know, essentially it was a licensing deal where he would get a cut of revenue. And then the other part of the deal is that he could also buy out any of these partners. At market rate, at a time in the future, you know, in the future to be determined. And you know, like some of these numbers are out there, but you know, I think the system-wide sales are close to half a billion dollars now. And he gets a cut of that. But you know, at any time he could decide to roll all you could raise money, roll all these partnerships up into one giant weed company that's, you know, making. You know that, that kind of revenue and, and suddenly, you know, all you need to do is you put a multiple on that and, and that'll tell you what the company would be. If he rolled it all up and bought everybody out. And I talked to Wall Street analysts about this and covered the space and they said, you know, yeah, you could put like a five x multiple on this, so that would mean it's you know, yeah, like about a $2 billion company. Then you have to factor in the cost of buying out all those partnerships. You know, long story short would probably be about half billion dollars because it is a very tricky business. In fact, you have to be very liquid when doing everything in cash. It's kind of complicated. People I talked to, you know, bankers and stuff, said, yeah, you would apply a private company discount due to the uncertainty of the market, things like that, that's operating in it, you know, you would knock 20, 30% off of that and you know, so that it brings it down to around a billion dollars and then Berner still owns about a third of it. And so there's the bulk of his fortune right there, you know, so his stake is probably worth around $300 million. This point, I figure. And I think that's pretty conservative. You know, you add in some other thing invested in the clothing line, which he owns, you know, a huge part of still, you know, some homes, cash stuff like. And you get to that 400, 2 million number. [00:40:27] Dan Runcie: Nice. Yeah, I've been seeing people wearing the cookies hoodies, walking around San Francisco, walking around other places. But definitely seeing the apparel thing push and I feel like he has one of those brands there are probably seeing even more of that stuff. I think it was a couple weeks ago I was driving by and I saw the store in Hate Ashbury neighborhood here at San Francisco. So yeah, no, definitely making moves. A few things there that stuck out. So he of course has his own standalone stores. As you mentioned, there's 55 of them across the country right now. And he also was selling them to other dispensaries. And I'm sure if and when weed does become legalized across the country, that will then just make things even easier from a distribution perspective from other places that he may be able to sell any otherwise. So in some ways the investment isn't just based on what's currently there or there's also a speculative nature. As this underlying product becomes more and more legal, there will be more opportunity to further sell this and further have its reach to different places.  [00: 41:36] Zack Greenburg: Absolutely. And the clothing line also builds the value of the cannabis brand. And you know, if and when it is federally legalized, you gotta think. I mean, you know, this is one of the top brands in the business. And in fact, you know, there aren't really brands in this way in the cannabis space. There's strains, it's almost saying like in beer, you know, like, yeah, people like IPAs or people like those or whatever, but there isn't really like a Budweiser yet or a dogfish head, you know, or something like that. And, you know, to go back to Diddy, there's not really a champagne of weed. So, you know, I think that Berner has built up all this credibility in this space and, you know, if, when it goes legal, it's like to be one of the top weed brands in this space that is going to, you know, potentially rival or, you know, at least kind of start to eat into alcohol business. I mean, you know, 2 billion is not a large number for a company. There's a lot of potential for it to get a lot bigger and, you know, we can get into the whole. There's definitely a lot of arguments, pros and cons, about the benefits of THC and Cannabis General. And, you know, we will be here all day on that. But just from a business perspective, you know, it seems like we're headed toward legalization. Berner actually thinks that republicans are more likely to make federal legalization happen. He said, cause they're all about their paper. So I'm not saying who he's voting for anything. I don't. You know. it was an interesting perspective and, you know, like I think that he's really got kind of the key to where….. [00:43:15] Dan Runcie: One of the other things that sticks out to me about him is that he's someone who is much more known, at least on a general awareness perspective, for the business that he's built as opposed to the music. I feel like his music was a bit more of a regional thing and he puts out a ton of music, but it never hit the same levels as some of the other artists who are having nine figure net worths as well. And I feel like there's often this thought, and which I do believe generally is true, that the artists who tend to be the most successful with product sales and investing and some of the more lucrative business opportunities that artists have done, they're more likely to be the household names who have been releasing music and touring for decades than a lot of times it's because they're releasing products that are lending their names, so they're leveraging their influence to now sell things that have a larger stake in and can be bought time and time again. He's a little different though because he doesn't necessarily have that. I'm curious what you think about that piece of it, because I think so many of the hip hop cash lists over the years do have at least somewhat of a correlation as to who are the more well known artists or who are the more popular artists at the time, and not necessarily who is building the strongest business, you know, that is being worth the most, and that is not correlated with how much mainstream popularity that artists may have. [00:44:44] Zack Greenburg: Yeah, for sure. I mean the funny thing is when you look at it, he is the most prolific artist on the list. But, you know, he has the least name recognition as well, right? I mean, Jay-Z, Diddy, Kanye, Dr. Dre, none of them are putting out music at the pace with which Berner is putting out music. But everybody knows who they are and not everybody knows Berner. You know, I think you could almost argue like, well, are you really gonna put him, you know, on the list with these guys who have that much more name recognition? But you could also argue, should we really be treating, you know, Diddy as a rapper anymore than we should be? You know, treating Richard Branson, as I know Richard Branson didn't actually rap ever, but, you know, effectively Diddy is just focused on business at this point and you know, he puts out songs here and there. Music is an ancillary Berner also used. You know, the Music Chief boosts the weed business, but he's in the studio like all the time, more than any of these guys. Yeah, it's just kinda fun. [00:45:48] Dan Runcie: I think another person that maybe thought of a similar way, someone like Chamillionaire who had one really large hit, mm-hmm. But wasn't necessarily known for having classic after classic after classic album or touring the world in the same large ways as some of the other big names we did, but his investing journey is something that has been pretty well documented and I think as a result, he's definitely further than a lot of the other artists that came around the same time as him that may have had even more commercial success. So I feel like even though there is a lot of a correlation between who are the most well known artists and who are the wealthiest artists, he is someone else who is a bit similar in that Berner way of, hey, yeah, there may have a smaller overall impact from the music itself, but was able to wisely use that and then now leverage that into something where, you know, the artist is making more money from the business moves and more known for that now.  [00:46:49] Zack Greenburg: Absolutely. I mean a great example of Chamillionaire and, you know, the work that he's been doing in the startup world. So at the same time, it's like if he hadn't had that one day hit, you know, would he have been able to get into, you know, the Silicon Valley kind of fear in the same way, you know, I don't know, but I think all it takes is one hit to be in the mix. And certainly like Burner never had that one hit, right? He just had a lot of, you know, really solid albums and stuff, but he was doing it in San Francisco. And I think, you know, in that way that you see somebody like Jamon Green getting really involved in the startup world, would he have been that guy if he were in, you know, like Cleveland or something? You know, I don't think so, but if you're in the mix, in the Bay Area, you're just gonna have access to a lot more opportunities, you know, in the startup world. And I think the startup world, cannabis world, you know, it. Kinda the epicenter. So in a funny way that the two have a lot of commonalities I think are familiar. [00:47:51] Dan Runcie: Yeah. This is good. I'm excited to see what next year's list looks like as well. And I know you may not be able to share publicly, but in order to get the five, you probably evaluated a few others. Are there any names creeping up, arising up that you think may make a  2023 appearance? [00:48:08] Zack Greenburg: I think, you know, Drake is creep enough, big new deal. You know, he doesn't have quite the same level of, you know, sort of like outside assets. Like he doesn't have, like a Ciroc or a cookie or what have you. And, you know, I think he does have this whiskey, Virginia Black, but it's like, never like still around, but it never really took off and it only tastes okay. It's okay. I don't think taste ultimately matters a lot of times with this stuff, but I'm kind of surprised that he wasn't able to like boost a little bit more. But I don't know. When I think Drake, I don't really think whiskey. Maybe that's just part of it. I mean, I could see him with more champagne maybe.  [00:48:51] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I'm interested to see for him how this new deal he has and the music that he makes as a result ends up factoring in, because of course we know that music itself may not be the largest revenue stream for a lot of these artists. Drake has this huge deal with Universal and Republic now, and he's releasing music more frequently than ever, and we can assume that it's likely because he's getting better upside and margins for the music he's releasing. So if he keeps up at this, like two, three albums a year clip. I mean, the numbers are gonna speak for themselves. Last year he streamed more than all pre 1980 artists. Like it's gonna catch up.  [00:49:29] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing with net worth less as opposed to. Is that, you know, it's just harder to get on these lists if you are a big cash earner. Like if you are earning a lot on an annual basis, you know, things get factored into that, like taxes and cost of living and all that. And so, you know, you're getting these huge outlays, but you know, it's not in the same way that it was like going into this, this growing asset that can be valued. And in a way that's kind of like a quirk of the system because, you know, I'm valuing Berner’s stake in cookies, you know, like it's not tax, right? Like  if he were to sell it and he were to get $300 million, you know, whatever, a third half of that would be gone to the government. But that's not baked into the formula until he sells it. So you know, this is how Bloomberg and Forbes do it. It's just kinda what it is. But, it means that if you are holding assets, you know, the taxes aren't taken out. Whereas if you're a cash earner, that gets deducted before it gets added to your cash pile. So, it just means Drake is more likely to be at the top of, you know, let's say top earning artist. And you know, it's a little harder for him to get to the top… [00:50:59] Dan Runcie: That's a great distinction. No, we'll definitely keep that in mind for next year. Do you think you'll do another top earners of the year list as well? [00:51:05] Zack Greenburg: I don't know. Maybe, we'll see how it goes. Being a new dad, and doing this full time program, you know, this fellowship at Columbia that I mention. It takes a lot of time. And you know, I don't wanna put out a list unless I have the time to really dig in and get the numbers right. But yeah, you never know. I got this one out. So, there could be more. More to come. [00:51:28] Dan Runcie: And I think on that note, just talking about dad life in general. Let's close things out there. So by the time this comes out, your daughter will be six months old and we can both share one funny thing that our kids did this past couple weeks. So I'll let you start. [00:51:44 ] Zack Greenburg: Oh, man. Well, I think the thing that's really most exciting is that she's laughing now and the thing that she mainly thinks is funny is when I'm laughing. So like, we'll get into this thing, I will make myself start laughing and then she'll go, ha ha. I go, ha. And, and it’s very dorky, dad life. But, that is like one of my favorite things to do is have like, sort of a laugh off with Riley. So, yeah, I don't know, man. I pick her up from daycare every day and she just gives me this huge smile and I know that she’s still really young, but I can tell that she's specifically recognizing me, you know, and that we have this bond already. That there's like a specific connection. I just had no idea that babies could sort of, like, differentiate people and start to have unique relationships in that way. And that, it's like the best part of my day every day. So…  [00:52:41] Dan Runcie: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. How about you?  [00:52:42] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. How about you?  [00:52:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like there's something about that. Like yeah, the first couple of months I remember I would like, ask my wife, I'd be like, you think she recognizes us? Like, because she understands who we are. And I think over time there was like, yeah, no, we can get that in. Even things like now, The mirror is something that she is obsessed with. I'm sure you probably feel the same with Riley too. But yeah, the mirror. At first it was kind of looking at the mirror where there's like, okay, what is this screen? Who is that person that I'm seeing? But I think now it's like looking at us through the mirror and like seeing that it's us. And maybe she's starting to be like, oh well, I see them through this. Like she probably still isn't at the point where it's like, oh, I can see that's looking at me. But she'll look at that other person staring at her in the mirror and start smiling and stuff too. So I'm like, oh, that's cute. So yeah, man. Wild time's flying by. She'll be five months by the time this comes out. Wild man.  [00:52:35] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. We do a lot of like…. [00:53:38] Dan Runcie: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's that? Little, little peek-a-boo style games.  [00:53:42] Zack Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah. In the mirror. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We'll have to have our kids together sometime soon. I guess, you know, but of course babies, not so interactive with each other yet. [00:53:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No. We'll get there. That'll be fun. Zack. This is great, man. Good work as always. It was great to see the list and again. The fact that I think you got just as much coverage and buzz and recognition for this, doing it independently is a great sign. Not just for you, but I think in general for people that are always questioning, okay, you know, what's the power of what I do elsewhere versus individually. So great job on that and we'll definitely keep tabs on this coming years. But great work, man, as always. Appreciate that. [00:54:25] Zack Greenburg: Thanks man. Same to you.

Rich Homie Quan was one of the defining rappers of the music era that preceded the industry’s shift to streaming. He — along with the likes of Future and Young Thug — made “mumble rap” a hot commodity in the mid-2010s. But while Future and Thugger continued their careers, Quan took a hiatus from the game, until now. Quan dropped his first project, “Family & Mula”, in almost three years back in October. During the long layoff, Quan admits he lost both his confidence and heart for rapping. He refused to quit on himself during the down period, which only spurred him artistically and business-wise.  That’s because the eight-track EP is also the first under his independently-owned Rich Homie Entertainment label. Now ten years into his career — most of which spent under a label — Quan felt now was the time to go independent. Not only for the creative freedom, but also for the CEO role that comes with it.  I caught up with Quan to reflect on his 10-year music career up to this point and how he envisions the next ten playing out as an independent artist and a CEO. Here’s everything we covered: [2:41] Reflecting on the loss of Takeoff [4:07] What Quan misses about his “come up” years [5:16] Why Quan went independent at this stage of his career  [5:40] Taking on a CEO role [7:57] Why Quan doesn’t like his hit record “Flex” [10:33] New partnership with Troy Carter and Suzy Ryoo's Venice  [14:44] Differences between Quan the CEO and Quan the artist  [15:54] Rising as an artist before the streaming era took off [17:25] Distinctions between album, EP, and mixtape  [20:16] Quan’s non-music business pursuits  [21:56] How pandemic re-motivated Quan to do music [24:00] Quan wants more credit for influencing Atlanta sound [31:14] Quan’s 10-year vision for himself  [35:54] Did Quan start “deluxe” project drops? Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Rich Homie Quan, @RichHomieQuan   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Rich Homie Quan: I was kind of afraid of my creativity on that song. You know what I'm saying? If that makes any sense. Like, I don't know. Cause I make a lot of music, man, and it's a lot of songs that's probably similar. That's like that. That will never come out only because of my mind. But that's why lately I've been letting the team I create, decide, you know? Pick which ones they feel like that needs to be heard. You know what I'm saying? So that's why I've grown as an artist slash CEO. [00:00:31] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Ruey. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:51] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is the one, the only Rich Homie Quan. R.H.Q came through to talk about his partnership with Venice and how this is a new start for him as an artist. He's independent now. He's seen what it's like on the label side. He's seen what works, and what doesn't work. But this is his opportunity to have more creative control. To see more of the money that comes in and out, and ultimately have more of a say on what makes the most sense for building his career and moving. So he talks about the benefits of the Venice partnership. He also talks about some of the other things that he's working on as well. We talked about his real estate game and how he made over a million dollars this past year from his real estate business. We also talked about where he sees himself in Atlanta's influence. He says he's top three and not three from the city. So you have to listen to hear the name chops that he has in here. Some of the other multimedia projects and a whole lot. Quan also recorded this one while he was getting his hair braided, so I gotta give him credit for multitasking. Shout out to Quan. Hope you enjoy this episode. All right. Today we got the one and only Rich Homie Quan with us. Man, before we get started with any of this stuff, let's just do a quick check, man. How are you? How are you living? How are things right now? [00:02:03] Rich Homie Quan: Oh man, I'm good man. Mentally, better than ever. I'm just in a good space right now, man. I love the space I'm in, probably better than ever, man. I'm good, man. Yeah. How about you, man? How are you, you know what I'm saying? Mentally, you know what I'm saying? You know, spiritually how you feeling?  [00:02:021] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I mean, I'm good. I mean, things have been good getting ready for the holidays and everything right now, but, I feel like it's kind of been a tough week, I'm not gonna lie. Thinking about take off and just thinking about artists passing so young. I mean, I mean, I know that this isn't anything new necessarily, but it just feels like it's been so much recently, so I've been thinking a lot about that. [00:02:41] Rich Homie Quan: That part, you know, like I've been trying to get it out my mind, man. Cause like me and Takeoff wasn't close, but I have worked with him, you know what I'm saying? On numerous occasions, on numerous occasions. And with him being from Atlanta, man, it just hit, that one hit a whole lot different, man. That one touched me, man. That one hurt me, man. That hurt a lot of us, man. You know what I'm saying? Like I think I was walking say the best man, like hip hop took big ill man that that was a humongous ill man. Humongous. [00:03:10] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And there were so many of you that came up right around the same time. I feel like you came out and then they had the moment, like there were so many of y'all from Atlanta that rose up. [00:03:22] Rich Homie Quan: Yes. Yeah. So that's why it's like, I, I kind of felt a different, like I saw, I saw before, um, they were with QC all us sitting on Gucci couch before we, before we got our first million, when we still were grinding and grind mode. So like, just to see that and know like, man, that could have been me, that could have been any of us. You know what I'm saying? Like, so that, that one definitely like hit me. Alright man, real hard. [00:03:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, you were just talking about it, you going back to being I QCs couch. I was just looking back at the double like cell cover, the freshman class for you on the cover. And man, it was such a moment. I mean, when you think back to that moment when everything was rising up, like what do you think on the most, what memories stick out to you the most about that time? [00:04:07] Rich Homie Quan:  Uh, what memories stick out about the most? I would just say more so recording in the music, being so. Because at that time we didn't have all those eyes on us. So then, you know, like we could say whatever and when, and no one, you know, we can say how we really felt. You know what I'm saying? Because you was in that grind and it just, you know, once you get to a certain level and certain things, you can't say no. Cause you know what I'm saying? You got certain people looking at you and that dissecting your words every, every type of way. So I would just say, man, just a recording process, man. Then man, the way we record the way, it'll be all five of us in the booth at one. Or maybe you should say it this way or this way. And it was just a know, just a vibe man. And the learning experience, man. Cause we were so young at that time, like we didn't know we'll be here 10 years later, you feel me? So yeah, that's the beauty of it all.  [00:04:56] Dan Runcie: And I mean, for you 10 years later, you've done a few interview recently. You talked about why you wanna be independent and what this next chapter looks like for you? What has been the big thing that's made you wanna have this next chapter? Be independent, be on your own terms as opposed to how the last decade was up to this point? [00:05:16] Rich Homie Quan: Would say the most important part about being independent and what I wanted about it, what I wanted, uh, from it more so, it was just the fact that I had tried everything else. I had tried being with the other independent labels and I just thought it was my turn. I had saw every side of the sword, but just this side of the sword and it's just been so much more fun.Just when I say fun, it's more so from a business side. And I say that because at first I was such an artist mode. It was hard for me to be a CEO, but to continue to say I'm a CEO when I'm not doing none of the CEO shit. And I say that to say like, I'm not in tune with the conversations, or I'm not on every phone call. I'm not CC'd in those emails and those important emails. So now man, with me being a ceo, I'm more in tune. You know what I'm saying? I'm knowing, I'm knowing what the budget is for this. Uh, just understanding the budget, know what I mean? Understanding, so, you know, just taking this a whole lot more serious, being independent, knowing now, like it's really the, that's why I'm probably in this such great space because I know the opportunity I have, I know what I've done. [00:06:27] Dan Runcie:  You talked about seeing the money and just being able to see what the costs are looking like, what the money's coming in. What was the biggest surprise there? Cause I know you didn't see a lot of that as the artist, but now that you're being CC'd on those emails, now that you're seeing those things, did anything stick out to you? [00:06:40] Rich Homie Quan: The most? To me, uh, it was just more so of money I would see go without videos and stuff like that, and I would have no knowledge on my input when it's my money that's paying for these. That made me just put my, you know, like, damn, I would've rather shot the video with so and so and so, and maybe, you know, it could have been better for a cheaper number than a number of, uh, someone who's big, big, like, you know what I'm saying? So it just started making me like, way more in tune man, just way more in tune and like, how can I call my c myself a CEO if I'm, if I don't have those last say sos on, you know what I'm saying? Who, who, who I think should shoot the video. So it's like, yeah, I just want to stay in tune, man. And stay at it. Stay at it. Yeah. All the way around the boy, man. Like I'm getting older now and I still got people I look up to and I'm looking at some of the transitions they had to make. You know, sometimes you gotta realize everybody can't go with you. Right. And that's part of better.  [00:07:40] Dan Runcie: And I feel like you're talking a lot about something I've heard you talk about at other interviews too. Creative control, being able to have more say so over the process. And I was surprised it stuck out like a song like Flex, which was a hit that people liked. Like you really weren't feeling that song as much.  [00:07:57] Rich Homie Quan: Oh, oh. Like one of mine like, because I felt like at the time Flitch came out, I was such, I was more so of, I don't wanna just say a street rapper, but those were my fans. My fans were like the people who came up from similar situations to me. And I just didn't want my fans to ever think like I was crossing over or making crossover music. And, cause that was one of them songs. Like it wasn't a, I was known for making pain music, you know what I'm saying? So to say. And uh, that was one of, one of those still good different records, but it made, it was, it was a gift and a curse to me cause it made me realize. It's not what I like, it's what people want, and it's all about the fans. And that was my biggest song, like solo to this day. So it's just, it, it just made me realize like co you just, just focus on making the music and let the people decide for you, which is which man, you know what I'm saying? But it turned into a good situation, man. To this day, I still patrol. I still perform Flex Man, you know, so still getting paid off. So, you know, that's. That's one of the perks, man. You know what I'm saying? Trust your team. Definitely trust. Trust your team. The ones that love you, who love you, that you keep around. [00:09:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I feel like that's a balance I hear from even the folks that have been doing this in entertainment for years. I feel like Denzel was someone who had said, he's making all these equalizer movies, right? But he's like, those movies pay the bills so that I can do these August Wilson plays and all of these things that really mean something to him. So I feel like Flex might be that for you, that gives you the ability to do the stuff you really wanna put out so….  [00:09:38] Rich Homie Quan: And that's what it was like. I was kind of afraid of my creativity on that song. You know what I'm saying? If that make any sense. Like, I don't know. Cause I make a lot of music, man, and it's a lot of songs that's probably similar. That's like that, that will never come out only because of my mind. But that's why lately I've been letting the team, I create, let the team decide, you know? Pick which ones they feel like that needs to be heard. You know what I'm saying? So that's why I've grown that as, as an artist slash ceo, know what I'm saying, getting outta the artist mode and going step back. I trust these guys enough. You know what I'm saying? Not, they're not gonna make me look bad, let alone make themselves look bad cause they're part of this. This represents them as well.  [00:10:15] Dan Runcie: Definitely, definitely. And if we fast forward a few years, here you are now you have R.H.Q Entertainment, you recently have the joint venture launch with Venice. Shout out, uh, Troy and Susie, the folks over there. Talk to me about this. What's the vision for that joint venture? Where are things going?  [00:10:33] Rich Homie Quan: Oh man, where are things going? I think, uh, the world is starting to see, and we haven't even got started yet. That's the crazy part. Like we haven't even got started yet, but like, you know, it was one of those situations. The distribution was nothing I hadn't had. You know what I'm saying? So like I said, it's all about me, like always throwing new things and never want, try nothing twice. You know what I'm saying? Like I still don't know like what my future holds, but I just know like, man, Venice has just been such a tremendous help to the RQ brand and for what I got going on, it just fit perfectly. And it wasn't one of those, or we just jumped straight into it. I think like a big shout outta Red man. Cause red, like he did not give up man. And it might have took us six months to get everything just done the right way where everybody's comfortable. And most importantly, everybody wins, man. You know what I'm saying? Big shout out Detroit. I was just with him last night. He flew down here, man. It was tremendous. Every time I'm, I'm big on energy and energy last night. Created a crazy vibe, man. You know what I'm saying? At the vintage man, Susie, everybody, the whole team Alyssa. I don't wanna eat nobody out, but man, uh, I love it, bro. I love it man. And it was the best situation for me. And like I always like to say, I don't wanna encourage no younger artists or anybody upcoming who wants to do music. I'm not saying independence may not be for you because at the same time, music takes money and sometimes a label situation may be the best for you. It just wasn't the best for me anymore. Cause it's something I. You know what I'm saying? And with me being in the game 10 years, like kind of saw it all. And now I know what's best for me, man. The creative control, you know what I'm saying? And like, and I still have a partner, you know, I still have a partner, man, but now man, I'm, I'm really boss ceo and I'm, I'm loving it. [00:12:24] Dan Runcie: So now that you do have a partner, but like you said, they're not a record label, it's more on the distribution side. What are the things that they are gonna be doing for you and like what does that partnership look like in terms of your role, in terms of Venice's role?  [00:12:37] Rich Homie Quan:  Okay. You got a partnership, man. It's more so of a, uh, like a lot of things I didn't know, like on the technology side of things and stuff that's showing me, man, you know what I'm saying? Even with more opportunities outside of. You know, I'm, I think that's the biggest thing now, man. You know, opportunities outside of meals, you know what I'm saying? Movie ventures and stuff like that that I had no idea that I thought I could tap into, but you know what I'm saying? It's showing me, man, it's beautiful man. It's beautiful man. Feel top priority. It feels better. You know what I'm saying? Like I've been in label situations. The team we got over there, they're working hard on 80% of these labels I saw, and I.So that, that's what I love and that's what it's been, that being able to show me, man, that like they ain't playing, they ain't, they ain't playing. You know what I'm saying? [00:13:26] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah. Cause, cause I mean, Troy gets it and I know just seeing the way that they've structured things, a lot of it is thinking about how to think beyond streaming too.Right? Like what does web three look like? What do NFTs look like?  [00:13:39] Rich Homie Quan: Exactly. So that's what I'm saying. It's stuff that I had no knowledge of. Of course I hear it, but now I. A person who can show it. And that's what I told him last night. Like, man, it's different when you, everybody that's talking, but you, you've shown and prove everything you said, man. So, and that's a big, and with me being able to have a direct line to him to be able to talk to him, you know, like, and no showing on the labs. [00:14:29] Dan Runcie: No dope. No, that's for sure, man. So yeah, it's been good to hear you just talk about the ownership and just what it means to be a ceo. And I know it's two different hats you gotta wear. Do you feel like Quan the CEO is any different from Quan the artist?  [00:14:44] Rich Homie Quan: I would definitely say according to CEO is a whole lot different from the, uh, from the artist. And that's only because as an artist, I be in my mind a lot. You know what I'm saying? I be in my mind a whole lot. But as a CEO, I get it. Where you gotta get out your mind. It, it ain't about your mind or your feelings, man. It's business. You know what I'm saying? It's, it's business and, and that's why I have to separate. It's what they're totally. And is only corn as an artist with the microphone, whatever. When I'm not the microphone, it's about the family and it's about the beast. You know what I'm saying? In that order. In that order, and God, of course, first with him being first, you know what I'm saying? I'm backing up. You know the son.  [00:15:23] Dan Runcie: Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. And thinking back just about your career, I feel like we're just talking at the beginning of the conversation, right? Whether it's you, Migos, Rockos, a few of you that came up in this same timeframe, but I feel like y'all were a little bit early then when streaming really took off. And I often wonder like, man, like they obviously all had successful careers, but would things look any different, and maybe it was like two or three years later when you saw how streaming was streaming really copied what y'all were doing. [00:15:54] Rich Homie Quan: I remember, yes. I remember that. Like when the first, like my biggest records, like those were so hard copies, you know what I'm saying? It's been like, it wasn't no streaming, it was just like, but a lot of my packs packs. You know what I'm saying? Me and record sold like no, like, you know, physically. So it is different. Like there was still city players then and stuff, you know what I'm saying? So it was, when they first started talking streaming, I was like, I can get paid out that, nah man put, I wanna sell money just now. Like you said. I really feel like they got something from the numbers we were doing and, and turned it. All the way. So I love it, man. And that's why this run here is more important. Cause I'm gonna get me some of that. No money, I promise you that. [00:16:37] Dan Runcie: Oh yeah. A whole lot. Yeah. The thing. Yeah, the thing. I feel like that you all. A lot was just dropping in the frequency of when the mix tapes came out. Right. It was like you didn't let up. [00:16:49] Rich Homie Quan: Like all Now and now Mix Tapes are album, they're no more mix tapes, you know what I'm saying? Like I think I saw something from He is gonna bring mix tapes back and it's like even now Mix tapes are album, then there was still mix tapes. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like come on. But yeah, it's ok. I got something.  [00:17:07] Dan Runcie: I know, man. I know. So, yeah. So you had the recent release that came out. It was an EP For you though, how do you distinguish or make a distinction between EP versus albums versus Mix tapes now? Just given that everyone is putting out music and however they wanna label it, maybe.  [00:17:25] Rich Homie Quan: Yeah. Yeah. To me, I differentiate 'em only because man, like, so what? I just put out the little EP man or mix tape. I feel like EP mixtape, same. Mix tape. I'm doing, I'm, uh, I would say I'm rushing the music, uh, album. I'm gonna take a little more time. You know what I'm saying? It's gonna be a little more thought out. It's gonna be, cause I still look up to my favorite albums coming from your, coming from your tis first album. You know what I'm saying? I'm looking at the structure of those and the instruction of those can't be within a month, two month process. That process may take a. You know what I'm saying? Because you know, I need the content to rap about, but that's the only way I differentiate towards the time I put out a man. You know what I'm saying? Time.  [00:18:09] Dan Runcie:  Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like for the most part, you can hear that from a lot of artists. Once in a while you'll hear a mixed tape that people feel like it's just as goods an album, but for the most part, The more effort that you hear or you hear to the production quality, you hear it in the bars and yeah. [00:18:25] Rich Homie Quan: And they last longer. You know that last longer. That's why I feel like a lot of the music is here, you know, today and gone in two weeks because it's so much similarities and that's why I've been trying to stay creative with the process. Stay corn, don't change my style, but I can't evolve in my sound. And when I say what I mean, it's like, you know, I don't see the same stuff I used to see. Now I'm rapping about the things I'm seeing now. Cause I'm old. I'm trying to put my peers and the, uh, the younger generation on real estate, man, that's probably less jewelry. Let's be, you know what I'm saying, little less flashy and get the things that really matter. You know what I mean? We, we screen the block, let's go buy a couple of properties on the block. So now, now we have a reason to, you know what I'm saying? Stuff of that nature, man, you know, and me just, you know, respecting my position and, you know, playing it. [00:19:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah. You been getting more real.  [00:19:16] Rich Homie Quan: Oh man. A whole lot. Whole lot. And I think last year, you know what I'm saying, a million plus on real estate, you know what I'm saying? And not a music checking ball, you feel me? Just last year. So I definitely getting into a whole lot more, man. [00:19:31] Dan Runcie: Nice. Was that a rental property or a sale property to be here?  [00:19:37] Rich Homie Quan: Uh, rental. A couple of flips and me selling my first. Nice. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, yeah, I did a million plus in real estate. No rap, no rap cap. And is this mostly in Georgia or is it El you got,  uh, not only in Georgia, you know, like I'm born and raised here, now I'm getting on. Now I have, I'm getting to the level I'm going out, you know, in different states and, you know what I'm saying, going to buy, you know, smaller, smaller stuff and just, uh, revamping them, doing resell. I'm doing a clip flipping and stuff like that, man.  [00:20:08] Dan Runcie: That's what's up man. That's what's up. Appreciate that, man. Yeah. Are there any other businesses that you've been getting involved with outside of music? Uhuh, you?  [00:20:16] Rich Homie Quan: Yes, sir. Uh, also with the 18 wheelers, got a couple of 18 wheelers, you know what I'm saying? We got box trucks, you know what I'm saying? A couple of car lots and stuff like that. Car mechanics, some stuff like that. It's every type of way to keep it. Keep it rolling man. Keep it moving, man. You know what I'm saying? The pandemic opened my eyes up a whole. And I really had to take advantage of that time opposed just sitting in the house making babies. [00:20:42] (Mid Ad) Dan Runcie: Let's take a quick break to tell you about a podcast I am sure you'll love. It's called nineties Now, A show all about the music, movies, tv, pop culture, and more from the nineties with a twist of what's happening. It's hosted by two radio vets, Kelly Alexander and Sharon Highland, along with their millennial producer Alex Brisson. The three of them navigate all that is and was the nineties, and you'll hear a wide range of nineties music. They had a really interesting episode about Diddy and Bad Boy and him starting a new record label. They had another breakdown on Beyonce, especially with Renaissance coming. And they look back at the decade that was the film, the TV, and so much more. And you'll also get to catch up with some of the beloved actors and actresses and entertainers that made that decade what it is. You can find nineties now on all of the major podcast platforms. Also check out their website nineties now.com or follow them on social media at nineties. Now fm [00:21:44] Dan Runcie:  I hear you on that man. I hear you on that. What was it like for you during the pandemic? Obviously you couldn't tour. I know that gave you an opportunity to explore these other ventures, but what was it like for you.  [00:21:56] Rich Homie Quan: uh, the pandemic? Uh, what was it like for me? Uh, I would say that's definitely the moment I caught my groove back in the music. Opposed when I had took that long break. You know what? Being here. Cause I had just moved at that time. I had just moved and got me another house. I had bought my, uh, the house for something. And when I moved, I didn't set the studio equipment up for like close to a year. Just I, I'm syn like, come on man. And I think, I think the Migos might have had a just drop sign. I'm had my employees just dropped, but I'm hitting like in a competitor mode. Like I go drop me one two with just like, man, get up off your ass and go. Go get up off your ass and go do something. And since that day, man, I haven't started recording. I built, I built the studio back at the house. A new one, A dope one. That's where I'm at now. And get here, get it done. And it's just like my whole mindset changed like, nah man, we ain't giving up. We ain't quit right now. Nah, man, I'm from Atlanta. We, we don't throw in any white flash. You feel me? It's going hard. I think, um, it started with that then from dropping some music, uh, in Lincoln with Ben and them trusting my plan and wanting to have my back, you know?  [00:23:05] Dan Runcie: For sure. What has it been like for you with live music just coming back in general? Have you been going and doing as many shows as you were doing before the pandemic? [00:23:17] Rich Homie Quan: I would definitely say I'm doing more shows than I was doing before the pandemic, and that's probably because of the new music we've been dropping. But I've been trying to get like a little more social, social active on the social media a little bit too, man, that's, that's played a part and me just, you know, like I say, taking it a whole lot serious, more serious now realizing that the game don't need me, game doesn't change the players do. And realizing that I need the game, so let me act like I need this shit like you. Changing my mindset shit, man. That's,  [00:23:49] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And in other interviews too, you've talked about your place in Atlanta hip hop and your respect in Atlanta, hip hop ain’t you say you feel like you don't get the credit you deserve. [00:24:00] Rich Homie Quan: Nah, I don't, I don't, I don't get the credit. Uh, I don't, uh, like I say, I feel like the sound, like the Atlanta sound today. I feel like I should be one of those ones in that heavily influenced sound. You know what I'm saying? But I wasn't vocal about it then. So I don't respect them. But they know, like we know, like we know and they know, you know what I'm saying? Like you can't mention the Atlanta sound today without mentioning corn. Corn, period. Period. You know what I'm saying? That's why I'm, you know, top three and I'm not three. And that's, that's, that's what it's been. And I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show these people that I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna let the music show you. It ain't just me saying it. I know what I, I know what we've been working on. They gonna see what I'm top three. [00:24:44] Dan Runcie: And so top three are not three. Who? The other two? I don't know. That's what the people decide. I didn't know three because, like I, but cause it's really like a five in hour. Like I got like a. And the five will be, um, no order. Savage is up there and it's just for today. It's not all time. You know what I'm saying? Bro. You got Savage up there. You got Future Up, you got Thug up there, baby up there, and myself up there and I'm just, you know, I'm top three and three. That's for everybody else.  [00:24:47] Rich Homie Quan: I don't know. That's what the people to decide. I didn't know three because, like I, but cause it's really like a five in hour. Like I got like a. And the five will be, um, no order. Savage is up there and it's just for today. It's not all time. You know what I'm saying? Bro. You got Savage up there. You got Future Up, you got Thug up there, baby up there, and myself up there and I'm just, you know, I'm top three and three. That's for everybody else.  [00:25:16] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, I hear that. And I mean, just here are the names you think about, thinking about you and a thug. I mean, I feel like lifestyle is one of the most influential songs of the decade. [00:25:27] Rich Homie Quan: For sure,  for sure. Yeah, for sure. Or lifestyle and definitely that the uh, the rich game mix tape, the rich Oh yeah. Tape as well as the still going in. And I promise I never stopped going in that influenced the sound that influenced the sound man. Cause that's when the differences came. The some type of wave and, oh man, that room was crazy that that decade did. It definitely influenced the sound.You know what I'm saying? [00:25:56] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I mean, even just the way that you see that artists are trying to do multiple things on a track, whether they're trying to sing, they're trying to real like the, I feel like you dug a lot of you were doing that early. So you combine that. You combine with the frequency that people are released in music. We, a lot of these pop stars just, you know, try to do different things on the, at all. [00:26:23] Rich Homie Quan: You know what I'm saying? Like Yeah, I think, I think we showed it like they ain't gotta be a single, the hold the tone. And I think it more people just want to go try like that. Cause I know I can't sing, but I can hold a decent song where I can make you, I can, I can trick your mind. And I think a lot of people want to try that and that's why, that's why you hear it so much. It's an unorthodox sound. We ain't trying to sing, but it does sound, we try to hold a song and you hear that in 80% of the music you on the radio today. If you weren't hearing that then 10 years ago, that's all I’m saying. [00:27:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, you see where the trend is for sure. But yeah, I mean, For you. I do know that, you know, even though you had that moment, there was a period where you know, you weren't released in music and there was, I know that in past interviews you've talked about how it was a bit of a difficult time for you. What was it like for you to be able to come back from that? I know you talked a little bit about how the pandemic was an opportunity for you to reset things. What was it like for you to really be able to come out of that and then still be in the place that you, you are today?  [00:27:42] Rich Homie Quan: Oh, man. To come outta it, I think it was just like amazing. Took a whole lot of praying for one, stand down and like I said, man, not wanting to give up, man. You know what I'm saying? Knowing like, I think I, I started something beautiful and it's still so. So many pages I've yet to get to, and I know I'm capable of getting to, I get to scratch the surface and like me being such an asshole to myself, you know what I'm saying? Like on days I would just make up, I would wake up mad just for no reason and like the people around me didn't deserve it. You know what I'm saying? Like. I'm the leader and a lot of times like, man, I just know, like I couldn't, I couldn't continue to live like that and call myself a child of God, man. You feel me? So once I got that cloud, my head, man, it felt, it felt amazing, man. But I had to take it a day at a time like it. I wouldn't be talking the way I'm talking now if I didn't get filed over. Like it was some tough, tough, tough nights. Like I think, like I said, I went a year without getting in the. And I've always kept me a studio, like at my house, like a nice, yo, I didn't, I didn't listen to the radio three years, you know what I'm saying? But I'm still doing shows. Like I never stopped doing show, but my, my heart wasn't in my mind, was there, but my heart wasn't it. And I think like in this bitch heart gotta be in anything. And I like for my shit genuine and you know what I'm saying? My heart just wasn't in it. So sitting back in this house for that, Um, reminiscing on a lot of things, a lot of memories, those good ones. And waking up one day is like, well, this is how you gonna hear your story. And I myself telling myself like, you better than all these niggas. But in order to say that, you gotta go put in the work to be able to show, show that. And that's what it was, man. And I ain't got, I ain't got, I did in room since I do everything down here. I sleep down. You as you see, I'm getting my hair braided down here. We play the game down, the vibes down here, it your energy out. Don't even come down here. You know? And that's just what it been, man.  [00:29:58] Dan Runcie: And I've imagine that some of that exact competitive nature too, right? Yeah. You don't listen to the radio for three years. You're focused, you're locked in, but you're still performing. When you start listening to the radio again, I'm sure you're hearing what's popping off and you're like, no, I'm better than these. [00:30:13] Rich Homie Quan: Oh yeah. Like when I'm hearing, I'm like, oh, this what people going crazy about. Oh no. We got to, we got to go to work.To go to work. And it was like, and when I started going to work, like at first I didn't, I felt like, um, cause I, I was so used to doing songs fast, like going crazy. And when I got back in there, it wasn't like I just got back in there and was the, it was the corner I am today. Oh no, it took time. It might have took six months before I got back to playing my songs back in the car from my, for the people around me. You know what I'm saying? So still I had to gain my confidence back, man. I had to get it back man. But I got it. Oh, I got it. I got it. [00:30:50] Dan Runcie: And I know too for you, I feel like there's a few things, cuz obviously it's you as an artist, like we're talking about Wanda artist building that up. You've got the confidence and you got the swag back with that. But I know that you've talked a lot about how 10 years from now you want Wanda CEO to be doing more of the work and you don't necessarily wanna be making music as much. You talk to me about what you see that 10 years from now looking like. [00:31:14] Rich Homie Quan: Uh,  10 years from now is a long time and I try not to see that. Like, and when I said. Cause I try to make like real short term goals that are real possible. But I do know and I like 10 years from now, I'll be 43 and I probably said 12. Cause 45 sounds like a better number just to leave it alone. It um, I won't be focusing on Coin the artist, but as far as point the CEO coin, the CEO may start writing more. Cause I just love music that much, but I still can never not see myself created. So, uh, I've been even dipping into it now, like more writing. Writing more, but I would probably doing, writing more, focusing on, cause I been trying, I've been doing models moderat lately when they do the fashion show, I'm walking the runway. It's the first time I did that, I had just did the fashion week. So I'm already trying how that? [00:32:05] Dan Runcie: How did you like doing the runway for the fashion show? [00:32:07] Rich Homie Quan: Well, I haven't done that yet. I, I do that next week. But just the fashion snow itself, just going to fashion week in new. Aw man. Amazing man. Like, just being around people like, oh my, like, I was almost like, I didn't want my phone. I, but I was, man, that's the boy from my show out. You know what I'm saying? Just like seeing Cal coo, no, see, uh, you saying boat? Amy? What's her name? Amy W Winnie. Winnie Harlo. Yeah. Winnie Harlow. Man. Like just seeing her in person, just made and being. Front next to talking to court a like, dang. It just gets you in different room. I'm, and I'm saying like, I maybe could do this. I maybe we could do this for the next 20 years after rap. You know, I'm saying stuff like that. So it's just like, you know, other stuff. Even like being an author, I wanna come out with a memoir. I'm ready to write my book, you know what I'm saying? Cause I do want to get in movies and I, uh, wanna come out with a autobiography movie one day. So, not even me playing myself, but at least writing it. I'm trying to get in directing, trying to get in. I see 10 years from now I see myself, that guy, man.  [00:33:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Okay. I feel like we're gonna see you at the Met Gala next year or something. [00:33:15] Rich Homie Quan: For sure. For sure, for sure. I'm gonna be at, uh, try to be at a whole lot more of a man, a whole lot more and all this stuff that's clean. I just gotta let 'em know I do this shit too. [00:33:26] Dan Runcie: The memoirs are good. I mean, Gucci's was good. Ross's was good. I mean, there's so much, and I mean, you're obviously gonna be able to tell stuff that no one's stole before. You're gonna have the … [00:33:35] Rich Homie Quan: Yeah, and I got stories that, I got stories that I know like, I mean, I just don't give that, I think that would be dope into a book. Like, especially me being real, I think it'll be more raw. Cause I love to read, so I would definitely give more, more details on my book, you know what I mean? I would definitely, yeah, it get spicy, it get spicy. [00:33:55] Dan Runcie: Have you done as much on TikTok lately? Just, you know, whether you are the on camera, off camera and, and I'm have a lot of opinions about it. [00:34:03] Rich Homie Quan: Yeah. I'm, I'm still adjusting. I'm still adjusting. I'm still adjusting. So now a lot of my TikTok has been like, like stuck on the music, but I'm starting, I'm, I'm gonna start, I'm, I'm gonna get a little more personal show, show the fans a different side of me. Cause that's what I'm transitioning to now. Like I am a rapper and that's what fans love. I'm transitioning just to showing them a little bit of, a little bit more of my personal side and just decide deciding which side of my personal side and what I'm willing to reveal. No, that makes sense. Cause I want to be authentic. I don't just wanna get on there cause everybody's doing it. I wanna have something different to offer and that, you know, it's authentic. You're getting a real me. [00:34:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah, like, I can't see you trying to do some like trick, like, you know what I mean? Like everyone trying to do these visual tricks. [00:34:48] Rich Homie Quan: Like no, never, never, never, never, never. That, that, that goes against my morals and ethics, you know what I'm saying? Like , you know what I mean? [00:34:57] Dan Runcie:  Yeah. No, for sure man. Well, no man, I'm excited for you, man. I feel like this is a good chapter. I feel like whether it's a pandemic or other things, like these triggers that happen in life, give us a good opportunity. Just pause, reset, and come back stronger. And I feel like you got the infrastructure there to keep moving, man. So proud of you. Excited for you for what's coming, but man, before we let you go, give us a heads up of what to look out for. What should we look out for the next couple months coming?  [00:35:25] Rich Homie Quan: Uh, next couple of months coming from me. We In November. Yeah. Oh shit. Some weeks after this, man, you can look for us to be reloading the family in Moula. You know what I'm saying? We're not gonna call it a deluxe, we're just gonna reload it. Cause I feel like the reloaded is a deluxe anyway. And I think like that's a trend I started years ago. So they, they, they say deluxe, but we reloading it with seven new songs. [00:35:51] Dan Runcie:  Wait, wait. So, so you started the deluxe.  [00:35:54] Rich Homie Quan: Yes. I'm not gonna say that, but it was called Reload. No, God, I'm not gonna say I started, but I think I did. You know what I'm saying? I think, I think men, I think Men Thug, what's the first artist doing? You know what I'm saying? The Duo Mix tape that they name the album. You know what I'm saying? So it's like a, you know what I'm saying? You know, history beats yourself.  [00:36:18] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So dope man. We'll look out for that and we'll look out for the rest of this stuff coming from you. [00:36:23] Rich Homie Quan: And more videos. Yeah, more, more videos in your face. A whole lot more. Yeah, man. More RQ, the brand, more RQ Time, Venice and more of us going up putting it in they face. Man. I'm on the way. We're here now. We're here now.  [00:36:39] Dan Runcie: Love it man. I love it. Quan, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for joining.  [00:36:44] Rich Homie Quan: Thank you, man.

Cooper Turley, better known as Coopahtroopa, is betting big on ushering a new generation of music. In September, he announced a first-of-its-kind investment fund focused squarely on web3 music projects and artists themselves. Coop Records raised $10 million and Coopah will be the sole general partner.  He’s hesitant to call it just an investment fund though. That’s because Coop Records is also a record label and incubator. Coopah will invest directly into web3-native music artists in a “seed round” — turning emerging artists into venture-backed startups. Structuring an artist’s company is what Coopah sees as web3’s biggest opportunity: resetting ownership dynamics. NFTs are another vertical of the Coop Records fund, in addition to the seed-stage investing in both companies and artists.   Coopah joined me on the show to give us an in-depth look at how Coop Records is eying its investment opportunities. Here’s everything we covered: [0:00] How Coop Records started [2:06] Focusing on emerging artists, not established ones  [3:35] Coop Records’ investment thesis [7:24] Investing in artists during “seed round” [9:50] Structuring artists as a holdings company [11:40] What does an exit look like for artists investors? [15:00] Artists as CEOs [20:11] What makes a music NFT historical  [22:28] NFTs as a replacement for masters and publishing [27:18] Accredited investors vs. fan investors [29:30] Artist success stories with community building on web3 [31:40] Focusing on story when marketing NFTs [34:25] Optimizing for engagement not reach on social  [39:24] How tokenization changes the artist-fan relationship  [47:00] Predicting the year that music NFTs go mainstream  [48:25] Coop’s big question for web3 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Cooper Turley, @Cooopahtroopa   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Cooper Turley: And I think that gets to this artist development piece more broadly is that you're trying to start the process much earlier, much earlier than I think a lot of the major record labels are starting now. Because I think they often wanna see artists having some proven. Track record before they're willing to sign them. [00:00:24] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Ruey. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:49] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Cooper Turley, aka Coopa Troopa. He is the founder of Coop Records, which is a new venture fund, a 10 million fund that is focused on investing in the future of music, specifically in web three. He is someone that has made a name for himself as a thought leader in the space. He was involved with the Dow Friends with benefits and he's now started this fund to make economics better for artists and ultimately help them take more advantage of the opportunities that are around them. So we talked about a lot of it. We talked about how he views the space right now, why he started this fund, and what the fund's investing in. There are three main areas that we go into. We talk about investing in music startup. Investing in artist seed rounds and investing in NFTs themselves as an investible assets that him as a general partner and little Bited partners would wanna see returns from. So we talk about what the economics of that look like. I think that. Cooper stands out in a lot of ways because he has a much more nuanced understanding of how Web Three fits in with the broader ecosystem of what's happening right now in music, what some of the trade offs are with the financials, the relationship with fans, what services it offers versus the traditional record labels and more really insightful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. Here’s our chat. [00:02:07] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we're joined by Coopa Troopa who just launched Coup Records, which is his fund that is investing in the future of music and Web three specifically. And first off, congrats. I saw the announcement, it's really dope. So walk me through the process from thinking about you wanna start this fund to where you are now, today with it. [00:02:28] Cooper Turley: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I've been in music for the last 10 years in crypto for the last five, and so I've seen everything from ICOs to Defi, to Dows, and not most recently NFTs. You know, throughout that time I've been active across public markets as a trader, behind the scenes, as an angel investor, as a community builder, and as an operator. And when I started to think about how to connect all the pieces together, I've always been a fan of music. I felt like there was never really a clear vehicle to help elevate and amplify the space. And so I found coop records to be the best way to really just zoom in on this niche that I'm so excited about and figure out how to really help the founders, artists, and builders that are supporting this space everyday. [00:03:05] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. What were the conversations like getting buy-in from LPs? [00:03:10] Cooper Turley: Basically helping to explain what music NFTs are, why this is a vertical that you'd wanna invest in at this time and day? You know, historically I think that music has gotten a bit of a bad rep, cuz it's very antiquated in a lot of ways. You know, there's a lot of systems that are very complicated and hopefully we can unpack some of those on this episode. But, I think we through presents a new opportunity for artists to monetize in creative ways. You know, as someone who's been a curator my whole life, it's very easy for me to understand the value of investing in songs, artists, et cetera. But for someone who's not music savvy and not passionate about this sector, you know, the majority of those conversations are why would anyone wanna collect a song? Why would someone wanna invest in an artist? And trying to help people understand why there's an opportunity here that I think is. Influential and paramount for the next chapter of music. But once people get over that line, you know, I've kind of been able to build a brand for myself that I think speaks very clearly to why I'm so excited about music. And so for investors that are looking to get exposure to the space, coop records is a great way to get that exposure without them having to get as deep in the trenches as I am. [00:04:07] Dan Runcie: Right. And I gotta imagine that that probably took a few conversations just given things that I'm hearing too, from folks. People, they understand the promise and the opportunity of what NFTs and what web three offer, but there's. Hesitation, there's still perception about what's going on and some of the headlines that people see. How did you communicate or address some of those concerns while still sharing the value add for what you have?  [00:04:32] Cooper Turley: Yeah, I really focus on emerging artists. You know, I think that this is where the vast majority of value will accrue over the next couple years with Web three. And so when you think about investing in music, most people's mind goes to like, how do we get Drake to drop NFTs? I actually don't really focus on that at all. Instead, I think about how do we develop the next act that becomes Drake using Web three tools? And so for investors that are kind of hesitant about getting involved in the space, I point out early examples like X copier people, you know, crypto artists who really made a brand and a name for themselves on the back of selling their nfts. And obviously in the case of people, he had a major brand before, but it wasn't until the existence of NFTs and sort of these community based assets that they started to see monetization aspects with their fans and with their collectors. And so trying to highlight that there's an opportunity here to develop and support emerging artists new to Web three through music, I think it really made a clear case that. This isn't about trying to get your biggest celebrity to drop NFTs. I think that will happen at some point in time. But this is about investing in the infrastructure and the artists that are going to make this space very valuable over the next couple years. [00:05:31] Dan Runcie: And one of the things I like too about how your fund is structured or reminds me a bit of Matt Pinkus and how his music fund is structured. It's not just focused solely on startups that are trying to build the next tech platforms. You're also looking more broadly. The NFT space itself and what that opportunity looks like and it'd be great to break each of those down. So let's start first with the music tech companies, cuz I know that's 85% of your fund looking at preceded seed stage companies. What's your thesis for the type of company that is a coop records company that you're looking for?  [00:06:04] Cooper Turley:  I'm a really big fan of composability. So in Defi there's this concept of money Legos or protocols and platforms that could plug into one another. I believe the same thesis will play out with music, where we're gonna have music legos, where there's different marketplaces, service providers, tooling, infrastructure that can help sort of amplify what an artist can do with Web three. And so when I think about investing in a music tech company, I think about culturally, is this company aware and active within the pocket that I'm spending a lot of my time in? And then beyond being aware of sort of the artists, the songs, the type of platforms that are doing well in this space, do they have the open mindedness to wanna work in collaboration with those other platforms? So in accurate, we can kind of create this toolkit in this stack where if I am an artist who's new to web three, it's not about choosing Spotify versus Apple, it's actually about trying to develop a presence across many platforms. And hopefully those platforms. The life of the artist easier by making everything connect together with one another. [00:06:56] Dan Runcie: And I feel like this speaks to one of the broader themes that I know you've talked about before, is. It can't be this approach of web three versus web two. These things need to be collaborative. No more zero sum games. How can you think more broadly about the opportunity there? How do you view that more broadly, not just with the fun, but also likely how you're seeing the space with any artist that you're working with too? [00:07:21] Cooper Turley: I'm really laser focused on web three platforms because I think there's a lot more room for change within those platforms. You know, I have nothing against legacy platforms like Spotify have done fantastic work for artists and I think there will be at a time and day when they're able to enable music, NFTs to be purchased, collected, listened to within their platform. But the reality is these companies are so sophisticated that trying to move the needle is very complicated. And so for someone like. I'm running this fund as a solo gp. It's a relatively small fund, and so when I think about where I can have impact and leverage, it's typically working with very early stage founders. You know, I can get in the trenches and help to develop the product. Think about how we're onboarding artists, think about new marketing strategies. And so for me, I think right now it's about cementing the cultural relevance and value of this emerging wave of Web three music. And once that's been clear and established, we can take those same values, ideas, songs, artists, and help to bring those into the traditional industry in a more clear way. Because right now I think that a lot of the bigger players, let's call it major labels, et cetera, they recognize that there's value to be captured in Web three, but I don't think that they have the same level. Boots on the ground cultural awareness that maybe someone like, um, myself or some of my colleagues have. And so I think the challenge here is a, making it very clear what that culture is so you can start to translate it to larger players. And then once that they agree there is something of value there, you know, being able to act as a connector where you can say, Hey, maybe instead of going and doing a 500,000 or a million dollar drop for the biggest act on your roster, let's go ahead and find an emerging artist who's curious about the space and develop them with the course. Five or $10,000 drops and instead really build that community and that collector base in a very organic way. [00:08:56] Dan Runcie:  And I think that gets to this artist development piece more broadly is that you're trying to start the process much earlier, much earlier than I think a lot of the major record labels are starting now. Because I think they often wanna see artists having some proven. Track record before they're willing to sign them. And in some ways your approach isn't too much different. Maybe it's just a bit of a different stage because one of the other areas that you're investing in is artist seed rounds. And can you describe. What stage an artist would have to be in order to be at the seed round, and what types of things you're looking for there from an artist? [00:09:33] Cooper Turley: I think it's very similar to what I look for in companies. You know, has this artist been able to prove a little bit of traction? You know, have they demonstrated that they're culturally aware of where this industry is headed? You know, different things that I feel like are interesting to kind of describe. Cause it's not very concrete. Like you can't point to like a specific amount of sales or a specific amount of volume and say, okay, this artist is ready to be invested in. But it's really just a development process of like, is this person making web three a focal point in their career? I believe that that's something really important for me personally, cuz that's where I had the most leverage. But once they've demonstrated that they've been able to release on some of the bigger web through platforms, you know, once they've been able to collaborate and onboard other artists to the space, you know, you start to see that these people have like a little bit. Leverage was sort of their career. And at that point in time, instead of signing a traditional record deal, co records can really be the one to say like, Hey, let's go ahead and set up a company for you. Let's think about how we wanna do a cap table. Let's bring on some partners to give you the capital that you need to go and hire a team around you. So instead of selling your next three albums to a major label, you can instead fund this through accredited investors. And then over time think about the ways you wanna bring other partners into the fold, but not need to be so reliant on the capital to do that in the first place. [00:10:38] Dan Runcie: And with the artists specifically, cuz I know that you've started the fund. Maybe for the people listening, is there a particular artist that you have made a seed investment in just so people can get a good idea for, okay, this is someone that we invested in, this is where they're at in their career, and this is what the opportunity is  [00:10:56] Cooper Turley: Not publicly. I think by the time this comes out, we'll be right around there. You know, I can say that privately, behind the scenes we're working. The first round, you know, we've had some very serious progress on it. Investors are excited about it. We're going through the whole corporate structure, but for me, this is a very different lane because it's not as simple as just investing in the safe note of a precede company. You know, there's a lot more complexity around IP ownership, around revenue sharing around. Kind of how this artist thinks about their company and what kind of rights they're giving back to people. And so it's a slower process, but it's one that's currently in motion. I expect that we'll probably have the first one announced within the next one to two months, but I can definitely say there's one in motion that I'm really excited about. And I think, you know, by the end of this calendar year, we should have that one announced.  [00:11:37] Dan Runcie: I think part of this too is also the structure of things. You mentioned this earlier, and I think for a lot of artists it's probably. Not necessarily a new way to think about it, because I think in general, artists do think of themselves as having multiple revenue streams, but in order for this to work, in order for you to be able to make an investment, there needs to be some type of, whether it's a holding company or some type of structure in place so that you can make an investment that would touch all of these things. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like on the artist side?  [00:12:05] Cooper Turley: Yeah, it's a fantastic question. I wanna start by saying, This is early days and so this is the first stab at it. I think that this model will evolve and change over time. The way we're thinking about it is there's one Hold Co, that represents the artist ownership across their various income streams, uh, that hold co owns subsidiary entities, one of them being a music entity, which owns the masters in publishing for that artist. One being a live entity, which owns touring and merchandising, and then one being a Web three entity, which owns NFTs and. And so all of that wraps up into the larger hold cow. But the reasons those subsidiaries exist is because we wanna limit liability to each of those different vertical. If there's an issue across web three, we don't want that to end up touching the masters. If an artist wants to go and sign a record deal, they shouldn't have to figure out what to do with their touring or what their NFTs to be able to enter into agreement with a different party. And so we've kind of split up the different verticals into buckets that make sense relative to the type of partners and the type of work that it is. But all of that rounds back up into this holding company and when it comes time to invest in the artist, quote unquote, that artist is selling anywhere from five to 10% of that hold cow to accredited investors so that they can have exposure and pass through to those underlying revenue streams. But there's not this sort of majority ownership, creative control, et cetera. It's really, here's capital and exchange for you to go do what you do best. In exchange for that, we have exposure to these underlying entities, which represent the artist brand in its entirety. [00:13:27] Dan Runcie: And for an investor like you, I think most people listening have a good idea of what an exit looks like for a startup, but what does an exit look like for you as an investor, for an artist, if you're going in at that seed round? [00:13:39] Cooper Turley: I think there's a couple ways it can pan out. You know, one I think would be IP acquisition. Let's say that there's a buyout of someone's masters or publishing, et cetera. You know, there's kind of larger capital inflections that can happen later down an artist's career. I'm more excited about this idea of taking artists public cuz it's something that hasn't really been done before, but I think will happen eventually. Where right now, if you're a fan, you can't really invest or bet on an artist. I think we're starting to see us at a very granular level with music NFTs, and it's something I would love to cover as the last bucket next, but to me, I think an exit here is helping an artist really take this company that we structure for themselves and explore what it means to go public. And so rather than only accredited investors being able to buy into that five or 10%, how do you invite fans to participate in that convers. I think that there's a lot of, uh, legal nuance there that needs to be figured out. And so I don't have that answer today, but I would say that more broadly, the two ways that this could happen is a, investors are seeing a return from the IP becoming more valuable, and they're being capital injected into the whole co. Or B, more optimistically the artist, quote unquote, going public by either, you know, listing on a traditional market or what I think is more likely is creating some form of a token, which represents exposure to this entity that's been set up to represent the artist brand in the first. [00:14:49] Dan Runcie: Got it. And then from a structure perspective, do you ever hear any type of pushback or comments from artists who feel like, oh, you're getting a slice of all these revenue deals. This feels similar to a 360 deal. Do you hear any of that at all? [00:15:04] Cooper Turley:  Yeah, I mean, it is a 360 deal, and I think that that's really important to like zoom in on, because 360 deals have gotten a really negative rep because of the percentage ownership that they typically encompass. So traditionally with 360 deals, it's anywhere from 50 to 80. When we talk about a 360 deal in this context, it's five or 10%. And if you start to look at the way that companies take on dilution and precede and seed stage rounds, it's kind of the same concept. You know, like that company is basically taking all of their revenue into this central entity and they're selling off dilution to investors. And so I think for artists, this is particularly scary because there's been such a history of people taking advantage of 360. But I don't think the structure with 360 deals incorrect. I just think the ownership targets that those deals are typically set at is what's really predatory. And so if we can zoom out a bit and instead say, Hey, five or 10% can give you a couple hundred grand, maybe a million dollars to go invest in a team around you, there's ways for that capital to be really value added where the dilution is actually necessary and valuable because it helps you advance your artist career in a way that you simply couldn't do without it. [00:16:04] Dan Runcie: I agree with that. I think that that's, Testament of some of the challenges with the broader major record label system as well, right? It's not that people shouldn't be willing to trade some level of ownership in exchange to get a boost from the company. It's how much ownership, it's what the terms that the actual economics look like, not the economic agreement itself. [00:16:28] Cooper Turley: Yeah, it's correct. And I think that it's something that is really important to help educate artists on. And this is the area that I'm actually most fascinated by is like artists really thinking about rights ownership, thinking about dilution, thinking about cap table management. And just with that in mind, I wanna highlight, it's a very specific type of artist that is willing to enter into this quote unquote, artists seed round. Because I think that most artists are not thinking about their brand as a ceo, but I think there are very selective artists who think about their entity as a business and for those specific artists being able to demonst. There's value in having employees. There's value in giving them long term options and equity, and having these ownership incentives be a little bit more aligned. I think traditionally music has existed in this weird ballpark where we've basically only ever sold masters in publishing. We haven't really experimented with equity or any of these other ownership vehicles that startups have been taking for the last couple generations, so I'm excited to explore it. You know, I by no means have all the answers, but I think. My time investing in precede and seed stage companies has given me a little bit of context on how things work behind the scenes, and I'm hoping that with a little time and effort, we can sort of mold those same practices and help apply them to artists more broadly. [00:17:34] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I have to imagine too, with artists as well, there's some artists that love the mentality of being the business person themself that can be the CEO and wear multiple hats. There's other artists who I. As much as they want the business to work for them, they just wanna focus on the art. So there's specific things that you're looking for to determine, okay, is this artist gonna be wanting to be the ceo? Or maybe making sure that they are partnered with someone that may wanna be in that role instead [00:18:05] Cooper Turley: Yeah, I mean, you just touched on it perfectly. I think that there's situations where artists have partners that are acting as their ceo, you know, and in many typical startups you have a ceo, a cto, a ceo, et cetera. Um, the artist isn't the only person that's responsible for their success. They're obviously the largest player in that. But it's less about, is this artist capable of being a ceo? It's more about is this artist capable of building a team around them that can. In tandem as a unit and as an organization. And if that artist is uncapable of operating as the CEO, because they're phenomenal at making music, it's very likely that there may be a manager, an agent, a business partner, et cetera, that could step into that role. And I think the biggest thing that I'm excited about is to realign incentives around the service providers around an artist. So whether that be a manager, an agent, a business manager, a lawyer, et cetera. Typically, all these actors are just operating on commission, you know, and they have five or 10 clients because there's no guarantee that they'll be with that artist in 10 years time. You know, these contracts aren't really a center aligned for those key players. But if we can instead start to create an instrument where a managers may be able to take a salary and then have equity that's vested over four years, I think there will be more situations where artists would be willing to enter into a full-time quote unquote agreement with their manager, because that a manager is now incentive aligned to actually spend all their time developing one. Instead of needing to commission off of five or 10 different artists just to be able to make a living. [00:19:24] Dan Runcie: It's a huge point because there's so many managers I've talked to that just talk about how thankless that job is, and that's purely just from how they're treated, not even getting to the economic aspect. You start thinking about the economics about how managers are treated and yeah, maybe you'll get 10 to 15 to 20%, but if that artist levels up and then they wanna level up their manager too, they can just be like, Hey, sorry, I wanna move on. And you, the person that brought them from zero to 40. Now you have nothing. Right? [00:19:54] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I mean, it happens time and time again from smaller artists to the biggest acts in the world. I mean, I don't have to name names here, but I think we all know examples of this happening time and time. And it's really just a game of incentive alignment. You know? And when I think about the term web three, to me that means ownership. And so for all of these different deals that I'm doing, it's about how do you create ownership incentives so that everyone who's contributing value to this entity is able to capture that in some way, shape, or form. And so I think it's a very difficult conversation to tell a manager, Hey, instead of taking a 15 or a 20% commission, you're gonna get a base salary and then have a couple equity percentage points that best over multiple years. But when you start to zoom out a bit, you start to see like, hey, maybe 1% of equity can actually be more valuable than 20% commission. Because if you're operating a multi-million or multi-billion dollar business, you know that's a life-changing amount of money. And so I don't expect this is something that's gonna happen in the short term. I think it's gonna take a very new class of partners, managers, agents, et cetera, that are willing to enter into these type of. Situations and these type of organizations. But I'm very excited to work with the emerging class of talent that's willing to try something out a little bit differently because I think that new class of talent is looking for an opportunity here. And I think that we've seen time and time again that the systems that exist today work, but I think that there's a lot of room for improvement and I'm excited to use some of the artists that we're working with help push the needle on what that could like.  [00:21:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think the other point that you mentioned too, was aligned as well, just in terms of artists being able to have that team around them. We've seen so many examples where whether it's Jay-Z, having someone like a Dame Dash next to him, or you have Jay Cole and e Bama, they've been working together for years. Kate, uh, Kendrick Lamar, and the whole Top Dog team. These artists are doing it themselves, and oftentimes the ones that try to get stuck, so no different then. Yeah, a startup, if you're trying to raise money, they're gonna push back. If you have the technical co-founder being the same one that's trying to go raise money, right? Like you need to have some expansion there. So I think so much of that makes sense. I do wanna talk about the other piece that you mentioned though, the NFT piece of it, because the way that you're investing in these, I think could be eyeopening to some of the folks listening because you're looking. And I heard you referred to historic NFT opportunities and NFTs as collectables. Can you talk a little bit about what you're looking for if you're investing in NFTs through this fund and how that may separate from what a lot of people may assume when they think about an nft.  [00:22:18] Cooper Turley: Yeah, so there's a really amazing market of songs that are being released as collectibles right now. You know, there's platforms like Sound xyz, where every day an artist is releasing a song with 25 editions as NFTs. And I've been really active across these markets for the course of the last two years. Personally, you know, biggest collector on Sound today, one of the biggest collectors on catalog. And I'm really excited about being able to collect these early songs from artists that are building in Web three. You know, the analog I'd make here. Music, rookie cards. You know, we have rookie cards for basketball players, for baseball players, et cetera. We don't really have rookie cards for artists, and I think in a lot of ways these early music NFTs are sort of the equivalent of an artist rookie card. And so personally, I've been doing this for the last couple years. I recently just put out a post called the Music NFT Collector Thesis. This is how we're thinking about collecting from the fund. But to really break it down, we're thinking about how do we sort of acquire early NFTs that represent historical relevance of this. Web three and Music NFTs have been around for maybe a year at this point. I think that there's a huge opportunity for fans to start getting involved by collecting the songs that they love and for the fund. I almost look at music NFTs as the new form of like masters and publishing. You know, it's not quite one to one, but there's almost this new market being formed of Tradeable assets that you can buy for something like 50 bucks when it drops, and then hopefully have the ability to resell at a later. And I think for the fund, you know, us being able to participate in these markets and say, Hey, we are aware of what's happening on the ground floor with the next generation of developing artists, we're actively collecting these songs that we can show that were there from them, beyond needing to set up a company and needing to do some crazy type of investment situation. And I'm really excited about the opportunity just to have. Ownership over some of these really early collectibles, cuz I think they're very historic in the development of these artists' careers and I believe they're extremely valuable and will continue to demonstrate. So in the years to come.  [00:24:03] Dan Runcie: You brought up an interesting point just about how you feel like NFTs could replace what we are naturally thinking about masters in publishing. I guess in terms of how artists are monetizing and what their ownership looks like. Can you talk a little bit more about that and specifically how that could look or what that could look like? Years down the road. [00:24:23] Cooper Turley: I mean, I'll start by saying that, um, masters in publishing are extremely valuable. You know, I think that this is a system that has worked for generations. There's a huge trend around catalog acquisition. I think that will continue to exist for many, many years to come. I think for someone like myself, me trying to get in the catalog acquisition game is not a smart move. You know, there's a lot of players with a lot more experience. There's a lot of people with a lot more money. The one unique advantage that I do have though, is developing thesises within this small pocket of web three artists, and the best way to get exposure to them is to simply buy their nf. You know the way that this looks is if there's the first song an artist ever released their artist rookie card, and there's 25 additions of that being sold for 50 bucks. If you zoom out and one of these artists becomes the Weekend, Drake Post Malone, Jack Harla, whatever it might be, there's a very high likelihood that those early additions are gonna be worth a lot more than $50. And so instead of trying to invest in the masters in publishing rights, those songs can also go on Spotify. They can stream extremely well. You can have relationships with major label. But I believe those early collectibles have a market of their own. These markets are not tied to any sort of royalty rights because it's just collectibles. You know, there's 25 additions of this digital vinyl. I can buy it for $50 and then sell it for whatever price I want in the future. And I think this is a market that not many people are paying attention to right now. But I think when it comes to new and creative revenue streams for artists, I think that collectibles are gonna be a very, very big market in the years to come. I think it's the most clear way that fans can start to get involved with sort of, Collectible nature of getting involved with an artist and as a fun, I think we're really excited to be participating here to say, Hey, we're really excited about this. I think there's some really amazing plays out there right now, and we're gonna continue to support artists on the ground floor to help develop this thesis.  [00:25:59] Dan Runcie: Why do you think that a lot of people aren't paying attention? Or what do you think some of the, if there's friction or if there is just in a bit of a natural adoption curve, like what do you think's going. [00:26:12] Cooper Turley: It's just new. I mean, this entire market has only been around for a little bit more than a year at this point. You know, in total, I think we have less than a thousand artists that have ever minted a music NFT before. There's probably less than 10,000 people ever collected one before, and so. Relatively speaking, it's just a very new and small market. And I think for a lot of players that have bigger fish to fry, it's probably not worth their time to invest buying records for $50 because they have multimillion dollar record deals in place. You know, and so for someone like myself, um, a lot of what I do is help educate artists that there's a lot of value to be captured in web through right now based on how early it is. You know, I think that there's a lot of unlearning that can be done with the way artists are releasing music in Web three. And so traditionally, when you're putting out a song on Spotify, most artists I know here in. They'll take eight weeks in advance to think about what distributor am I gonna put this out through? Am I gonna sign this to a label? What's my advance? What's my marketing rollout? What's my TikTok campaign? How am I getting pre saves? How am I making the music video? And what I've been preaching is like, Hey, if you have a song, you should put that out tomorrow. You know, like there's people out there that would probably wanna collect that record. And if you can 5 25 people to come and collect music in FT for 0.05 E, they're basically $75. That's the equivalent of half a million streams. And so I think trying to teach people that you don't need to have this giant rollout process to make this headline moment with music. We've gotten really conditioned to trying to shoot for the new Music Friday playlist. You know, all of these emerging editorial playlists. One of the beautiful things about the SoundCloud era was people were just uploading music in real time and if you had your finger on the trigger, you could go and just repost something and be part of a wider movement. And I think what's happening with music and FTS now is artists are gonna start to see that you don't need to have a six week rollout to put out a collection of 25 songs. If you make that song on Wednesday and put it out on Thursday, you can immediately get funding from your biggest fans and use that funding to go and market the rest of your career and instead be able to obviscate the need for a lot of those major capital advances that typically get artists caught up in a weird position in the first place. [00:29:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like if the funding's in place and you can replace early on, because I think for a lot of artists, the economics don't really work out either. Unless A, you own the underlying masters in publishing to begin, so you're just bringing on a. You know, revenue per stream or just general from what you're getting from streaming or on the other side, you're just massive, like Drake or someone like that. And your billions of streams per year brings in plenty of money. But for a lot of other artists, it ends up being either A, a loss leader if you're focusing solely on streaming or a, or you're leaving money on the table some type of way. So I feel like that approach is something that makes sense for a bunch of. On the investing side though, I have a few questions on this, but the first one, on the investing side though, how do you feel like the appetite will be for, let's say an artist does have early investors, the likelihood for those investors to be folks who are accredited, folks that just wanna be able to get a return, versus people who are actual fans of that artist. Any thoughts on what that mix may look like for the average artist that's going through the web? Growth cycle and the rep do growth curve? [00:30:19] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I mean, I can speak on this from the artist seed round that we're doing right now. Every investor in that round has been an active collector of this artist for many, many months. Prior to that, they all have personal relationships with the artist. You know, they may be an accredited investor, but they're not just bringing capital. They've been active and supportive of this artist's career way before the seed round even started. And so I think if we zoom out, there will definitely be situations. Investors just want to put in a couple hundred grand and not really worry about getting involved on the ground floor. But given how early it is right now, most of the investors who are interested in participating in these capital markets are ones who want exposure to both NFTs and to the artist equity. And so I think that over time, collectors to me are a little bit closer to like early investors. Think about them like almost angels or sort of like seed round investors. Over time, collectors will start to mirror more fan behavior. But I think for right now, a lot of the collectors I know, they're just excited to get exposure to an artist's career and to go and support them more so than they are to really go to their show or to buy their merchandise, et cetera. And I think that's where a lot of the pushback comes for web through music is like, oh, these people aren't actually fans. They're just, you know, buying NFTs. But if you zoom into what that means, it's almost a different form of fandom where they're providing capital to be able to have exposure to an artist's career. And their expectations are a lot less on the fan side. I need you to collaborate with this artist. I want you to put out this type of music. It's more so like, Hey, we just wanna support you and your career however we can. Because the more that you're able to identify your vision and create a brand around it, the more valuable our NFTs are going to become. And so it's a very mutual relationship I think hasn't really existed in music in the past. [00:31:50] Dan Runcie: You're really getting at this aspect of community and how artists can foster that, how they can build around them. We've seen the power of that in the SoundCloud era, so we've seen a lot of these things happening and what streaming in general has enabled to happen. What are some of the success stories that stand out to you when you're thinking about artists to be like, oh yeah, they've nailed community, or they're nailing community, like that's how you do it. [00:32:13] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I would say a couple artists to check out. Daniel Allen, I think has done a fantastic job of this in the web three space. Latasha who started something called Zora Topia has done a fantastic job at this Early nft. Artists like Matt Cha os. Grady bloody white. I mean, the list goes on and on, but basically you see. The small pocket of artists that are really making web through a centerpiece for their career, and they're leveraging that into creating more community conversation. Where typically all these artists have a collector chat where once you've bought a music nft, you can get into a private chat with that artist. It's typically 20 people, 25 people, and that artist is in there every day saying like, Hey, what do you guys think about this demo? Hey, I'm thinking about dropping a song next week. Which one do you like more? What do you think I should do for the supply? Do you think we should do an airdrop? And that conversation is a lot more interactive. And I think in a lot of ways artists have typically maintained separation from their fans to kind of uphold this like form of mystery and this like storytelling aspect. But what I'm seeing now is that collectors are getting really close to the artists that they know and love, and those artists are realizing that for a very specific demographic of their audience, they can be very value added, asked the right questions. And so instead of just doing a meet and greet or doing like, you know, 50 people standing in line to say hi, back to back for an hour and a half, it's like, hey, if we wanna have a valuable conversation about the future of my career, These other people that I can turn to, cause I know they have exposure to my brand and they actually typically have experience That's very valuable and it's something that I think is gonna happen more and more with the next generation of collectors to come. [00:33:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's a good way to just think about the framing of it, right? Meet and greets can be great, but it's so transactional. It is really isn't an opportunity. And it kind of has a bit of this like hierarchical thing. Like, oh, I paid $500 extra at this concert to like take a picture with you. Versus no, like if you've really been with this person, then how can you help shape that in the same way that someone that was really early on can? So I feel like there's so many principles there and there's so much that aligns with, especially on the financial side. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the marketing side of it, because I know that's a piece that a lot of artists have had questions about, but I also think that we've seen from. Project specifically with Web three projects like outside of music where whether it is the creator themselves who's been able to market or get the word out effectively, or they've been able to just find ways to build their distribution themselves. What are some of the ways that you've seen artists who've been successful on the Web three Path have been able to replicate, or at least make up for some of the marketing that they would get from a major record label, but otherwise they're recreating on their own. [00:34:47] Cooper Turley: I think it starts from the story, you know, like first of all, what is the music that you're releasing and what is the story behind that? But more importantly, like what is the narrative with how you're using the technology? And so almost fusing together like the creative side with the tech side, you know, whether this be something as simple as like creating your own artist website where people are mentioning s from, or it's something like, hey, we're using on chain splits to reward and compensate. 15 different contributors, five of which didn't touch the music, but were helpful in the development or the project management or the visual assets, et cetera. You know, I think there's new creative channels to help bring more people into the table, but I would say generally Twitter is kind of the main resource for all web three artists. You know, the ones that I see doing really well are typically putting out tweet storms, talking a lot about the drops that they're doing, why they're doing it, and how they're doing it. I see a lot of artists doing these sort of collector chats and more private investor relationships. If they have a bigger release coming out, it's not only about posting the tweetstorm, it's also about going and finding time to talk to some of your bigger collectors one on one and being like, Hey, what do you think about this? How can I get you involved? What are some feedback you would have on this drop? Are you excited or not excited? And I think typically with music, traditionally, how it's released, Artist makes a song, they have their internal team, and then they put it out to the world. And when it's out to the world, everyone forms an opinion on it. With Web three music, a lot of the time, there's a lot more happening behind the scenes before the release actually comes out, so that when it is time for one of these releases to happen, you start to see these things sell out because there was a lot of work put into the record before it came out, and that's not untraditional from typical music, but I think the difference there. Active conversations with your collectors is very new. You know, typically it's like people around a table at a major label that are talking about like, how are we gonna market on TikTok? But this is different because it's going and having very direct conversations with the people that are supporting you the most. And in aggregate that sort of. Neural net of all these different people talking about your drop in tandem. It creates this sort of network effect where when it does come out, there's almost a rippling effect that helps to make the drop become more successful. And I think that's something that I'm seeing being replicated time and time again. [00:36:44]  Dan Runcie: And I know that, as you mentioned, Twitter has been a great space for artists to be able to share things. There's so much. There's so many people in the one three community that are active there, and I think have added to a lot of the discussion and narrative around it. But as someone who's active on Twitter myself, I know how small sometimes those circles can feel. What other platforms or what other areas are you seeing some of these conversations happen, and how long do you think until we're starting to see it not just becoming necessarily a Twitter thing, but it is expanding to more platforms and it's becoming a bit more of. Early majority, at least being able to catch on. [00:37:22] Cooper Turley: I think it'll be Twitter for the foreseeable future. You know, I think that's just where the vast majority of Web three people live. And I think it's actually the one social platform where you can talk about Web three and not get ridiculed for it. You know, I think across nft, TikTok, et cetera, it's very taboo to talk about NFTs, and I don't think that those users are really as tapped into sort of like the valuable aspects of Web three. And so I think for the immediate future, let's call it the next one to two. Twitter, I think is gonna be the source for all of that. And to your point, some of these communities do feel very small, but I think that's actually one of the biggest differences with Web three. You know, I think with traditional marketing platforms, we optimize for impressions, we optimize for plays, for eyeballs, et cetera. On Twitter, if you have 50 people that are consistently showing up to each of your drop, you're doing an amazing job. You know, I think that this is the biggest thing that shows why Web three is valuable is you don't need to have a million monthly listeners to make a couple thousand bucks. If you have 25 people that are willing to come and support you, you can make the same amount of money and have a deeper relationships with those individuals. And so I always say to artists, Even if you're only getting three, five reactions on your tweets every single time, that's very impressive because the benchmark to move the needle and Web three is a lot lower because every individual person is much more active and the quality of those conversations is much higher than what you could expect from a TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. [00:38:36] Dan Runcie: And I think in general, like with those platforms, you're more likely to reach people who are just casually following or passively engaging versus whether if you're already in that audience that's Twitter, you're likely reaching a more active fan base to begin with. And it gets to this whole concept of where can you not just reach followers, but reach people who are actual fans of their music? And a lot of the platforms that have grown tremendously large in the past few. Are much more overindexed on followers and less overindexed or or under indexed rather on true fans. [00:39:08] Cooper Turley: Yeah. And so there's still a lot to be done there. You know, I do believe there's a world in which artists that are using Web three and music NFTs become viral acts that have fans in the traditional sense. I try not to like focus on that too much because there's a lot of work that needs to be done to get there. I think that will happen, but I don't think it's healthy to think. What that looks like today, because frankly, we're just far away from it, you know? And I think for me, helping an artist get a thousand collectors is much more important to me than how do they get 10 million streams on Spotify? You know, if the ladder happens, that's great. But I think the former's actually a lot harder to do because it's a much smaller design space. But, you know, I think there's something really exciting there. And a lot of the work that I do as a collector is really just educating fans on like, why would I wanna collect music? Like, why would I wanna participate on the other side of these? I think from the surface, a lot of bands got really bad experiences with NFTs because artists were just selling random drops that didn't really have any merit to them. They didn't actually care about the output. They were just kind of doing something to be cool at the time. But now what I'm starting to see is that these emerging artists, they really care about their NFTs. They care about them just as much, if not more, than their release strategy on Spotify. And for those demographic of artists. If you are a fan that's looking to sort of develop a brand for yourself around. I believe that this web through music space is a great opportunity to do so. And what we're now seeing is a very small group of music collectors who are building their entire Twitter brand around collecting drops on sound, or writing newsletters or writing mirror posts, et cetera. And I think those are the type of people that I want to try and amplify in Spotlight because it's a very much two-sided marketplace here. And in order for these artists to be successful, you also need to have collectors that are willing to be active in these markets and see success from the music they're collecting as well.  [00:40:42] Dan Runcie: This is one thing that I keep in mind. More broad trends about like what's happening in music, but I also keep it in mind with artists and creators who are trying to expand beyond the folks that they're naturally reaching. Because if you're only going to try to focus on the people that you naturally reach on a regular basis, it, it can work. And I do think that it's kind of like shifting a bit of the psychology, because I think so much of us have been conditioned to just focus. Who is the next person you're gonna reach? What is your customer acquisition cost? It's not just artists, it's the whole industry that's thinking about it this way, but you can build a sustainable business if you are just focused on the pub shot reach. I know it's a bit of that thousand true fans mentality applied to web three, but I think that there's plenty of nuances there. And sometimes it could be less than that. Sometimes it could be more than that. But I think there's some really unique things. One thing. Interested to hear your thoughts on though is just with artists specifically and fans and just the nature of that relationship and whether or not the tokenization of their relationship changes anything. Right. Because I feel like with fans, there's a lot of this conception that because they don't feel like there's nothing that's like financially tying them to them, maybe that brings up, you know, a different relationship than they would if they do feel actually, you know, financially tied to the. Is there any downsides or is there anything that you think of in terms of how that broader tokenization of the relationship changes any of that dynamic or expectations? [00:42:21] Cooper Turley: I definitely think there's downsides, and I think there's a lot of pressure that comes with it. You know, I think for artists that are selling nfts, you need to think about new mechanisms. Like, what is my floor price? What is my volume? Is this asset trading above what I sold it for in the first place? That's a lot of pressure, you know, and that takes a lot of time to get right. I think that over time people are gonna recognize. Collector is getting mad about floor prices. The same as a fan being mad about the type of song that you're releasing, where that's just kind of the name of the game. You know, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it's not like there needs to be a huge reliance on that. I think the one thing the artists need to focus on is actually being consistent with what they're putting out in releasing. If you're giving it your best effort and you're doing things to add value back to early collections, to be able to engage with your community and doing things that show that you're being intentional, that to me matters a lot more than like, what is the price of the tokens themselves, because I think over. We need to recognize that not all fans are the same, and it's not like all music is only gonna exist as NFTs. What's gonna happen is that all these songs are gonna be available on Spotify. If I'm a passive fan, I can go and just listen to that song. There's no expectation for me to ever have a financial relationship with that artist. But the new unlock here is if I wanna go deeper on that relationship. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, and I believe many others do. I can now collect something that represents a limited version of that song. And for other people that are excited about that artist's career. Not only can we share on our Instagram story, we can now go into a private collector's chat and say, Hey, I was able to pick up this sold out drop. I was able to pick up one of their early rookie cards, and I think what we start to see is that the fan base gets a little bit more. It's delineated across different verticals where there's some vans who are just showing up to a concert, you know, all the time. I go into GA at a show and I'm like, how do I get these people to buy music and FT use? And the reality is most of them probably never will because they just wanna go and have a good time. They wanna party and forget about their nine to five job. And that's perfectly fine. But I think for the small subset of people who are really passionate about music, those active listeners being able to answer into these more deeper relationships, it's really gonna empower curation in a very new way. And I think the analog I would make here, Sites like Height Machine really drove the success of SoundCloud in a very massive way. You know, there was a demographic of curators who were saying, Hey, we love this type of music. There was all these different blogs, like This song is sick, you know, all these EDM blogs, pigeons and planes, et cetera. They were adding cultural zeitgeist to these songs. And I think the financialization of these assets is not only gonna incentivize people to wanna curate and write about these different article. It's actually gonna give them the means to sustain themselves on the back of doing so. Or if I'm a curator who's really successful at identifying talent, I don't need to go work for a major label as an a and r because I can simply spin up a newsletter on sub stack, go and look at the drop calendar on sound, xyz, and then the event that I'm able to really identify. Successful drops, I can actually start to make a living on the back of my taste. I think that's something that hasn't really existed before and something that I'm personally really excited to see happen more and more in the industry at large. [00:45:08] Dan Runcie: That last piece is huge because it makes me think back to the blog era, especially at hip hop with just. How popular it was when, whether it was sites like Two Dope Boys or Now, right. And their influence on being able to have a mix tape that they're putting out. They're putting their stamp for approval. They're the media channel that's sharing the tape, that's being released from Dap Piff and being like, Hey, here is this new kid Cutty record that you need to listen to a kid named Cutty. You know, this is the mix tape. Check it out. Or the cool kids, or Charles Hamilton or whoever, one of these artists, The difference though, is that even though the artists in the blog era and the people who ran these websites in the blog era were so influential, and I think at a time they even had more influence than the major record labels did. They didn't capture the upside. They created the culture. They created the influence, but they didn't capture the upside. This allows that to happen in a way. The next version of Two Dope Boys could essentially be the one to, like you said, they could start up a newsletter, they could be able to release this and be like, Hey, I'm the one that is putting this investment in and then this is gonna stay there from here on out. That's something that's really special. And to be honest, I don't feel like there's enough discussion around that. So I'm glad you brought that point up. [00:46:26]  Cooper Turley: Absolutely. And I think the one, the one thing I wanna zoom in on there, That doesn't require the artists to sell any of their masters. You know, them putting out 25 editions of a collectible song that a curator can go and buy and then help spread the word about within their pockets. There's no conversation around like, what percentage master publishing does this curator now have? Do I need to bring them into my creative decision, et cetera. It's a new market that now exists on the back of taste and curation, and I think in a lot of ways, music NFTs get pushed back cause they say, oh, you don't actually own the rights. Why do these things have value in the first place? I'm a big believer that community has a lot of value to it. You know, I don't think that art needs utility or needs IP ownership or Masters or publishing to be valuable. I think these curators are able to tell very compelling stories about the impact that music has and being able to add a new market into the equation through music and fts, it really unlocks a new mechanism for artist fandom that I think is very simple to understand. I don't think the average fan will be able. Rationalize what a master or a publishing right looks like. But I think they can understand what a rookie card or what a limited edition of songs looks like. And so I'm very excited to watch these markets mature. And I think that ties back into why the fund is collecting music, NFTs, cuz we believe that. More people are going to be able to understand what it means to own a collectible than they are going to know what it means to own masters or publishing. And so you sort of have these two different sides of the equation. I think they can both work in T and in unison with one another to make the aggregate music market more valuable as a whole. [00:47:51] Dan Runcie: And I think your fun will be a, a test to see how well that works. So, It'll, it'll be, it'll be fascinating. I feel like the structures make sense. You have each day, each piece of it there. I'll be very interested to see what the returns end up being like for each of those categories. Right. Of course, you know, most of the fund is looking at your precede and seed stage music and web three startups, so I assume that it's naturally gonna be what the expectations would be for any young startup. But I'm very interested to see what those expected multiples or the exits will be for the NFTs and then, The artists seed round investments themselves.  [00:48:26] Cooper Turley: Absolutely. I will say that the vast majority of the fund is going into web three companies, but time and time again, people get really excited about this idea of investing in artists. Again, do not have the answers whatsoever, but. I'm noticing people are really excited about that ballpark. So I'm excited to at least start that trend with this first fund here and in the future. I'm hoping that we can create playbooks for many artists who don't even use nft, use their web three to also start to enter in these agreements as well. But you know, I'm really excited about it. You know, like I said, I've been in music for 10 years, crypto for the last five. I feel like this fund is a great way for me to really fuse those two passions together. And it's a very small market right now, but if you made it this far in the episode, I hope that this is something of interest to you and I would love to keep the conversation going if you have more. [00:49:06] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Before we wrap things up and let you go, one of the quotes you had mentioned, you referenced this earlier, the conversation too, that we're not at the point in Music Web three, where Drake is gonna come through and drop an album or a Bieber or a Post Malone or one of those artists. If you had to pick a year that you think that will happen though, what year would you pick? [00:49:26] Cooper Turley: Uh, 2025. Okay. And I think what's gonna happen is that a lot of the biggest artists in the world will just happen to have NFTs under the hood. You know, I don't think it's gonna be like one of those major superstars doing their first drop as NFTs. I think there's like a developing culture of artists right now that are gonna really gain a lot of momentum over the next couple of years. And when they release that major album, you're gonna look back and see that their first songs actually happen to be minted as the collection of 25. A lot of major artists are really excited about this. You know, I spend a lot of my time talking to artists who are currently signed to deals that are saying, Hey, I wanna drop, but I can't because the major label doesn't let me. And I think what's gonna happen is that major labels are gonna wake up to how valuable these early collections can be. And instead of blocking their artists from doing these drops in the first place, they're gonna start to really ramp up and get engaged with them too. So instead of just like, how do we put this album out on Spotify? It's gonna be, how do we develop a relationship with these platforms and onboard our catalog into the. So the biggest thing that I see as a question mark for web three is do we recreate the same systems of Volt? You know, is there going to be a world in which the major labels are just driving the vast majority of NFT sales? I think you're already seeing early examples of this like Warner's partnership with Open Sea, and one thing that I think is really important for us to recognize is that artist independence is very, very valuable. You know, I think that artists owning their own rights and knowing how to run their own companies and run their own business is extremely valuable. And so I'm hopeful that there's a world in. Artists can coexist with labels in a more free form matter. You know, I'm hoping that there's a world where artists can upstream their most viral song to a label, but still retain the rest of their catalog. But I think what's gonna happen over the next year or two is there's going to be. A shuffling of different power dynamics from artists to label relationships. And I think the most forward thinking labels are gonna recognize that it's okay to give up a little bit of control so that an artist can run their business more properly. And if you have 20% of the biggest artists in the world, that's probably more valuable than having 80% of someone who's not really doing much with their career. And so I'm eager and excited to see what those relationships look like and hopefully try and, you know, form some of those early stage relationships along the way. [00:51:41] Dan Runcie: But it's to your point, yeah, they would rather have 20% of that than 80% of the field at this point, so, mm-hmm. , I think we'll see more of that and actually we'll see more of that, not just involving multimedia, but involv. More merging technology. So yeah, it's only a matter of time. 2025 is earlier than I thought you were gonna say, but things move quick, so we'll keep the, we'll keep an eye out for it.Cool. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. This is great. [00:52:07] Cooper Turley: Thank you, man. I just wanna say, I really appreciate this podcast because you're so well versed when it comes to both the music side, the tech side, and the financial side. I think that it's, Um, difficult for me to find pockets to really talk about the financialization of music. You know, there's a lot of pushback that comes from it, but you know, the way you structured this conversation I think really gives a clear picture of why I'm excited about more of the financialization of music. I think it gives a lot of credence to emerging artists and sort of the way I'm thinking about collecting. So really appreciate you making this happen. I think it was a fantastic episode. I'm excited to share with all my friends. [00:52:37] Dan Runcie: Likewise, no. These are the conversations that need to happen, right? The more that people can talk about it, the more it just gets in the open and the faster things get to where it should be.So thank you for making the time. This is great.  [00:52:49] Cooper Turley: Yeah. The last thing I'll say here in closing, I write a weekly newsletter called This Week in Music, NFTs. If you're interested in any of this conversation, every Monday I publish a short edition that talks about upcoming drops, top stories, bonus read from the community. So if you're looking to get more involved in the web three space, that's where I'd recommend getting started. And then if you are a founder or an artist that's building something and looking for investment, the best place to reach me is via email coop Coop records xyz. But again, thank you so much for having me, man. This was a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate your time. [00:53:18] Dan Runcie: Thank you. And if you're not following him on Twitter and you reactive on Twitter, make sure you do that. What's your Twitter handle? [00:53:23] Cooper Turley: Twitter is at kooopatroopa. Good stuff. Thanks man. Thanks for having me.

Today's episode is a two-parter. Part 1 is on Spotify and YouTube’s billion streams and views playlists. After reviewing both lists, there’s a lot to learn about the streaming era and the strategy for both platforms respectively. I broke it all down with Tati Cirsiano, a music analyst at MIDiA Research. Spotify’s list is more reflective of passive consumption. Spotify’s top-performing songs are more correlated with radio hits than YouTube, which is a more active consumption experience. YouTube’s Billion Views Club has more international stars than Spotify. With streaming continuing to grow across the world and plateauing in the United States, YouTube’s list more reflects future music consumption.  Part 2 is with Glenn Peoples from Billboard. We talk about its new Global Music Index that takes the publicly traded stocks from the biggest music companies in music to give an overall picture of stock performance for the industry.  Here’s everything Tati, Glenn, and I covered on the show: [3:03] Immediate takeaways from each Billions Club playlists [5:15] How “meme traffic” impacted both platforms [9:37] Passive consumption vs. active consumption [12:11] International differences between Spotify and YouTube [14:57] The Justin Bieber conundrum  [16:36] How Spotify and YouTube enable fragmentation of fandom [21:26] Gym-going and seasonality’s impact on streaming numbers [26:14] Short-form videos eventual effect on YouTube streaming [27:55] YouTube vs. Spotify competition intensifying  [35:58] MIDiA’s upcoming predictions report [38:33] What % of the Global Music index Spotify takes up [39:23] Why music industry stocks fell further than the overall market [46:25] Streaming platforms increasing prices [50:22] What goes into calculating Average Revenue Per User for Spotify [55:23] Spotify’s podcast strategy & acquisitions [59:18] How much of Trapital’s audience comes from Spotify [1:02:53] Why TikTok should launch it’s own streaming service [1:09:39] What Glenn expects 2023 to look like Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Tati Cirisano, @tatianacirisano, Glenn Peoples, @theglennpeoples   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Tatiana Cirisano: Spotify's list is more of an accurate reflection of what the passive majority listens to, whereas YouTube is more of a reflection of what people are actively fans of and actively engaging, which is interesting because that was a question that we asked in our last episode where we were like, how do we measure, like, what are new ways to measure consumption? And I said, well, it'd be interesting if we could actually measure, you know, active consumption versus passive. And now here I'm looking at these two lists, I was like, oh, this is actually potentially an example of that. [00:00:37] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:57] Dan Runcie: Today's episode is a two-parter. We normally don't do two-parters, but these topics were so closely linked, it made perfect sense, so we had to do it. The first part of this episode is a conversation I had with Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research, and we talked about the Billions Clubs. Spotify and YouTube both have their respective playlists that have over a billion streams and views respectively. So we talked about what can we learn from both of these playlists together. What does it tell us about the most popular songs that do well on streaming, but also what can it tell us about these two platforms individually? What are the differences between the two playlists? Are there certain songs that perform better on others versus that and why? And what that means more broadly for the sector, Just given how big these companies are. Second part of the conversation, I talked to Glen Peoples who works for Billboard, and he recently released this Global Music Index, which is a value-based index that takes the publicly traded stocks from many of the biggest companies in music, combines them, and gives us an overall picture of how we can look at the performance of the music industry, at least in the publicly traded companies. Hint, it's been a down year for stocks overall, so nothing too surprising there. But we talk specifically about Spotify, who stock is noticeably in a tougher place, at least from, where it was year to date compared to some of the other companies. So we talked about why that is, what to expect, and more. Really great conversations. Let's start things off with Tati. Hope you enjoy it.  [00:02:31] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have Tati Cirisano back with us from MIDiA Research and we're going to dive into the Billions playlists that are both from Spotify and YouTube. What a fascinating list that's like a tripped-out memory lane, telling you what songs are popular, but also how these lists are different. I feel like they both have somewhere between like 3 to 400 songs, but there's a whole bunch of different trends here. I know that we both have a bunch of notes here, but Tati, I'll start with you. What stuck out to you most when you were looking through these lists?  [00:03:03] Tatiana Cirisano: Oh my gosh. So there's so many things. I guess I'll start with the things that stuck out to me that don't have to do with differences, but just stuck out to me in terms of just looking at both. And one was that I felt like there was definitely a dominance of songs and artists from the last decade and maybe even just the last five years, which was interesting to me because there's been such a debate recently about is old music or what we call catalog, which is often not actually old music. But is it sort of cannibalizing new music? Does new music have more to compete with? And that whole argument. So it was interesting to see that there actually weren't that many or weren't relatively as many older songs. I believe the YouTube Billion Views Club had, like, one song from the 70s. It makes more sense with YouTube. And I think YouTube had even more dominance with more recent songs. And that kind of makes sense because if it's visual-based, maybe some of these songs we don't have the music videos, or maybe they're not as good. But I thought that that was interesting just off the bat from both ways.  [00:04:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I would agree. I think that YouTube's list did trend much younger, and there's a whole MTV effect of just what music videos look like then and now. But I also feel like what's important is with both Spotify and YouTube, that when these platforms accelerated in growth, a lot of the artists that were releasing music around those times accelerated and growth too. And I feel like I saw some trends there. If I think about YouTube and its rapid growth phase more so in the early 2010s. There were a few songs there that I saw, whether it was like a party rock anthem or songs like that, that streamed really well on YouTube. Still nowhere near a billion streams on Spotify. And I think on the flip side of that, on Spotify, there were a few songs that were in that late 2010s era when Spotify was in its rapid growth phase that weren't on YouTube's playlist. So that was one of those interesting things. Like, for example, I think Drake's song Nice for What, a billion streams on Spotify. It's in the Billions Club, but it wasn't on YouTube's list. And I remember that music video, I think it's at the skating rink and he has, like, Issa Rae and all these people in it. So there was definitely some influence of the platforms too.  [00:05:15] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. And that reminds me, too, of with the influence of platforms, it felt like, there were, so okay on both platforms. I felt like there were a lot of songs that were driven by, like, a viral hit or a novelty, which kind of just goes to show how embedded music has become in, like, meme culture and social media and just like online culture in general. But it also, like, looking at the differences within that, it felt like, this is like, I mean, you'd need to do more of a real, like, study and look at the actual numbers on this, but just from scrolling over the list, it seemed like, more of the TikTok traffic is going to Spotify. Like, there were a lot of songs that had a billion streams that I just remember being moments on TikTok, like Dreams and the Roses, Imanbek remix, like those songs and many others had passed a billion streams on Spotify, but had not cracked the YouTube list. And then on the flip side, YouTube had a lot of stuff that was more, like, just these, memes about, I'm trying to think of an example, like the Dame tu Cosita song and video, like that. There were actually an abundance of songs on the Billion Views Club for YouTube that were linked to these videos, including Crazy Frog.  [00:06:24] Dan Runcie: I saw that.  [00:06:25] Tatiana Cirisano: It like that was just, like, that was a moment in time in meme culture that kind of preceded TikTok humor. I don't know, like you can almost track meme culture's impact based on these two platforms lists as well with TikTok driving more traffic to Spotify and sort of the old, almost like Vine humor going more to YouTube.  [00:06:45] Dan Runcie: That point makes me think of two things I also saw as well. So I believe the first YouTube video that hit a billion streams was Psy's Gangnam Style. I don't think that song has a billion streams or anywhere close to that on Spotify's list, which I think speaks to your point about just the visual nature of that. And that of course is a pre-TikTok era. The other song I think that lines up with this a bit, and this is because of memes within the music video itself is Nelly and Kelly Rowland's Dilemma music video. That is the most popular YouTube video that Nelly has, and I'm pretty sure that Kelly Rowland likely has too. And it's because of this one scene in the music video where Kelly is texting on this 2002's phone and she has Microsoft Excel open, and that's what she's actually using to text. So they're both, you know, generating money. And Kelly was even talking about an interview semi-recently talking about, I didn't even know what Microsoft Excel was. They just told me to type. But over time, and now we obviously have a different relationship with texting. That type of event can blow up on YouTube in a way that not necessarily going to Spotify.  [00:07:54] Tatiana Cirisano: Right. Like, there's an inherent difference in just what you're going to do on these platforms. Like, there's a number of reasons why you might look up a music video on YouTube. Maybe you like the song, maybe there's a celebrity cameo, maybe somebody told you that. It's a crazy, wild video and you're just curious. Like, there's a lot more reasons I think than there are reasons why you would stream a song. So that just by definition kind of opens up a lot of differences in these lists.  [00:08:18] Dan Runcie: The other thing, too, that you mentioned earlier was the decades and how YouTube's list only had one song that I think that was before 1980 and there was only a handful even from the 80s and the 90s as well. And while Spotify had a bit more, I still think it was quite less. Last time I looked at Spotify's list, it was less than 10% of the 300-plus songs that were more than 20 years old. And I have to assume YouTube may be even closer to 94-96%. Part of that, I think, as you mentioned, is music videos, but I also wonder is part of it with Spotify having a bit more of a close link to radio play and just things that were popular on the radio at the time. Like for instance, a song like Goo Goo Doll's, Iris, that was on Spotify's list is not on YouTube's list. I don't necessarily think the song had like a memorable music video necessarily, but I think it's the audio of it, it makes people think of, you know, what was that movie that it was in? I'm trying to remember the movie that it was in. It'll come to me, but there was some 90s movie that was in, I'm drawing a blank on it right now. Oh, City of Angels. So it was in that, and then, but I just don't think that people, like, recognized the music video they would like, it wasn't necessarily this big, like TRL hit the way that like a boy band song was.  [00:09:37] Tatiana Cirisano: I noticed the same thing where looking over Spotify's list, it felt very much like just a list of every radio hit of the past 10 or 20 years that it was really, really tied to that. And I wonder, like, this kind of brings me to another thing that I wanted to talk to you about with this, which is how my sort of theory with another reason that these are different is that Spotify's list is more of an accurate reflection of what the passive majority listens to, whereas YouTube is more of a reflection of what people are actively fans of and actively engaging, which is interesting because that was a question that we asked in our last episode where we were like, how do we measure, like, what are new ways to measure consumption? And I said, well, it'd be interesting if we could actually measure, you know, active consumption versus passive. And now here I'm looking at these two lists, I was like, oh, this is actually potentially an example of that. And the other reason that came to me is because at MIDiA, we've recently done a report on looking at different types of entertainment and how much of consumption is in the background of another activity versus focused. And YouTube, like, people that watch music videos on YouTube are much more likely to be doing that as a focused activity in the foreground rather than something in the background, which makes sense because it's visual, there's, you know, social features to it, et cetera whereas they're a lot more likely to just put on their Spotify music in the background of something else. So I wonder if that's also part of the reason that Spotify seems to have more of a tie to radio and those songs that were just kind of popular for everyone whereas YouTube is more what are the songs and artists and videos that people are like engaging with. [00:11:09] Dan Runcie: That's a good point. It makes me think, well, on the YouTube side, I'm much more likely to listen to a YouTube playlist run, right? Like, I normally don't do that when I'm watching YouTube. I know YouTube has playlist, but I'm more likely to put a Spotify playlist on, which speaks to that. And I know some of the stuff that you've researched and the team has researched on MIDiA as well, is just this whole nature of probably a bit more on the digital stream provider side, but how to measure active versus passive engagement of, or actually listening to a song. And maybe this is a closer way to get a gauge for that because, you know, especially when these artists have these big week sales that'll come out and we'll see the numbers come through, it would be great to know, okay, how many people said yes, I want to listen to this Taylor Swift song from the Midnights album as opposed to people being like, oh, it just happened to be what's dominating today's top hits or if I'm listening to, you know, the number 50 or the top 50 songs in the US. These are the ones that happen to play.  [00:12:11] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, yeah. That makes total sense. And I think the other reason why Spotify's list probably is more tied to radio is because it's a lot more, like the user base is less international than YouTube 'cause that was the biggest difference, looking at the two lists was just how few internet, like non-Western artists there were on Spotify's Billions Club versus YouTube's.  [00:12:36] Dan Runcie: That stuck out too. And I think YouTube as well also had a list of artists that had the most Billion Views Club songs were and artists like Ozuna were high up on that list. I want to say he had at least 10 videos on YouTube that hit a billion. But on Spotify, it's far less. I think J Balvin was another one too, where there was a big discrepancy there. And yeah, I think the fact that YouTube has had much more of a market share and in general listenership in these regions outside of, you know, US and Western Europe as opposed to YouTube. So maybe part of that, where it's a signal of like, okay, this is where Spotify's clearly trying to grow and has been trying to get more share in. So, like, if Spotify achieved its goal, then it likely would have more of that and vice versa. [00:13:28] Tatiana Cirisano: Right. And then it is YouTube's sort of a more accurate representation of, like, what the music landscape of the future looks like in that way where it will be less dominated probably by Western artists. As you know, streaming sort of infiltrates all these other places. And that is so interesting for, like, the fragmentation conversation that we've been having because it means things are just further fractured and, you know, there's going to be lots of artists and songs on these lists that we've probably never heard of. Like, it was so interesting to me because part of the, like, excitement that I had to do this little project of, like, opening the two and comparing them was, I was excited to be surprised. I was like, I want to see what things are on the list that I'm like, I have never heard of that. Or what is that? How did that end up here? And I did not have that moment once looking at Spotify's playlist. But looking at YouTube's, there were so many videos and so many artists that I just had never heard of, and that was exciting to me. So I wonder how much that's a product of YouTube specifically versus that being what will happen inevitably when streaming is more widespread. [00:14:34] Dan Runcie: And were most of the surprises that you had, were most of them from an international perspective, or were there any Western-based music surprises?  [00:14:43] Tatiana Cirisano: That's a good question. There were definitely a handful of Western ones that I can't think of right now, but the majority were probably just artists I'd never heard of or songs, yeah, artists I didn't know anything about that had billions and billions of views. Yeah, I don't know. Let me think about that.  [00:14:57] Dan Runcie: Yeah. While you're thinking about that, one thing that stuck out to me was there were certain artists that I think surprised me both in a way of, oh, I thought there would've been more here, or there were actually a bit less here. One artist is Justin Bieber. So I know that Justin Bieber is very popular, but if you would've asked me who were the biggest artists of the 2010s, I probably would name four names, maybe even five names before I named his name. But if you look at, even if you're just looking at Western artists, the artist that is the one with the most songs on Spotify and the one that I believe has the most songs on YouTube as well, Justin Bieber is in the top three of both of those lists. I believe it's at least nine songs on Spotify and at least maybe 10 or so on YouTube. And there's something about that fandom that I didn't necessarily, I mean, I knew that he was huge. I knew that there were so many songs that were quite popular, especially the album that had, like, Sorry, and Love Yourself. Like, that one was huge, but I thought that there were other artists, like for instance, an artist like Beyoncé or even someone like Taylor Swift, who, I don't believe that Beyoncé had a song on the YouTube list at all, or a song that's really close to that. And at least up to now, I don't think that Taylor Swift has a song on Spotify's Billions List. I think that Blank Space will probably get there eventually, but I don't think she has a song this moment that's on that list. So to see the two of them who I think a lot of people largely think are two of the largest musicians in of the past decade, but to see someone like Bieber just have hit after hit on both of these lists, I was like, wow. [00:16:36] T a t iana Cirisano: That's so interesting, the Justin Bieber conundrum of all of this. Okay, I have a couple of thoughts on that. I think, so he was sort of Made on YouTube, right? That's where he started posting clips. That's where he was discovered. And I think something else that this ties into that I wanted to bring up is how, with YouTube, the artists that reach these Billion Views Club, I think probably are more likely to have sort of built a community on YouTube which Justin Bieber did, and that was kind of like the roots of his fandom. So when I was reading YouTube's, like, blog about the Billion Views Club, and there were a bunch of artists' quotes, and a lot of them had to do with the artist saying, you know, like, YouTube was a place to build a community. And Alan Walker was one of the artists who said that. And he was someone who, he's an electronic music artist who when I was looking at the YouTube Billions Views Club, he came up again and again and I was like, it seemed random to me because he's a great artist. He has a big community of fans, but I just didn't think that he would have billions of views. But he seems to credit the community aspect for that. So I think that could be part of it. But then as soon as you said, oh but he's also one of the top artists on Spotify, I'm like, okay, but that's a completely different story because there's no community building on Spotify. So is it just that the fans are, that obsessed with the music that they're, you know, maybe migrating over and streaming there as well, or are we just misremembering, you know, how big of an impact Justin Bieber had? And then that brought me to thinking about how, I mean I think this relates to Taylor as well, but they both built their fan bases at a time when things were just kind of a lot less congested. So I think it was in many ways, easier to get a billion views or billion streams on something a couple of years ago than it is now, now that people's tastes are so fragmented. So maybe that's also part of the reason why, like, I wonder how many of those streams came from, you know, pre-2015 or something versus from then on. I wonder when they were accumulated. So yeah, that's sort of my rant of thoughts.  [00:18:41] Dan Runcie: That one about Bieber is a good one because I didn't think about that, but I think it's absolutely right. He was doing all those cover songs of all these other artists when he's like a teenager. He's growing the base there. And to the point that you had brought up in an article a couple of months ago, we talked about the last time we're on the podcast, he is in a different category than someone like a Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. Like, when Taylor made Teardrops On My G uitar. I don't even like, that was probably around the same time that YouTube started. Like in some ways her fandom predated so much of what people know as music. And of course, Beyonce became a solo artist from Destiny's Child well before YouTube even started. So I think that's a good point there with some of it. The Spotify thing though is interesting, yeah. I mean, I think those songs did get a lot of radio play as well. Like everything off of that album, that Bieber's album that Sorry came on as well. Like, they got a ton of radio plays. So that ties into the Spotify piece of it, too, and maybe a little bit of misremembering of certain things of, well, and you know, like I'm a little bit older than the custom Bieber demo, so there could be some of it there where they may not hit me in the same circles that, the same way that, you know, someone did with Beyoncé for instance. [00:19:53] T a t iana Cirisano: Yeah. I have another thought related to this that I feel like I'm struggling to articulate, but I'm going to try, which is that on the Spotify list and the YouTube list, I thought there was more overlap when it came to which older artists were on the list than there was when it comes to newer artists. And I wonder if that is also sort of further proof of this fragmentation that's happening because it would make sense that if a decade ago, two decades ago, people kind of had less to choose from to listen to. Everybody kind of has the same favorite artists from those decades that they've listened to enough to reach a billion streams. Yet now that people have more choice and things are fragmented more, their favorite artists and songs today are more varied.  [00:20:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think there's something there because if you think about it, the lists are quite similar. And I think even if you look at YouTube's list, which I think even though YouTube's list is less reliant on radio, the biggest songs they have from the 80s and 90s are still the same songs that people have heard in bars and in stadiums and in TV commercials for decades now. So there's consistency there. Things do start to get a bit segmented to your point of where things are right now. So both of these platforms, in many ways enable the fragmentation of fandom. Their algorithms made it easy for people to have their own circles. So I do think that that piece of it is true. So I think that's a good point.  [00:21:18] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. Okay. I'm glad I could put that into words 'cause it was one of those things where I had this thought and was like, does this make sense?  [00:21:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Oh, yeah.  [00:21:25] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. Fascinating. [00:21:26] Dan Runcie: Another thing too, that stuck out, this stuck out a bit more on Spotify's playlist than others, but how certain songs have shifted from when radio, for instance, was more playing songs that I think people more often wanted to hear in their cars. But Spotify, it's on-demand, it's everywhere. I think, for instance, workout music is something that we've seen a pretty large uptick on with Spotify. A song like Eminem's Till I Collapse, which is in the billions playlist for Spotify, I don't think I heard that song once on the radio. Maybe I'm misremembering things just relative to how big Eminem's hits were in the early 2000s. But that song is one of his most played songs. And I think it's because it's a song that a lot of guys listen to when they want to work out. Maybe it's something that they also will play, like, I don't think they to like LA Fitness necessarily like on the speakers, but I think it's more so of like a, no, let me go listen to this while I try to, you know, set PR on the bench press or whatever. So I feel like there's things like that, also seasonal music, right? Of course, just Mariah Carey and some of the records and accolades that All I Want For Christmas Is You has continued to reach and all of the remixes and versions she's done of that song, like that doesn't happen without streaming, right? [00:22:41] Tatiana Cirisano: I was going to say September was also on there, which, you know, every September everybody starts to sing. That is a seasonal song. So, yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I also noticed that both lists had a lot of, like, upbeat music, like what you're saying, like stuff that people work out to. And I feel like it's for different reasons. Like I'm Spotify, maybe those types of songs dominate because like you're saying, they're the things that people put on in the background of something. Whereas on YouTube, the reason might be because those tend to have more vibrant videos. Like, I feel like more people are likely to watch videos for, you know, an upbeat reggaeton song than like some acoustic, I don't know, Taylor Swift song, even though she's a massive star. Like, overall, you know? And on that note, I don't know if this is just my, you know, anecdotal takeaway, you'd have to, again, like actually go through all the songs and do some data crunching. But I felt like Spotify had actually more varied in terms of like upbeat songs were on there. But also a lot of, Coldplay, a lot of like earlier Ed Sheeran, like, those more like, not so upbeat, more acoustic songs, whereas YouTube barely had any of those because again, I think there may be less likely to be something people watch the video of. I don't know. But that was interesting just how uptempo the two lists were.  [00:23:59] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I would need to go back and check to see if like a song like Coldplay's Yellow. Is that on YouTube's list?  [00:24:08] Tatiana Cirisano: It's on Spotify's, but I don't think it's on Youtube's. [00:24:10] Dan Runcie: And that would speak to that, right? It's a more somber video. I'm pretty sure Chris Martin's head is laying like sideways on the pavement in that video, right, or on the bed, if I remember correctly. So yeah, it's just not going to be as, I think, yes. Like, if you have five minutes, like, this is the thing that I want to be able to get to. So yeah, it's such a fascinating distinction. And I think with it, it's clear that with both of these platforms, the two of them are really trying to compete more and more with each other, with both Spotify trying to get more and more international, YouTube trying to have more and more influence just in terms of the overall revenue that they generate for the industry. So I do want to talk about the two of them as companies distinctly, but before we get there, I think that the international piece and just how revenue is generated for each of these streams or each of these views will be an interesting distinction over time because, especially with Spotify, these streams that the artists are generating don't necessarily get weighted the same in terms of the pro rata and the pools that they get put into and then getting separated. So if one artist has a bunch of streams from a bunch of their fans, but a lot of their fans are in places where the subscriptions cost $2 per month to subscribe to Spotify, or there's a over index of free accounts versus paid, like these numbers don't necessarily reflect that, which is fine. I think we're just trying to get a gauge for what listening looks like. But the revenue may actually look very different for, let's say, thinking about like one of these, you know, 80s or 90s radio hits. The person that's listening to that account may be more likely to be paying 10 or maybe soon $11 a month for Spotify subscription if I'm just thinking about what that consumer may be like and therefore essentially getting more revenue per stream than some of the newer artists that may have a younger aboard international fan base. So that was another point that I thought was interesting. We won't have that data, but just based on inference, I feel like that's a trend in terms of where it's going.  [00:26:14] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, that makes sense. And I also wonder, like, if short form video becomes the more dominant form of consuming video, and the people that are watching music videos on YouTube shift to watching 32nd videos that use music on shorts, like, what will that do to the revenue mix? And it'll also depend on if the way that UGC platforms payout to the music industry changes where it's no longer this, you know, blanket payment for uses and is more per use. I think there's a lot that could get shifted around there. And I wonder if, like, does that mean YouTube is sort of cannibalizing its own, one of its own sources where people that are watching music videos are now going to shorts instead? Or is there an opportunity? Like, I think there's an opportunity for both. But I guess these are just questions that come up in my mind when I think about it.  [00:27:02] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's like in some ways it's similar to when Instagram adds stories, right? You're trying to get a sense, is this additive or is this going to take away, And I think YouTube's goal is that would be additive, but you're bringing up, I think, a valid thing where it's a little different with music and how you're registering streams. And I do think that there's a certain number of people that the better and better that shorts get, there's going to be less desire to go check out the actual video. And if these songs aren't registering, I think at least for a stream or a view, it's 30 seconds of listening needs to be registered, at least to be counted as a stream. Then if that doesn't happen on a short end, you're just getting these clips, then how does that impact the actual artist themselves, right?  [00:27:47] Tatiana Cirisano: No, you put it really well. Like, the better that shorts gets, the more it might actually threaten people going to YouTube to watch the video. [00:27:55] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So many interesting, I think, things to just dive into with this. But I think it's a good point to just talk more broadly about Spotify and YouTube in general, just in terms of where they are, how both of them want the other one. And I think based on these blog posts and based on a number of the letters that, the emails that you'll see from Lyor Cohen when he's describing where things are with YouTube. There's clearly a goal to, you know, establish itself as the leader in the market. And I think the growth has been pretty strong, but of course Spotify, I think still with nearly 200 million paid subscribers is definitely, you know, I think leading on that front. But where do you see this play out in terms of whether or not the trends and clearly what these playlists tell us about the tendencies of these two companies and also where things are going and who we think will be more or less dominant, let's say five years from now? Let's not say 10 years. I think that's a bit too far out, but let's say five years from now.  [00:28:51] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. Well, I've written about this, I've written a couple of blogs about this, but I think that YouTube does have a lot of advantages, especially for just where the music landscape is going. So one is that, in the streaming world, there's so little differentiation, right? All the DSPs kind of offer the same experience, the same catalog, the same price. But YouTube actually has a differentiating factor in that it's an audio-visual platform, and that they also have shorts, and they kind of have this ecosystem of apps that feed into each other. And that's sort of the second advantage, is that ecosystem aspect where, you know, based on our data, new generations of fans are really looking for more ways to actively participate in fandom and, you know, not just listen to a song, but create content around it. And YouTube has that it has this, you know, creator proposition. In many ways, YouTube was the first, arguably the first, you know, creator platform. The first place that you could post video content online and build a career around it. So, fans want this, but also artists need more ways to directly engage with their fans and monetize and actually not just be discovered, but sustain fandom and build communities. And that's the thing that I think so many social platforms lack, is they can help artists get discovered, but it's still really hard for them to connect the dots. So when you have YouTube, if you think about like the journey of, a fan through the ecosystem, you know, maybe they discover a song on shorts, and they can actually just click it and go straight, you know, go straight to the artist's YouTube page where maybe they watch the video that just came out and then they can go to YouTube music and stream the song, and it kind of creates this more frictionless experience. So I think we're already seeing a lot of consumers spend more of their music time on platforms that let them play around with the music, like the TikToks of the world and the shorts of the world. So if you have an ecosystem that combines that with streaming and the ability to just go seamlessly from one to the other, I think that's really powerful. And that's also why, you know, ByteDance launching a streaming service could really change the game. I think ByteDance and YouTube have a lot of the same advantages in that space. So I think YouTube is well positioned for the current era and what both artists are looking for and what fans are looking for, I guess is how I would frame that. [00:31:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think that YouTube's biggest advantage with this is that A, it still is under a much larger company that prints money from search, which is Google, right? So the fact that it in itself is the second largest search engine, largely because of Google, I think that piece of it will serve well. And I think secondly, the fact that when there's so many more things competing for your attention, whatever can make that have less friction, it can make it easier for people to access that platform as we've seen based on the rise of TikTok, I think those platforms do tend to win out in this area where you're ultimately trying to either capture or monetize attention. And the way that streaming is going, even though I know it can be lucrative for artists that own their assets or have favorable terms, it is a bit more of a measure of capturing attention for a lot of artists and being able to essentially market and position themselves out there to share what they have so that they can monetize elsewhere. And I do think that, I know I've talked about this previously, but just Spotify may be in a little bit more of a difficult position just given the fact that its ultimate goal is still to try to get more monetization from its non-music audio, whether it's your podcast or your audiobooks and stuff like that. [00:32:41] Dan Runcie: And I think that is a little bit of a tougher bet relative to YouTube, China. going with shorts and essentially try to compete more directly with TikTok or just other things in general that are making it easier. That said, I still think that Spotify is more strong from a product perspective of actually being able to, you know, ease of use of listening, being able to find and skip to the song, and being able to listen to a song on my phone you know, turning off the screen and then putting it in my pocket. And I know that YouTube does now allow you essentially to do that if you pay for subscription, but I think the friction, at least in the consumer's mind, is a little different than it is with doing that with Spotify, even because you do that with Spotify for free account especially. So I do think that there are some pros and cons there, but to your point, I do think that because YouTube is moving more in the direction of creating less friction for people to use its product and just the fact that it's visual, it's engaged, and to your other point, it's a bit more directly connected to fans being able to actively choose what they want to listen to, like the data and all those things are going to be more impactful and insightful there. [00:33:48] Tatiana Cirisano: Right, Right. So I think artists will kind of go to wherever the fans and the remuneration opportunities are, and I think YouTube is right now, providing more of that than Spotify is. Like, Spotify is a place where you can monetize scale, but you can't monetize niche. And YouTube is an ecosystem where you can monetize both. And I think there's no reason why streaming services in general shouldn't be a place where you can monetize both. But we haven't really seen that happen yet, and I think YouTube is moving in that direction. So I guess I come at this question because of the work that I do from such a perspective of what do the artists and the fans want. But of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that alone isn't going to, you know, make YouTube overtake Spotify. So I guess I'm a little bit biased just based on the work that I do.  [00:34:38] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I could see that. Because there's just so many other, there's just so many factors at play here. It's such a dominant position and at the end of the day, nearly 200 million people in the world are paying for the service and that is much higher than a lot of these other services. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out though. I feel like to some of the points you brought up earlier. Just going back to the Billions Club, if we had this conversation two years from now, I'd be interested to see, one, which old songs creep back up and which songs that have come up recently end up rising up and hitting those places, and does it line up with a lot of the points that we brought up here? So I'm excited to see what that looks like.  [00:35:15] Tatiana Cirisano: No, me too. And also what the pace will be like? Will there be just way more songs that have hit a billion streams in a shorter amount of time, or will the opposite trend happen because of fragmentation? Like, I'm not, I'm not really sure. So yeah, as always, excited to see definitely what comes next.  [00:35:30] Dan Runcie: Well, Tati, this is great. Thanks for coming to share these insights. And I think now I got to go back and count how many Crazy Frog videos there were on YouTube's list because when I saw that, I'm glad you brought that up. I was just like, my goodness, I forgot all about this trend.  [00:35:45] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, at least in that ratio, you know, we have confirmed YouTube wins.  [00:35:49] Dan Runcie: All right. Before we let you go, what do you have coming down the pipeline? Are there any upcoming research or any recent things that you've put out that listeners should keep an eye out for? [00:35:58] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, I would say coming up one of my favorite things that we do at MIDiA Research is our predictions report where every year, at the end of the year, we put out predictions for the coming year. And we also rate ourselves in terms of how much we got right from the past year. I believe our success rate is somewhere above 80%. [00:36:16] Dan Runcie: That's legit.  [00:36:17] Tatiana Cirisano: That's great. But yeah, so we always do I believe we always do a free webinar on that. It was free last year. So look out for that because it's a great chance to interact with us even if you're not a client. And it's a lot of fun.  [00:36:30] Dan Runcie: Awesome, we'll look out for that and, yeah. [00:36:33] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. [00:36:33] Dan Runcie: We'll have to see. I'm curious about what the hit rate will be this year. So definitely let us know what the success rate is... [00:36:39] Tatiana Cirisano: We will. [00:36:40] Dan Runcie: from the ones you made last year, heading into this year.  [00:36:42] Tatiana Cirisano: Awesome. Thanks, Dan.  [00:36:43] Dan Runcie: Awesome. Well, thank you. This is great.  [00:36:45] Dan Runcie: All right. Hope you enjoyed that first part with Tati breaking down the Billions Clubs. Here's my chat with Glenn Peoples. [00:36:53] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have Glenn Peoples with us who is from Billboard, and he just released this Global Music Index, which has stated that music stocks are down 44% this year, twice as much as the market. And Glenn, it'd be great to start here. What's going on? Why are socks down in the music industry? [00:37:13] Glenn Peoples: Hey, thanks for having me. Well, stocks are down in general. So it's not that just music that's having a tough time at the stock market. You know, a big component of the Global Music Index, which I created for Billboard is Spotify. And Spotify has had a tough year, just like Netflix has had a tough year. There's, I think, enthusiasm for streaming stocks was high at the beginning of the pandemic and dropped quite a bit since then. And investors are not looking at growth so much as looking at margins, looking at profits, and so they're expecting a lot more from streaming services right now. So it's a tough time to be a streaming service, whether you're Netflix, whether you're Spotify. You could say, well, the investors got carried away. They were overvalued. Yeah, maybe so. It's just been a tough year for streaming services and when Spotify is that big of a component of the index, it's down, well, as of yesterday, it's down 60% for the year. And so that's a lot of market cap that's gone and that's dragging down the index. And that's the short version.  [00:38:17] Dan Runcie: Right. So of course, it's a value-based index. Market cap is what defines it. And just so listeners know, how big of a factor is Spotify? Like, how much is their stock and their market cap weighted in terms of the overall index? [00:38:33] Glenn Peoples: I would say it's probably, again, this is just ballpark. It's probably about 15% of the value of the index. It was a lot more obviously. I would say right now at its current price, it's 10 to 15%. Universal Music Group is the biggest component of the index, and there's some other companies just a handful that really stand out above everybody else. Live Nation, Warner Music Group, Sirius XM are some of the big ones.  [00:39:02] Dan Runcie: The thing that stuck out to me about it is that, of course, Spotify stock is a huge piece of it, but even if you were to take out Spotify, the non-Spotify stocks in that index still are down more than the overall market has been this past year. So it also makes me think that there may be something going on that's a bit deeper than just streaming.  [00:39:23] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, it's not just streaming. You know, a lot of music companies had a great 2021 and I think that they just had further to fall. So there were some really high valuations and it just sets these companies up for a pretty big fall when investor sentiment turns and the market turns. And ever since the Fed announced in, I believe, December, that it was going to start raising interest rates. You know, stocks have started to fall and Spotify definitely started to fall then. And it's been a long, what is that, roughly 10 months since then. Things have calmed down a bit, but stocks are, boy, they're really having a tough time. It's really volatile a lot there. I think there's two ways to look at it. One is what's the value of the stock? What's the value of the company as valued by investors? And what's the potential of the company based on the company itself and the intellectual property it has? And those two don't always line up. You know, Spotify I still think is a very good company. I think it has a lot of work to do, but it's growing at a good clip and I think they have good people there. But when you are a streaming stock and you're facing really a once-in-a-generation kind of environment with very bad inflation you know, crazy, I was about to say unemployment, but unemployment is not that bad. It's just a very strange time in the market and a very strange macroeconomic climate. And you're seeing good companies have very difficult times with their stock prices. You know, Universal Music Group is down. But the market is down overall and Universal's not going to escape the just general downturn of the market. That's saying something because Universal is the biggest music company out there holding up market share very well has a big share of the top 10, any given time, big artists. But you can't correlate stock market performance with company performance just perfectly. It's a very strange time in the macroeconomic climate right now.  [00:41:23] Dan Runcie: Yeah. The interesting thing with the major record label stocks, and even some of these other companies that, yeah, even though they may not be streaming services themselves, when streaming makes up such a high percentage of the overall revenue for this entire industry, then Spotify's stock is in many ways going to be at least somewhat correlated to what we see with Universal given the fact that these companies have equity in each other, they're so dependent on each other, so a lot of that is given. You mentioned Live Nation earlier, and I think that their stock is interesting, too, because even though it isn't directly tied to streaming, that stock had hit record highs in the middle of the pandemic when there were no shows going on. So that just spoke to how much of a disconnect there was if you looked at how the company was actually doing in 2020 and even in 2021 when there were nowhere near as many shows as they had had in 2019, but they now are actually being able to realize more of that revenue. But the stock has adjusted in a lot of ways since. So there is a bit of this disconnect. I think there was just a good amount of excitement as well about what's happening in music as an investment class. Specifically, you looked at all of the catalog sales and the booms that happen thanks to the low-interest rates, and they're no longer low anymore. So you're also seeing that play a factor in, and you've also heard some of the acquirers of those catalogs expressing a bit of disappointment that the returns aren't quite what they thought the returns were going to be as well. So some of those things, I think, Brought some of the temperament and a lot of the companies that are in your index down to, I don't want to say necessarily down to earth, because I think there's still plenty of room for growth for a lot of them, but it's clear that we've moved past that era of the pandemic when things were just high for the pure speculation of where it could be in a few years. [00:43:15] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, I think the honeymoon is over for a lot of music stocks. You know, music as an asset class was really attractive. And, you know, look, just the fact that Universal is public and Warner is public once again, and there are numerous streaming services from Tencent Music and Cloud Music in China to Anghami and Spotify and Deezer. There's a lot of music companies that are publicly traded right now and that says a lot about music as an asset, as a segment, set aside the problems it's had in the last year. So music companies had a great 2020 and 2021, and it's been downhill since then. But the fact that there are a lot of publicly traded music companies right now, and so much investor interest in music catalogs like you mentioned, I think says a lot about music as an asset class, music as an investment in general. Look, five years ago, how many publicly traded music companies were there? I mean, Spotify has been public for about five years. Pandora was before it was bought by Sirius. You know, but you didn't have Tencent, you didn't have Cloud Music, you didn't have Anghami, you didn't have Deezer, you didn't have Reservoir Media, or Believe. Warner was private. Universal was private. So the fact that Wall Street has taken a liking to music, I think says a lot despite what the stock prices say right now.  [00:44:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I agree. The fact that this wasn't even possible, just shows what's happened. And a lot of companies, even outside of music, are starting to have money at least level back off now that the pandemic is over, now that the quarantine highs for a lot of these stocks are over. I'm interested to see where did things go from here, because I still believe that there's a ton of potential in each of these companies if the expectations and if the investors expectations of the market are where they need to be. I still think that music is a hot and a popular asset class, especially for investors. But is it 30 x value? Is it 30 x multiples for some of these catalogs that just bring 'em to certain valuations, or does it need to be more level? Because I do think that there's still plenty of value if those multiples and a lot of those things are where they should be. And even thinking about whether it's live entertainment or streaming in general, I think there's still plenty of room for growth. There's still a lot of opportunities there, but it's just being able to get a clear idea on, what is the actual TAM? What is the actual total addressable market for these areas? And I think if anything, you saw that challenge happen with a lot of the discourse around Netflix and what the future is there, you started to saw things drop right around they had, you know, around 220 million subscribers. I think Spotify was likely asking similar questions, too, and I still think there's growth, you know, for the right price there's always going to be something, but what that price would be and how many people are willing to pay for it, knowing that, of course, if it's a paid product, you're not going to hit all 8 billion people in the world. But there is some actual number out there. So I think the more clarity that there is on that, and of course that's part of the game to figure that out, but the closer that you can get to what that actually is, the more that investors can make sound decisions.  [00:46:25] Glenn Peoples: Yeah. You know, as we're talking now, there's a lot going on. We're a couple of hours away from Spotify releasing third-quarter earnings, which will, I'm not sure how much that'll say, look, that's backward-looking, but the company will take the opportunity to talk about a lot of things investors and analysts are curious about. Yesterday Apple announced it was raising prices for Apple Music and Apple TV Plus, and the Apple bundle. And YouTube premium prices went up as well, I believe, for the family plan only. And what do we see today? What we see Universal shares went up almost 12% and closed. They're trading the Netherlands, so that's already closed. In the middle of the day, Warner Music was up 7% to 8% at its best. Believe was up. Hipgnosis shares were up about, and those closed, that trades in London. That closed up about 8% I think. So investors, I think, get the news that they've really been waiting for, that prices are finally going to go up. You know, Netflix has raised prices. Pricing in streaming video on demand is a lot more flexible than it is for music and music prices have barely budged in over a decade, and executives have been saying for months and for years that prices will go up. But they haven't.  [00:47:45] Dan Runcie: Why do think it took this long?  [00:47:47] Glenn Peoples: Well, I think, companies were much more concerned about growing the market than maximizing revenue per customer. Is it more important to get the customer in the door or to charge more per customers is the question, and I think that they've been much more concerned about building the customer base and building relationships. And then at some point, it's a timing issue. When do you raise price? When can you do it without turning people off? And I think what we see these days with inflation is what it is, is companies might feel a little more emboldened to just raise price and think they can get away with it. Name one price that's not up in the last year. Except music streaming, it seems like everything else is up. And so somebody had to be, you know, first to do it and YouTube and Apple did it, which could embolden Spotify to do it finally. And I think my impression of Universal's shares going up almost 12% is that they think Spotify's going to raise prices as well. That doesn't seem like a bump just from Apple. That seems like a bump from broad price increases across the board. [00:48:51] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I would agree. I think that it's going to happen and the reason why I think it probably hasn't happened until this point I was talking to Will Page about this, who is a former chief economist at Spotify. And his perspective on it was that the difference, and it was mine as well, the difference between why a company like Netflix would continue to increase prices but Spotify hasn't a bit in line with the type of content that you're getting. In a lot of ways, Spotify and Apple are offering a lot of the same thing. Sure. I know Spotify has its podcasting, Apple has its podcasting and non-music audio, and we'll talk about that in a second. But I think when they're all offering the same thing, then there's a bit more pressure to try to offer price discounts and bundles and stuff like that as opposed to Netflix or some of those companies offering differentiated content. So you're more buying into something that you're going to get on Netflix that you can't get on Hulu or on Disney Plus, or on HBO Max or one of the other services. So I feel like there's a factor of it there. And I remember a few years ago there was some tests about it and some discussions where in Europe they were exploring what. 12.99 would look like, or maybe it was 13.99. But I didn't hear anything necessarily come definitive from that. Maybe it was 11.99, but there was some price increase that they were exploring in Europe. So it feels like it's inevitable that Spotify will join in and yeah, if your price is going to increase 10%, then your stock price will likely increase around 10% as well. [00:50:22] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, that makes sense. Most people look at how much revenue a company takes in every month. ARPU, average revenue per user, Spotify considers a metric lifetime value. And so it's not focused solely on price. Price plays into lifetime value, but so does churn rate, and the family plan is something that is reduced churn rate. As churn goes down, lifetime value goes up. I mean, for a subscription business, what you don't want are people coming in and out and churning in and churning out and taking time off or just leaving the subscription service for good. So if you cut down churn rate, the value goes up, and that's more value to creators. That's more value to publishers, to record labels, and to Spotify without raising price. If you can work on lifetime value without having to raise price, that might be the low-hanging fruit that you do in the meantime before you consider raising prices. And now it appears like everybody's to the point where they say, okay, now we can raise prices. [00:51:22] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. I think the fact that we're here says a lot. So we'll continue to see, and I'm sure that the next price increase after this probably won't take this long if this is the one that got us here. The thing with Spotify though, is I'm sure we'll see what investors feel more broadly about the company's strategy because non-music, audio and podcasting specifically has been part of its big bet on how it can have better margins, how it can just essentially make more money and have something that they can continue to grow. But there's been a lot of pushback. There's been a lot of canceled shows and studios, and some of that's standard for the industry. But some of it also feels like there's more and more question marks on, okay, they've spent billions on this. Is this going to work? Is this going to take off the way that they expect it to? What's your current take on the future outlook for Spotify's non-music audio strategy?  [00:52:16] Glenn Peoples: I think it's a good strategy. You build up a platform starting with music. You attract hundreds of thousands of users and then you turn it into an audio platform that's not just music and you introduce spoken word content. I think it's going to take quite a few years. So I think expecting changes, you know, we're only two years into some of their acquisitions for podcast studios and for platforms such as Megaphone. I know investors might not want to wait five years, but it's going to take a while. And, you know, long-term Spotify thinks that they can get some pretty good margins out of podcasts, margins that exceed what they get from music. They think that they can get the math when I look at audiobook margins, they bought an audiobook distributor called Findaway. And I think as retailer and distributor, Spotify gets about 60% of sales. Audiobook download margins are pretty good and that's about double what they're going to get for music. How much business is out there for audiobooks? Yeah, I mean, right now probably not that much, but over time I'm sure they can build it into something much more considerable. And, you know, if it's 60% gross margin, that's really good. You're not going to get that in music. You can build a platform based on music, but then eventually you got to go looking elsewhere for margins. And so I think it can work out for Spotify, it's just going to take a while and some people might not have much patience. I get that. But it's going to take a while.  [00:53:41] Dan Runcie: It's something I've thought a lot about because I understand that podcasting itself is something where the audience takes time to build. You want to be able to see these shows grow over time. But I also think that so much of their biggest growth has come from acquiring shows that are already popular. And I know they've made big acquisitions, whether as with Gimlet or with The Ringer, or they have the exclusive deal with, or the licensing deal with Joe Rogan. But how many others of those are out there that they haven't necessarily had? Are there going to be more in-house ones that can build up? Because I feel like one of the challenges I've seen with the strategy is that they've had a lot of money spent on getting these big-name celebrities to then have shows where they have other big-name celebrities as guests and things like that. And a lot of that is antithetical to what's made so much of podcasting be effective for a lot of folks. And sometimes it works well, but a lot of times it doesn't. And it's content. You do have to make some bets, but I'm interested to see how many more of those wins that are going to be out there for them, because that's the piece that at least gives you some bump 'cause at least we've seen the numbers and successes from the popular acquisitions, the shows that they've had. It's the in-house development where I think by nature there is a natural, whether it's just the likelihood of success of you're starting anything new, not everything is going to take off, but the real success metric will be, okay, two, three years from now, we're there Spotify originals that are at the top of the charts and are creating and demanding that audience the same way that some of these other shows, whether it's outside of the network or some of the ones that they've acquired are able to do? [00:55:23] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, it looks to me like they have kind of a three-prong attack where they spend mightily for somebody like Joe Rogan and that's not going to last forever. That licensing deal will be up, I don't know, maybe next year. And what do they renew or do they go spend a lot of money on somebody else? I mean, Joe Rogan brings 'em a lot of a lot of listeners I'd wager. So they have a very small number of really big shows, and then they have a lot of in-house shows with Parcast, The Ringer, Gimlet, and they can go acquire some other ones. And then they have a lot of DIY stuff. And then you get into the long tail. And this is where I think there's a lot of potential to monetize listening just like there would be in music. They bought a platform called Anchor. That's a podcast creation and distribution. Megaphone rather, is more the distribution tool. And so they have the infrastructure in place to let people create shows, distribute shows, and now they can monetize those shows. Now, do advertisers want to monetize or advertise against, you know, podcasts nobody's heard of. Not sure exactly how that's going to work. You might be not getting good advertising dollars on some of the shows, but to the extent that you can monetize the long tail podcast, Spotify is building that. And if anybody can do it, it looks like they could. So it's not about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan might have been something just to get his podcast business off the ground, a very expensive way to get his podcast business off the ground and get it noticed by listeners and noticed by advertisers. And they might not, you know, have another Rogan after that deals up. But there's a lot of stuff out there to acquire. You know, Spotify, you take a look at the top 50 or a hundred shows. Spotify is Rogan and Call Her Daddy and maybe one other one. But there's a lot of stuff out there that they could go after. But again, this is kind of the long tail and maybe the midtier stuff that would be in-house productions. I think that really is the test of how they're going to do in podcasting at scale how can they monetize the long tail of podcast?  [00:57:20] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think the other thing that's an advantage for them is the advertising business and being able to not just offer, but sell better data to advertisers on who's actually listening to podcasts because outside of Spotify, using podcasts downloads, or relying on some of these third-party tools to be able to tell you how well a show's actually doing is not the best way to actually determine if people are listening. There's so many shows out there that now have ghost downloads from people that we're downloading and subscribing to these shows back in 2014, 2015, 2016, that are no longer listening to those shows, but because of the metric of downloads, It's essentially an RSS feed. They don't know if you and I are actually listening to a show versus it actually being downloaded. I'm talking about more from Apple Podcasts and from other places outside of Spotify itself. Spotify's advantage is the fact that it can provide data just as precise is what it does in streaming, essentially. Are these people listening for at least 30 seconds? Are they going and listening to the middle? And I know some of this exists with Chartable and some of these other tools, but that's the advantage that Spotify has. So if you can essentially have that, offer that to your advertisers and then say, hey, this is the better data to base it on, not self-reported podcast downloads, which is a very tough metric to use if you're trying to base that purely on advertising. This is how you can ensure that you're reaching the right people. And I do think if you have enough of a catalog there and you're able to monetize enough, then in principle, you could then pull the advertisers yourself. And if you pull them, then I think that helps also attract the shows. And you can become not just the dominant platform, but the dominant platform that can monetize as well. [00:59:08] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, well see. You have a lot of insight. You're a podcaster, so you have a lot of insight into what Spotify's doing. As a podcaster, how is the platform for you? Do you get a lot of listeners from Spotify?  [00:59:18] Dan Runcie: There's other platforms that I still get more listeners for. Like, I still get more from Apple Podcasts, I would say. But it's up there though. It's interesting because even though I get more listeners from Apple Podcast, if I put a link in my newsletter that has the Apple Podcast link or the Spotify link of where to listen, more people click on the Spotify link. So that also makes me think, okay, one of these is measuring what's already been there, people that could have been listened to my podcast since 2019 to prove my point when I started it, versus what's capturing things now. And I think as we're just seeing Spotify continue to grow and we're seeing more and more stats of how, I forget the exact metric, but them becoming one of the more popular places for listeners to listen to a podcast. The data that I'm seeing on my side, even though I haven't precisely calculated it, more so a gut check of when I'm checking my newsletter analytics, I'm like, okay, I can see where this is trending. [01:00:12] Glenn Peoples: I think it helps Spotify that they're just an innovative company that is always improving the product, right? So, you know, who knows what they'll end up doing with podcast. They could revolutionize how we listening to it.  [01:00:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah. The other thing, too, that made me think of it, you mentioned audiobooks earlier, and I feel like there's an opportunity for innovation there because audiobooks themselves, I think to date have in many ways just been looked at as another channel that's a companion to people either buying a physical book or downloading something on a tablet to read. But how can the art of creating an audio podcast feel similar to these high-production podcasts that we hear that sound like they are, you know, made by multiple people in a studio show? I think Malcolm Gladwell did something like this with his most recent book the Think Like Strangers, I forget the exact name, but something like Strangers where it sounded like his podcast does. You know, it's high produced, you can get a bit more variety. It's not just some voice actor that they paid, you know, some flat fee for, and then that's just what's uploaded as the audiobook. So if you're able to create that as its own unique experience, I think that there's an opportunity there with audiobooks. So I'm interested to see if the art and the content itself around those will continue to improve. [01:01:31] Glenn Peoples: I would love a company like Spotify to breathe some life into audiobooks. I used to do a lot more audiobooks than I used to. And you know, what's changed? I think what's changed is just the podcast platforms that are available that make it easier to listen to and find podcasts. I'm not much of an audiobook buyer anymore. But I would say that my audiobook listening has been cannibalized by podcast.  [01:01:54] Dan Runcie: And I think some of that, too, like if it's in the same app, it's something that you're already using. I feel like there's an opportunity there because although it's been a while since I've used the Audible app, I have to imagine that the Spotify app is much less friction to be able to be like, I want to listen to this. Boom, here, let me click and listen to the thing. And it's a game of, yeah, how can you make it as easy as possible for the consumer. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see how that space develops. The last topic I want to chat about though before we end things is TikTok. I know you've written about this recently. TikTok has been trying to get into a number of areas, specifically streaming, and I'd be curious to hear your take on them, not just their potential in streaming, but what their strategy is overall in music and how you see them working, either not just alongside, but also competing with not just the streaming services, but other companies that are part of this, that are part of this chain of the, you know, music ecosystem. [01:02:53] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, I think TikTok is fascinating as far as TikTok launching a streaming service. I mean, that makes perfect sense. I mean, why would you not? TikTok sends a lot of traffic to streaming services. If you could keep people on the platform, or at least on an app from the same company, rather than sending them off to Apple Music or YouTube or Spotify after they see a video on TikTok, I think that's probably a better, I would say, it's a better listener experience. But you know, what we've seen over the years is people use the apps they want to use. You can't force-feed people an app. You can stick it on a device. It doesn't mean they're going to use it. People will use what they want to use and TikTok would have to build a pretty amazing music streaming platform for people to use it. And I guess the question is could they grow the market rather than just take customers away from the Spotifys and Apple Musics in the YouTubes? Yeah, I guess so. There's always that, but I always think of it as more of a zero-sum game that TikTok would be taking business away from others. On paper it makes perfect sense. You know, Billboard's done a really good reporting, had some really good articles about the impact TikTok has had on the business. You know, most recently there was an article about how it's just kind of, thrown A&R executives' lives into disarray because it's, it's very hard to capitalize on TikTok success, which everybody wants. It's much more random than sending something to streaming services or sending something to radio and promoting it. It's much more grassroots and not so top-down. So it's unpredictable on what's going to hit. And that's not a good way to promote music, not knowing what people are going to end up listening to, so it makes labels' lives difficult in that aspect. On the other hand, I think labels are probably pretty happy that there's an app out there that customers want to spend a lot of time with and potentially spend money on, and that they are licensing music too and they'll get royalties from. So, you know, labels don't build these platforms themselves. They have to count on other companies to do that. And I read articles every now and then that says that TikTok is going to be the death of labels. Now labels have to partner with these platforms. That's what they do. They don't build the platforms themselves. And TikTok has a great platform. And so it's another one to work with. The question is, is it ultimately good for the labels? Yeah, maybe they honestly don't have a choice. They have to work with TikTok. They have to go where the consumers are. But I think it's ultimately probably a net win even though it's, really thrown things into disarray and changed how people discover music, and it's just not as simple a path as it used to be in promoting music and get people to listen to it. [01:05:28] Dan Runcie: You brought up a few things that I want to circle back on because I think they're important to highlight. One, if you look TikTok's overall strategy, I agree this is something that they should naturally do. If you're the person that has the top of the funnel, then you would want to identify ways that you could do it yourself instead of having another app that is relying on yours to capture that same traffic and to capture that same business opportunity. That said, does that mean that you will succeed? Not necessarily. I think as we both understand and see, it takes a lot to have a platform that gets to where Apple Music has gotten to, to get to where Spotify's gotten to, even where Amazon Music and some of these other digital streaming providers have gotten to. It takes a considerable amount of time to get there. So being able to do that effectively and being able to necessarily grow the market and do that, I think it's tough. Are there regions that TikTok is going to reach that Spotify and Apple have not already spent millions of dollars trying to reach? Probably not, which does turn it into a bit of a zero-sum game. And then are you going to be able to try to offer it at a different cost? Are you going to try to do any of these things that really make it stand out? Not necessarily. And I think one of the bigger challenges, too, is just the consumer behavior that someone has when they're going into TikTok. It has grown as fast as it has because it's an app that doesn't require much active engagement. You can sit there and passively scroll through everything. It's a very passive entertaining experience. Streaming is not that. You have to go and find who you want to listen to. Even if you want to go check out the latest album, you have to go type in that person's name unless they're the biggest star in the world, and they may happen to be on the app when you open it. You got to type in the person's name to figure that out. So shifting that consumer mindset, I think is tough if that's what they're used to in your app. So I think that piece of it is going to be a bit of a challenge for them. And I think in general, we're kind of seeing TikTok adopt a bit of that Facebook strategy, where Facebook is a company that has tried to do any and everything because they're like, hey, we have billions of users. We are the biggest platform in the world. Let's try to do all these things. And more likely than not, Facebook doesn't succeed at a lot of these things. It's more likely to succeed at the things that are naturally aligned with why someone would want to be on Facebook to begin with, and whether it's Facebook's dating services or any of these other things that just didn't necessarily take off the way it could, I think that there could be, you know, some similar type of risk if you're thinking about TikTok. Even though it is aligned with music, even though there's a lot of these things, the mindset that a consumer has when they are going into a streaming service that requires on-demand activity is very different than a passive social media experience. [01:08:13] Glenn Peoples: Yeah, I think those are really good points. There's no guarantee that TikTok is going to make a winning music subscription service if that's what it chose to do. It's just not that easy. I mean, there are companies with big head starts who have built really good apps and have a lot of momentum. And you know, the thing that I've noticed over the years with subscription services and music streaming, in general, is that you have to have an excellent product. Having a pretty good product just doesn't cut it anymore. And there are a lot of music services that have been pretty good that have just gone out of business 'cause pretty good doesn't do it. With ByteDance and with TikTok, you have to assume that they could put together pretty good service. I would bet, better than average. And can they do better than that? Possibly. And what could they do differently that would transform it? And maybe that's the question. Do they need to do a transformative subscription service? Or can they just do something that's a little more traditional and not try to build a new mousetrap? Maybe that's the better option. You know, I'm not sure, but I think, people shouldn't expect that TikTok is just going to clean up the competition because they have a very popular short-form video app. That's just a different experience than what they would be getting into.  [01:09:22] Dan Runcie: Agreed. Streaming is a very different game. It'd be interesting to see how it plays out. But Glenn, before we wrap things up and let you go, how do you think the Global Music Index that you created, how do you think things will look at 2023? What's your take on how you think certain things will play out in the index? [01:09:39] Glenn Peoples: There's so much negative forecast out there for 2023. There's a lot of economic experts saying that there's going to be a recession in 2023. You know, normally I would say, boy, probably pretty good. You know, the time to buy a stock is not when it's high. It's time to buy is when it's low. So right now the index is starting from would be starting year at a pretty low place. It's just that they're pretty dark clouds on 2023. It's really hard to say how it's going to play out. There's just a lot of really bad expectations for next year. So I think that as far as these stocks have fallen, they're not out of the woods yet. And I don't think we can assume that they're going to turn around and start growing next year. But if you look at 2022 as kind of a correction to maybe some stocks that were overvalued, then they're starting in a better place. [01:10:27] Dan Runcie: That's true. Maybe the overvaluation may have some, or the overvaluation of the overcorrection rather could lead things off to a good start. So it'll be exciting to see for sure. And we'll definitely be keeping an eye on the index itself. Once again, good job creating that. I think a lot of people were looking for a way to just capture everything that's going in the industry. So it'll be good to continue tracking it. And Glenn, thanks for coming on. It was great to touch base on so many important topics, and I'm sure we can have a similar conversation like this soon.  [01:10:54] Glenn Peoples: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.  [01:10:56] Dan Runcie: Thank you. [01:10:59] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Megan Holston-Alexander is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund. It’s the first VC fund that raised money exclusively from Black leaders — from entertainment to sports to business. The fund co-invests with a16z’s other funds and has raised more than $60 million across its three funds to date. The overarching purpose of CLF is to create generational wealth opportunities for Black communities. It’s a two-pronged approach. The first is getting Black dollars directly on the cap tables of high-potential startup companies. And the second is creating a pipeline for more Black talent at early-stage companies.  Megan joined me on the show on the heels of hosting the first-ever Cultural Leadership Summit and announcing CLF III before then. Here’s everything we covered during our conversation: [2:39] Takeaways from the Cultural Leadership Summit [5:19] Building despite economic uncertainties  [7:36] High-worth individuals also affected by macro economy  [9:05] How has the Cultural Leadership Fund evolved? [14:54] Difference between entertainment and executive LP’s [17:16] Web3’s knowledge imbalance   [19:16] Megan’s interest in DAO’s [20:58] Will CLF’s investment model change? [22:42] How CLF used relationships and trust-building to scale its operation  [28:35] Megan’s vetting process with LP’s [36:02] How VC industry at-large can create more opportunities for black founders and talent  [39:15] Has the Bay Area lost its monopoly on tech?  [44:59] What CLF is focusing on in 2023 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Megan Holston-Alexander, @meghalexander   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a   Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Megan Holston Alexander: What we hadn't considered on the executive side is, while the athletes and our kind of entertainers can partner on different things or, like, help them go into new markets, when it came down to, like, core operations or how you should run on your board, or how to think about hiring X, Y, and Z, our black executives, like, hold that information, like, in the palm of their hands. These are people who've been, you know, operators for 20 or 30 years, and so they brought kind of an additional level of skill and kind of insight to bolster what our other LPs on the more kind of athlete or entertainment side were doing.   [00:00:40] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:01:01] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Megan Holston Alexander. She's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, currently leading its Cultural Leadership Fund. And to date, this fund has raised over 60 million, invested in over 300 Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies, and has brought over a hundred black leaders into this space. I'm talking to Megan right after the Cultural Leadership Fund hosted its first-ever in-person summit. It was a pleasure to attend that summit myself and meet so many of the people that are friends of the fund, LPs of the fund, and really make it what it is. So this conversation, we talked a little bit about what it was like bringing that event together, especially after the pandemic. We also talked about how events like that fit within the fund's overall strategy and how that strategy has evolved over the past few years. For a little bit of background, the LPs in the Cultural Leadership Fund are all black, and it is one of the first funds to have ever done that in the VC space, and specifically, to date, a lot of the investors had been athletes and entertainers, but Megan talked a little bit about how they've expanded to bring on more black executives, what that looks like, and how that ultimately helps support the goal of the fund even more. One of the fund's other goals is to increase the amount of black talent and interest in tech. So we talk about what some of the opportunities are, what some of the challenges are, and what the VC community can do to help improve this even more. Great conversation, so many insightful points that Megan shared. I enjoyed this conversation and I know you will too, especially if you are an investor or you're a founder yourself. Here's my chat with Megan.  [00:02:39] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have Megan Holston Alexander from Andreessen Horowitz Culture Leadership Fund, and first, I got to say congratulations on an amazing summit. It was a great event to be a part of and to attend. How does it feel for you now being on the heels of that and just seeing the impact of everything?  [00:02:57] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah, so thank you so much for coming. It means so much that people would be interested enough and engaged enough to spend time with us away from their, you know, everyday grind. But we're really pleased with how it turned out. We were motivated because so many of our LPs had said to us, we want to get together, we want to meet each other, we want to meet the founders, we want to meet the investment team. So as an LP and kind of partner summit, I think it had the intended effect and it seemed like people really enjoyed their time, but also learned a ton. So I could not be happier. I will say I was telling myself that after it was over, I was going to have so much time to, like, get so much other stuff done, but, like, it just never, it never stopped. So, we were really proud of what we were able to put on. [00:03:38] Dan Runcie: 'Cause I'm sure an event like that makes you think about what else you could do, right? I'm sure you had a bunch of people buzzing with ideas on what other in-person events or what other things could look like, too.  [00:03:48] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. And that's always the hope, right? We bring people into a room together in hopes that, like, we can help some serendipity happen. So many people in our network work on similar things or adjacent things or things that would have a really nice kind of partnership together. And so anytime we get to make those introductions, our hope is that people will be buzzing after, and have ideas for events and programs and partnerships. So we'll see what comes out of it.  [00:04:12] Dan Runcie: And I imagine that a lot of this probably had been in the plans for a while. It was just a matter of timing. So much of CLFs rise and growth had happened during the pandemic as well. And it was just a matter of, okay, when can you bring people together safely to make something like this happen?  [00:04:28] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. And when I say it was three years in the making. I am not kidding, because we were planning actually to host the first summit in 2020. So we were in process of like, you know, picking out venues and cities and where we wanted to be. And then, like, so many people when the pandemic hit that spring, it just kind of cleared everybody's calendars. And so it's nice to know that 2 and a half years after the original that the motive was still the same and the demand for what we were building was still the same that we got to put it on, I think, even better than we could have hoped in 2020. [00:05:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I agree. And then looking at, now, you, of course, get to have it on the tail end of your announcement for fund three. You've now raised over $60 million for this fund. What was it like raising in this climate though, just given where things are with the market and how things have been so far in 2022?  [00:05:19] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah, totally. Totally. So when it comes to like the market environment, you just never know what's going to happen and unintentionally, you know, I actually got to raise ahead of kind of the market changing earlier in the spring. And that was actually because I was expecting and planning to be a new mom. And the firm was really supportive of that. And they said, okay, kind of up to you. Do you want to do it before mat leaves? Do you want to wait until the fall when you come back? And me being like, I don't want to think about this while I'm trying to raise a baby. I was like, Let's knock it out early. So lucky enough, you know, I was able to close that out before people really started tightening their belts. But, you know, as a firm, we really believe that, you know, no matter what the economy looks like, what the macro, you know, face of the world looks like, builders are always building. And even more so, during times when they can be home and spend time thinking about the problems that they want to solve. And so our hope is that, you know, even in moments like that, we can still really rely on founders to keep, you know, pushing great, great companies out.  [00:06:17] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I like to think of these moments as well as when you do start to filter out some of the companies or ideas that maybe were a bit more fleeting, and you can focus on the real things happening, you look at the last economic downturn that we had, and all of the companies that came from that timeframe, too. So I feel like the call to action for so many fund managers like yourself, you mentioned the LPs or even to others is, like you just said, people are still building, and if anything, it's the real companies that are going to come out of this timeframe. [00:06:46] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. And then a piece that I would add onto that is in these moments, while we know that like great companies will be built, we don't truly know what they are because people do build for the time and you don't know what kind of instances will be, like, permanent behavior changes or what things are like, just for now, it seems like it's a, you know, a really good idea, but in six months people won't behave the same way. And so the hope is that you just always try to lean in the things that you think will have kind of staying power. But you just try to do risk reduction.  [00:07:15] Dan Runcie: Right, Right. And I assume, too, from a fundraising perspective with you and this fund specifically, because a lot of the LPs are high net worth individuals, some of their willingness to invest in funds hasn't necessarily changed as much as some of the more institutional investing in things that we've seen in the past year or so. [00:07:36] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah. So actually I might argue the opposite. So when you're dealing with individuals, right, in their personal wealth and people who are really new to venture, right? That's a really, really scary moment because venture is a long-term play, right? It's not like you put your money in and then two or three weeks later, you can be like, Hey, Megan, where are my dollars? And so making a long-term commitment like that during a period of economic uncertainty is actually more difficult for an individual than it would be for an institution because one, it's not any particular individual's capital, but also institutions have much kind of more thorough game plans, right? They know what percentage they're putting into venture versus private equity versus, you know, bonds or whatever the case may be. So they're kind of more consistent and they understand that the market kind of goes up and down and that there will be moments like this, and it's actually a little bit more difficult when it comes to individuals to kind of get them over that hump. [00:08:30] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's fair. Because I do think that even in some conversations I've had with folks, things like the price of Bitcoin or the price of Ethereum having a pretty impactful influence on what their net worth is and their own willingness to invest in particular things.  [00:08:46] Megan Holston Alexander: For sure.  [00:08:47] Dan Runcie: And for you with this fund, specifically, now fund three, but the fund itself has been around for a few years now. Do you feel like the vision for the fund has evolved at all in that time? I mean, I feel like the core mission is the same, but have any of the ways that you've either talked or pitched the fund evolved in that timeframe?  [00:09:05] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So I think you're right. We've kept our two kind of core missions the same, but what we do understand now is there are a number of different ways to execute on it. So if you will bear with me, I'm happy to share kind of two, you know, how that looks on both missions. So on the first mission of connecting the world's greatest cultural leaders to the best new technology companies. You know, historically we set, you know, athletes and entertainers and musicians, people who, from, you know, a large scale of consumerism have contributed to cultural change. But over time we've realized black executives also have like a really, really huge impact on this space. So people who are in leadership roles at Fortune 100 companies, or even at startup companies, they can have a huge impact on culture and consumer behavior more generally. And so we wanted to be sure that we really leaned into bringing in more black executives into the fund than we ever had before. And that has proven to be really helpful for the firm because they end up being, you know, equally if not more useful to the portfolio than the musicians and the singers, and the actors, et cetera. And so we have really enjoyed kind of expanding and involving that side of the network. And then on the second side of getting more young African Americans in tech, you know, fo fund one, we committed all of our management fees and carried to, like, one set of organizations. We picked them in the beginning and wanted to support them through the life of the fund. But what we realized by fund two was like, well, that doesn't really give us an opportunity to invest in new non-profits that are kind of on the cutting edge of technology, right? As things are growing and changing, we want folks who are being innovative on the non-profit side as well. And so what we did for fund two and now for fund three is we opened up kind of the spectrum of what we would support from a non-profit perspective to kind of match where we thought the technology world was going. So for fund one, you see a supporting kind of big well-known organizations that have proven over time if they are directly putting black folks into the pipeline for technology. But now we're saying like, okay, how do we add to this? Well, Web 3.0 is a huge thing, not only as a space for investment for the firm, but also generally of wanting to be sure that black folks don't get left behind in this Web 3.0 revolution. So we support organizations like crypto tutors that is meant to do just that, and that's not something we would've had insight into in that first fund. Gaming is also a new, huge area in technology. It is now, I think, you know, people play games more than they watch TV based on current research. And so how do we ensure that black folks are being supported in the gaming industry? So now we support black and gaming. We support the Black Collegiate Gaming Association. So just ensuring that our philanthropic efforts can support and are aligned with what we're doing as a firm and where technology is going overall.  [00:11:51] Dan Runcie: I actually want to talk about each of those two things separately. Let me go back to the first one.  [00:11:55] Megan Holston Alexander: Let's do it.  [00:11:56] Dan Runcie: I think it was really interesting what you said about athletes and that sector around sports in general, if I heard you correctly, them being but not even more influential or helpful for the fund overall, but maybe relative to some of the other folks, whether it's your LP such as your musicians or entertainers. Did I catch that right?  [00:12:16] Megan Holston Alexander: If I'm hearing what you're saying, you're saying that I said that the athletes are not as useful? [00:12:20] Dan Runcie: Oh, the other way around. Like, more useful than, like, some of the others that work with the fund? [00:12:24] Megan Holston Alexander: Well, I was saying, from the executive side, did I say athletes and not executives? [00:12:28] Dan Runcie: I think it was athletes. [00:12:29] Megan Holston Alexander: Maybe I misspoke. But what I was essentially trying to say is from a cultural leadership perspective, historically, it has very much been athletes and entertainers and we wanted to involve, we wanted to evolve our kind of mission overall to include more black executives. [00:12:45] Dan Runcie: That was helpful. Yeah, 'cause I was curious to tap into more about like, why that is and how that's impacted the fund so far.  [00:12:52] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. Because I feel like, everybody thinks that when you bring on like just a celebrity, everything skyrockets, right? That it's just like, ooh, if you put this name on there, things just grow. And that's not always necessarily the case. We've, you know, really supported our companies in being thoughtful and strategic around the ways in which you use a celebrity. And we've also been, you know, in deep conversations with our kind of LP network and our network at large about wanting to be more than like a disengaged kind of passive investor. And so they love partnering with the portfolio companies, et cetera. But what we hadn't considered on the executive side is, while the athletes and our kind of entertainers can partner on different things or like help them go into new markets or help them with the launch of a new product, when it came down to like core operations or how you should run on your board, or how to think about hiring X, Y, and Z, like, our black executives, like hold that information like in the palm of their hands. These are people who've been, you know, operators for 20 or 30 years, and so they brought kind of an additional level of skill and kind of insight to bolster what our other LPs on the more kind of athlete or entertainment side were doing. So now we have this really robust group of black cultural leaders who can help in a number of different areas. [00:14:07] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, we see the influence, we see how influential they are in all of these sectors, and if you're thinking about just like how your fund is structured, I know that you do have different folks on the team focused in sports, focused in entertainment more broadly, and I feel like eventually having, you know, whether it's even more of those or just being able find the best ways to lock in on talent, because I think we're seeing this more and more. I think a lot about like, let's say like 10-plus years ago when we saw the era of a lot of artists being named as creative directors for particular companies. And some of those turned into, you know, really flourishing partnerships, and some of them necessarily didn't. But now, and I feel like your fund was timing this. You captured this moment where we're seeing more than that.  [00:14:54] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep, absolutely. And it's not just because you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And it's not just because, and not only because, you know, athletes and kind of other entertainment folks want to be more engaged, but quite frankly startups are requiring it. They don't want you to just let your name on something and then you disappear and like, you know, take the money and run or whatever the case may be. And so what we're trying to do is really build up to kind of core groups of people who are interested in each other and want to work together. And so there should be an equal expectation when we bring our LPs in and on our startup side that the startups want to work with these LPs and they've been thoughtful about how they want to engage with them, right? So if you want a particular person, why, right? Why is this person the best fit for your company? And so we really challenge our companies on that, where it's not just like, you want to get the biggest name, but the person who will actually be most influential for the product that you're building. And on our LP side, we say like, okay, what is it about this company that makes you most interested that you want to bring to the table? So it really is about working together. We are trying very hard not to make it where it's just like, kind of one-off, really transactional doesn't make a lot of sense 'cause those tend to be the things that don't work out. We try to be thoughtful on all fronts.  [00:16:11] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. 'Cause it's like, otherwise, then it would just be like an Instagram ad or something like that, being like, oh, hey, go sponsor this product. And like, that's not what this is about.  [00:16:21] Megan Holston Alexander: And it doesn't make sense. Like, make it make sense. That's the most important thing for us because those are what can be fruitful. And then say it's something that, everything doesn't always work out, but if you went into it with the right intentions and everybody did their best, like, that's all you can hope for. And then those people usually want to work together again, even if it didn't work out. So we really do take this long view on relationships, not just as a firm, but as a fund and the way in which we interact with people and hope that they'll interact with each other.  [00:16:47] Dan Runcie: Right. And then at the second piece of what you were talking about, you talked about investing in companies that are ultimately helping to either further access or knowledge. Web 3.0 was an example and wanting to make sure that black talent doesn't get left behind in this space or in other spaces that may emerge. Where do you feel like things are right now? Do you feel like folks are on board? Do you feel like there's still a huge opportunity specifically with when it comes to Web 3.0 and black talent?  [00:17:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I think until we get to a place where we feel like we have like, peer across the board equity, there's always work to be done. And being like an HBCU grad being from, you know, born and raised in Alabama, I have a very core sense of like what inequity looks like and how, what are the ways in which we can try to approach solutions to that problem. And so I think I'm lucky enough to have you know, that, sort of background where I can bring an interesting perspective into how we solve those problems. But I am finding that Web 3.0 overall has a lot of opportunity. One, because, like, nobody's an expert, right? Nobody's been doing Web 3.0 for 30 years. It is relatively new, right? There's people who've been doing it for the last 10 ish years, and there are a few people who are just really hardcore, but there is so many of our Web 3.0 companies, because there is just like a lack of, expertise in the space, they're just excited to get people who are interested and passionate about Web 3.0, right? So you kind of get to jump over this need for a long period of time having worked in X, Y, and Z or Web 3.0 in this case where you get to just work off of passion and start building the product. So that's one of the things I love about Web 3.0. The hard part is that there's a knowledge imbalance, right? It takes a lot of reading. It takes a lot of listening to podcasts and going through the a16z canon that a lot of people just don't have, right? The information is there, but everybody doesn't have time to read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages on Web 3.0. And so the kind of that asynchronous ability to get information, I think, is where we have to fill in the gap. What is the answer to that? I'm not completely sure, but organizations like crypto tutors that I mentioned earlier, are making content easy, accessible, fun, really big on entertainment. And so while I think the opportunities are there for the roles, I do think we need to fill in the knowledge gap in terms of who gets the knowledge. [00:19:09] Dan Runcie: Agreed. And for you specifically, which areas of Web 3.0 are exciting you the most as an investor?  [00:19:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Whoa, well, you know, with CLF being a co-investment vehicle inside of the fund, I feel like I get lucky enough where I get to see all the cool stuff, but I don't have to make the strenuous, anxiety-ridden decisions about, you know, which ones to pick. I just get the benefit of spending time with them all after the fact. And so for me, I am most excited about and I'll just say the one piece that I've been looking into a lot lately is like, DAOs. I love this concept of like governance and people getting to vote on what they do with capital and making decisions of that, like, things to buy and things to sell. I think the way in which communities are being built around kind of DAOs and that type of governance is really interesting.  [00:20:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. I think some of these conversations, whether it's DAOs buying sports teams or Dows trying to get involved with different things, we'll see. I think, like anything, we're in the early days and some of these things will come to fruition but there's definitely something there. Just looking at how decentralized so many things are becoming then I think a lot of those things do need to.  [00:20:20] Megan Holston Alexander: Agreed and I think there's pros and cons of everything, and I think that's one of the things that, you know, gets missed in the hype cycle. There are things that will be really great about web 3.0 and there will be things that don't work out in the way that we hope, but in the end, we hope we shake out with the best kind of the pack.  [00:20:38] Dan Runcie: Right. And then you mentioned it earlier about just the way that CLF invests and you co-invest. So you do get to see all the things that come through and you're not necessarily picking or, you know, making them the investments yourself. But do you think that's something that may change with either the vision or the evolution of the fund itself, where you would be making those investments?  [00:20:58] Megan Holston Alexander: You know, we, at the firm, we never say never. We don't know what the future holds, but I think right now, the way that we've structured it, you know, we've got two really core goals at CLF, and the first is like getting black dollars onto the cap tables in Andreessen Horowitz companies and the more that I can do that, whether it's through co-investing or otherwise, I think that the structure that we have right now is one that works and that I'm I'm really pleased with. And then in that second mission or actually still the first mission, but the second way that we execute on it, right, so CLF has a fund and dollars out of that fund go into kind of the deals across a number of the funds inside of the firm. Not all of them, but most of them. But then the second thing that I get to do and spend a lot of time on, because I don't have to do, you know, a ton of that behind the scenes like diligence work, et cetera, is get additional strategic rounds for our portfolio companies. So not only is our LP base as a whole represented on the cap table, but anytime that there is a really thoughtful or smart partnership or somebody wants to add an additional strategic capital, we now can give even more black people on the cap table. And so I really enjoy spending my time doing that and I want to keep at it, but the firms, we never say never to stuff. Who knows? If it ever makes sense, we'll see.  [00:22:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. And then I think too, you mentioned this a few times just in terms of how the firm is structured in terms of building and investing in relationships. And I think this is something that I know you've talked about in other interviews, something that rings true with a16z overall. Can you talk a little bit about the way that you have the divisions or the way that you have the different verticals for, whether it's entertainment or sports and some of the events that you attend as well, and how that helps the overall mission?  [00:22:42] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So for CLF, you know, historically when probably two years ago when it was just me and Chris the two of us, we did everything right and we realized that if we really wanted CLF to scale and to grow and to really have an impact on the communities and generational wealth, we needed to scale what we were doing. We need to get more cultural leaders involved. We needed to be able to make more kind of partnership introductions, et cetera. And so the way that, you know, made sense was, okay, we've got these cultural leaders. How do we bring together the best at what they do in order to help manage these networks? So we brought in folks like Derek who have been on the management and agency side for a number of years to manage the entertainment vertical, right? So when you have one thing to focus on and it's only entertainers, you can make much more kind of clear and thoughtful decisions around who to introduce to whom or who to bring into this company, or when a portfolio company says, I need this type of person, you can make a quicker decision. We brought in Deb on the athlete side. She was a manager at Rock Nation Sports for a number of years, so she really just has the depth of knowledge. And not only that, they both have this really interesting knowledge just about who players are, but how we can structure deals with them, right? This is what they're used to, and now we're bringing in this tech side, how do we make those deal structures match, or how do we make it more, you know, favorable to everybody involved? And so they brought another level of rigor to the deals and the strategic rounds that we were putting together that we needed a lot. And then both Julie and I work on the executive side, which I said is burgeoning. And so we really try to specialize. One as a firm, right? We've got a crypto fund and a bio fund, and people who are specialized. We do the same thing inside of CLF. We try to have people focus on a swim lane. And it's proven to be successful. So far, we're really pleased with that decision.  [00:24:29] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think it's effective and I think the names that you've been able to have as LPs in each of the rounds speaks to that too. And at the end of the day, especially in these industries, of course, I know relationships drive everything, but I think it's more so in these industries because especially with some of these high net worth individuals in entertainment, there's so many people from coming out of the woodwork who are trying to swindle them out of stuff or trying to propose them the most horrible deals and investment opportunities. So I think that's where the value add is here, as opposed to, or even more so than someone else who, you know, isn't in these fields. So they're not necessarily getting as much of the crap, if you will, from the proposals. So being able to sift through the good ones. [00:25:12] Megan Holston Alexander: I think you brought up a really good point. And I think that point is trust, right? So when you have people coming out of the woodwork, like you said, with investment opportunities, I got a good investment opportunity for you. But that person has no real background to be able to speak to like kind of whatever that item is or whatever that company is. We try to really mitigate the risk for our LPs and, and kind of partners that we bring into rounds for CLF, like, we never bring deals to people that we haven't invested in ourselves, right? We feel like how can we tell you like, you should invest in this, but like we didn't do it. And so people know that anytime we bring something to them, it is fully invested through Andreessen Horowitz, like, process, deal team, GP, et cetera. And so we try to, you know, really eliminate risk for them. And obviously, we always have them, you know, do your own research. Here is the information you make the decision for yourself. But we just pride ourselves on building trust with people because if we mishandle people and we swindle people, like that gets around and then that doesn't benefit us, right? If it goes around like, oh, those. sneakers over there, a16z are doing that. But we feel like we have really put forth a concerted effort that people know that they can trust us and they share with their friends that they can trust us. And that really is I think how we try to maintain and engage with our network. And so far, you know, that network has been able to grow and we always say, you know, we're not going to sacrifice a relationship for a quick buck that's just not our style. That's not what we do. I hope that that is kind of what's making the rounds. But so far it feels like people really have built a lot of trust in us and we don't take that lightly. [00:26:53] Dan Runcie: And I do think that information and understanding of these things has just gotten better in decades overall. And couple that with the fact that this is venture capital. Of course, it's a risk. Most of the companies that we're investing in probably aren't going to take off, but the ones that do are going to hit. And you're doing it with a firm that has a track record in this. So I feel like there's so much transparency.  [00:27:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Well, I don't think I'm allowed to agree with that, so I'm just going to say okay. [00:27:20] Dan Runcie: Fair enough. Fair enough. And I think the difference there though is that I think about so many of these athletes, whether it's you get pitched on like opening restaurants with their name and all these other things that you know are just dated things. Of course, those things can still work. We've seen them be effective. But we've come a long way.  [00:27:39] Megan Holston Alexander: And then one of the other things is, you know, we tell people, you know, that invest in our fund to please consider us a resource when things like that come up, right? We say we're a VC firm in your back pocket, right? So if something comes your way and you want us to, like you have questions about it, you know, obviously we can't tell you what to do, but we can help you figure out what are the right questions to ask when these opportunities come in front of you. And so that education piece that we do, I think is really valued by a lot of the folks who trust us with their capital. [00:28:10] Dan Runcie: And then with your LP specifically, is there anything that you're specifically looking for from a vetting process? Like, not necessarily talking about like commitment levels or anything like that, but more so things that you're looking for 'cause earlier we're talking about, of course, we've come a long way from the celebrity investors slapping their name on things. But I'm sure there are probably still some out there that may want to do that. And you're making sure that that's not who you're attracting.  [00:28:35] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I'm trying to tell you all my secrets. You know, the most important thing for us is that we have LPs who want to engage. We want people who are willing to like, you know, hop on a call with us and share their interests or if, you know, you join the fund and you are entered in particular deals or we, you know, come across a company that would be a really great fit for you to talk to, maybe just have a 15-minute conversation with the CEO. There are people who love opportunities like that. So people who want to engage and want to learn and spend time with us and spend time with our LPs is who we try to really, really lean into because it's a symbiotic relationship, We want to support them. But at the end of the day, like our largest goal is to support our portfolio companies and whether it's the a16z team, whether it's our LPs, like it's all hands on deck. And so I love people who come in and have a genuine curiosity and they're excited about technology and innovation and they want to play a role in things that are being built. And so, we love those conversations and you can kind of really tell, like I've had people who you would never think, people who you would think would be super disengaged. Like, that person is interested in tech who are, have gone down like the Web 3.0 rabbit hole and they're like, ooh, and I'm going to do like a token that has this, and then I'm going to give it to my whole community back in Texas or whatever. Like, really is just a really, really thoughtful people. You don't have to be an expert. Like, that's not what we're looking for, but we just look, want people who want to be involved.  [00:30:04] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. That makes sense. Shifting gears a bit on the talent side of things. We talked about it a little bit about how important it is to the fund to be able to just help develop this space and obviously your fund's doing its part. We talked about some of the areas that you're looking to invest in, how you're looking to just elevate this space overall, what do you think the rest of the VC community and landscape needs to be able to do to ultimately get things to where it should be.  [00:30:31] Megan Holston Alexander: Sorry, when you say get things to where they should be, you mean in terms of like talent as an employee of companies? You mean talent in what way?  [00:30:40] Dan Runcie: So I'm talking about talent in terms of whether it's black founders who are leading companies or black talent that are just interested in the space that are either going on to get jobs in the space or to work for other established companies, overall investing and then just being able to grow and see more black talent in tech. [00:30:59] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So I'll start by saying there's no one way to do it. I think there are a number of different approaches that people can take. But I usually divide it up at least of this industry into three things. One, funds can, or you know, firms can support black founders, right, by putting capital directly into their hands so that they can build their companies. Two, they can help more black talent get into early stage companies, right? So, employee 10, employee 15, employee 20, because we know that early employee equity can really change a life, right, when a company has a liquidity event, whether it's an IPO or a sale that now that person has capital to start a company or to angel invest in companies and kind of create some generational wealth for themselves. And then the third thing is getting more black dollars on cap tables, right? So ownership stakes, not just monetizing on a platform, right, for all of the amazing things that we're creating, but actually having its ownership in the platform to create generational wealth. And CLF focuses on those last two, but there are a lot of firms, again, focused on, you know, funding black founders. I think kind of focusing on those three core areas can really create economic, you know, extreme economic kind of opportunities for the black community. And so, you know, with CLF focusing on those last two, I think we've got a really special niche that we get to support in a number of ways, which I mentioned before. [00:32:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like the closer that, or at least the more people, whether it's in this generation or in, you know, people that are a little bit older that are still trying to do it, being able to just get more focus on building generational. And just the knowledge and the mindset of it. I think all those things help. I think we're seeing more podcasts, more shows, more content from black folks that are specifically focused on this, which is great. I think, you know, there's never too much of it. So personally I think that I would love to be able to see more dollars and more hiring that happens in these places too 'cause I think we saw, especially in the past couple years, there was so many press releases that came from particular companies, and I think I saw recently there was a big tech founder that just announced, you know, a $400 million fund to invest. [00:33:16] Megan Holston Alexander: 400 million. Yeah, yeah.  [00:33:17] Dan Runcie: But like, wanted to be able to actually see the results from those and being able to see the impact and being able to see people, you know, become their own Robert Smiths that can then, you know, pay for, you know, tuition for a future class. The more of those we see, and it's not just the one, you know, few names we already know would be great and I think those things will happen, but ultimately I think that's what so many of us want to see in this space.  [00:33:39] Megan Holston Alexander: And there's so much embedded in this conversation, right? And I'll go on a little bit of an aside because I think one, we have to understand that like when we think about the future and black equity and empowerment, some people still don't care. Like, there are a lot of people who just do not care. It's not their problem. They don't want to help solve it. And then you have people who kind of commit to things but have no follow-through. And that's what we saw a lot of over the last couple of years. Like, after the murder of George Floyd, all these companies were like, yes, we're going to give this, we're going to do this. And then the follow-through two and a half years later is just not there. And then you have the people who are really, really committed but don't understand the expanse of the black community and think of it as a small sliver, like, really high, like, accelerators that they would want to support who still go to like a very specific set of schools, right, the talented tenth of the black people and are willing to support that. But then there is this holistic perspective around, like, non-monolithic blackness and how do we encourage economic empowerment and growth across the community as a whole? And that's what I want to get to. When we think about HBCUs, there's over a hundred of them, right? And how do we support more of them as opposed to like the same ones that get, you know, a ton of shine. Mind you, when it comes to HBCUs, like, they don't work outside of the community, be like, we depend on each other and we rely on each other. So, you know, I want to get to a more comprehensive perspective on, like, what supporting black economic empowerment looks like from a long-term perspective. So I think we'll get there, but there's a long way to go.  [00:35:25] Dan Runcie: What you just said reminds me of, there was one of the tech companies that announced that they were going to have a black board member and that someone was going to take their seat away and they were going to make the opportunity for a black board member. And people were very curious, okay, who should it be? And to the point that you're making, who can we elevate to that point? Who could we provide an opportunity for? And I think they ended up choosing one of the most successful and high-profile black founders in this space. And while it is great to see that person in that role, that wasn't creating a necessarily a new opportunity in that same type of way, and it goes back to the talented tenth thing.  [00:36:02] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. We're here. And you know, I think you bring up a good point when, and now we're about to get into black history, but that's okay 'cause this is for the people. Conceptually, when you think about the talented tenth that's, you know, W. E. B. Du Bois and, like, his concept from a sociological perspective, and you think about who he was at tension with the most, Booker T. Washington and this concept of the Atlanta Compromise. Two very powerful black men, the founder of Tuskegee University versus, like, the first black man to get a PhD at Harvard. Conceptually thinking there are multiple ways in which the black race can succeed. And I think that's still very much the case, right? So, you know, W. E. B. Du Bois is very much like, we should be going to college. We should be getting these advanced degrees. Like we can have these like high power jobs, et cetera, and be in government, but Booker T. Washington is like, our people down here, don't even have running water, right? We should be focused on trying to get like basic level of education, jobs that provide us, like, a source of income that's steady, et cetera. So my point is, you know, reasonable people can disagree to what the solution is. And, again, I think there's multiple approaches and so I think if we can, you know, not just go one route, right? It can't always be about only the talented tenth, but kind of like also bring up a pathway where in Booker T. Washington space, right? That's why we'll have all the like, black agricultural people. Tuskegee is, like, the best university for, like, mechanical engineering and industrial engineering. And that's all like thematically with Booker T. Washington. So there's room for both. We just have a habit of focusing on one. Ali went there and went into a total black history tangent.  [00:37:38] Dan Runcie: We could do a whole episode on that. But I'm glad you brought that up 'cause I do think that analogy and just, it ties so much of this together and ultimately the purpose of the fund and what you're trying to do. When I think about the nuance of all these conversations and the comprehensiveness of it what people need to hear so thank you for that. [00:37:56] Megan Holston Alexander: Fun fact. I'm actually a sociologist by trade. It was my undergrad. My undergrad degree, I got a Master's in it. I went to get a PhD, dropped out 'cause I hated it, moved to California, and got into tech and my dog is actually named after W. E. B. Du Bois. So fun fact for the people out there. [00:38:14] Dan Runcie: Still fresh, I mean for some of that, you know, I'm sure the sociology degree may have been, you know, some time ago, but still fresh. You still got it.  [00:38:21] Megan Holston Alexander: It's good stuff. I love social interaction and studying how people engage with each other. So it's my secret passion. I'm a sociology capitalist, I guess so.  [00:38:32] Dan Runcie: Of course, no, I think that there's some term there. But shifting gears a bit though, this is also somewhat on a sociology perspective, especially among VCs, the concept of where to live and where people are investing in has just been a bigger discussion ever since the pandemic had started and you are someone that lived in the Bay, you've recently moved to Alabama. And it'll be great to hear two parts. One, not just why you made the move, but also what is your take right now on the Bay Area, on San Francisco, because it is such a polarizing discussion point, especially from whether it was even people I talked to when I was at the summit or in so many conversations, for me as someone that still lives here. [00:39:15] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So it's polarizing for a lot of people, but my feeling is clear and I've always felt that, like, talent is truly, truly all over. So I moved to Alabama because, you know, I got two little babies and, you know, my parents are getting older, and I wanted to be able to have my kids spend time with them and to go to Mimi's house, and Mimi to be able to come to their school stuff. And so, you know, the pandemic really allowed us the opportunity to do that because as you know, Andreessen Horowitz moved to the cloud. Prior to the pandemic, we were very much a, you know, in office culture as most firms were. But you know, much to the credit of our leadership, they saw how much flexibility people had while still being productive and wanted to be sure that, you know, people were able to maintain that. So I'm really grateful for it. But, you know, my stance has been the same. I've always felt like people, smart people come from everywhere and they can be everywhere. I used to get really offended, actually. So I went to an HBCU undergrad. I went to Clark Atlanta, but ultimately got an MBA at Stanford. And somehow after I went to Stanford, everybody starts, like, picking up the phone for you, right? And then they'll, like, respond to your emails when they, you know, see a certain thing there. But people are like, oh, I see you went to Stanford. Like, you must be smart. And I'm like, I was smart before I went to Stanford. I was smart in Alabama, you know what I mean? And so I've always conceptually believe that, you know, yes, people get these extra markers, but that doesn't necessarily determine, like, I didn't go to Stanford and get smart. I didn't go to Stanford and get some magical thing that makes me, you know, smarter than everybody else. And so I've just always been a believer in, you know, talent being everywhere. As far as like the Bay, in particular, I do think, you know, something special happens when you can kind of create some serendipity and put people in the same place. It's not that like, oh, you know, everybody was just born there. They're very smart. It's like, no, like, people were actively coming there to join companies, et cetera. So you did get this great critical mass of people living in one place, especially when offices were in office culture. But now kind of that disbursement has happened and I think it just shows people that like, yeah, people who are interested in tech and building things. Also, they desire to live outside of the Bay Area for whatever reason, whether it's family or friends or I want to live near Warm Beach. Whatever the case is, I just think, and again, have always believed that you can live anywhere and be smart and productive and happy. [00:41:38] Dan Runcie: And I think a lot of this was inevitable. We knew that as technology got better and better, the power of conglomeration, especially from a physical location perspective, was only going to lessen. I don't think it necessarily goes down to zero. There, of course, is benefit and why people live in particular places, but I do think that what we saw the past 15 years up until maybe the past two years was at least like the last wave. And you saw it before, whether it was with, you know, the auto industry or the Midwest of all these other places. Like, we've seen this happen time and time again. But what's different now is that things are so fragmented and it makes me think a lot of things we see in music as well. We saw so many areas that were just such culture beds for where the new hot sound was coming from, where the hottest music was. And I think we still see a lot of that. But we're starting to see even that spread out of it too. So this is happening across the board.  [00:42:31] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I agree. And, you know, I think as long as companies support their employees' needs in whatever it is to be productive, I think we'll get to the right answer. So for example, our firm allows you, if you want to go to the office, you can. There's, like, no office that exists, so, like, you can't get interaction if you desire it. But not requiring it allows both types of people to be happy. And quite frankly, like, most people don't even know I live in Alabama. Like, I'll be on the phone with somebody from work and I'll like, no, I'm in Alabama. And they're like, oh, how long you visiting for? And I'm like, no, I live here. And like, everybody's eyes bug out and they're like, what? You can be equally as productive and no one have no, you know, no idea where you are. [00:43:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think that, and it's interesting, I've heard, you know, from some founders that are trying to go back in the office, some founders that are, you know, doing things remotely a hundred percent. And part of it is all that works for you, but the fact is we have options now and that's basically it. [00:43:30] Megan Holston Alexander: And I appreciate, again, the flexibility of so many companies to, like, actively buck against what the normal used to be, because I think it would've been really easy or conceptually easy to say, like, we're going back into the office. Like, that's what it is, and, you know, that's the end. But for all the companies that are like, hey, the world is changing, let me adapt. I and I know so many other people are really grateful for that. And me as a new mom, the flexibility it's given me is just huge.  [00:44:00] Dan Runcie: Right. And to tie it all in too, it just allows the greatness and the genius to come from so many other areas that aren't filtered by all of the other things that let people pick from the pools of talent that existed before. [00:44:13] Megan Holston Alexander: Agreed. The CLF team, at this point, I don't think anybody's in the Bay. [00:44:17] Dan Runcie: Makes sense.  [00:44:18] Megan Holston Alexander: I knew we've got New York and Miami and LA. Okay, wait, no, we do have one person in the Bay. But the fact is that this team, CLF as it is now, could not have existed if we could only be in Menlo Park.  [00:44:31] Dan Runcie: Right, right. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. All right. Well, Megan, this is great. Covered a bunch. We got a deeper look behind the fund. Everything that goes behind the work you're doing. [00:44:41] Megan Holston Alexander: Wait, we're not done, are we?  [00:44:43] Dan Runcie: We're getting to the tail end. We're going to the tail end. Oh, you got more?  [00:44:46] Megan Holston Alexander: You couldn't convince me that that wasn't only 20 minutes. [00:44:50] Dan Runcie: No, we definitely, we definitely had some good deep dives in here. This was good. But no, before we let you go though, what's one big thing that you're excited for 2023?  [00:44:59] Megan Holston Alexander: One thing I'm excited for 2023 for the fund, I am really excited to continue to, like, bring people together. In the last two and a half years, we haven't been able to do that, but CLF as a fund and as a network really relies on putting interesting people in a room together so magic can happen. And you probably heard me saying it's all around like the summit a few weeks ago. Like, my favorite part of my job is when, like, I know somebody and I know somebody else and I see them and I'm like, ooh, they need to talk. And I'll bring them together and I'll say, like, I don't know what's going to happen here, but y'all need to talk and whatever happens, give me my credit. And then I walk off. And then there's like all this like zhooshing and this magic that happens. I love those moments. So hopefully I can get to create more of those in 2023 with the awesome team that we've built at CLF. [00:45:50] Dan Runcie: Well, we'll definitely be looking out for that for sure. Megan, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.  [00:45:56] Megan Holston Alexander: You as well. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're doing something very amazing with Trapital, and I mean, I just feel honored that you wouldn't let me be on your platform.  [00:46:04] Dan Runcie: Of course, these are the conversations you want to have. Thank you. Appreciate that.  [00:46:08] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

At the top of the episode, I talk about Trapital’s new Culture Report and our opening section on hip-hop’s “decline.” This report is sponsored by DICE, and it was a great chance to chat with DICE President Russ Tannen about the future of ticketing and live events. Russ moved to New York City in 2021 amid the pandemic with one lofty goal: grow the music ticketing platform’s business inside the competitive United States market. If that wasn’t challenging enough, this was all while live musical shows were still hard to come by. More than a year later, DICE is still in growth mode, not only in the US but with aspirations for other international markets too. Russ was a day-one employee of DICE when it started in 2013 in Europe. What separated the platform then — and to this day — is its laser focus on the music fan. Unlike its major competitors, DICE is as much a discovery platform as a point-of-sale. Using the app’s own internal data, fans are recommended local shows to attend.  The recommendation system was created with the intent of improving the live music-going experience for fans. This same reason is also why the ticket price you see on DICE is the final price, no extra fees added at check-out. DICE tickets also can’t be resold outside of its app, ensuring true fans, not ticket scalpers, will have first access to see their favorite artists.  Russ joined me on the show to discuss the inner workings of DICE, from the app’s unique benefits for fans, artists, and venues alike to its overarching growth strategy. Here’s everything we covered: [0:35] The Culture Report [13:01] DICE entering the US market amid pandemic [15:26] Competing against other ticketing platforms [19:58] Re-wiring consumer behavior around attending events [22:15] Prior partnership with Kanye West [23:37] Has there been any artist pushback? [25:16] Showing ticket price upfront, not at checkout [28:10] How DICE deals with ticket-buying bots [35:57] DICE’s investment in data science is paying off [35:37] Partnering with Ice Spice [38:21] Early signals that an artist is on the rise [40:22] Correlation between social media and streaming numbers on ticket sales [43:16] Differences in ticketing in US vs. other markets [46:18] Sales strategies for low-demand shows [48:46] DICE’s plans to tap more into Latin music market [52:27] Expansion is DICE’s primary focus in 2023 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Russ Tannen, @RussTannen   Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Russ Tannen: At one point I was booking in London a 150-capacity venue, and I thought it was amazing when 400 people would show up for the hundred 50 capacity show, and we try and cram them all in. And I always saw that was an amazing sign. Those shows were always free, but obviously, now we are ticketing around the world, many of the best 100 to 200-capacity venues that exist in some of the best music cities in the world. So what's fascinating for us is to not just be speaking to the people that are running and booking those venues, but to be looking at the data of, okay, which shows sold out on and out at that level, and who's got the biggest waiting list at that level. And we see a complete global picture of that. [00:00:42] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.    [00:01:02] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Russ Tannen. He's the president of DICE, which is a ticketing platform for live events that's working to make ticketing fairer for fans of live music. They're also working to make sure that there's personalization, so that fans have a better understanding for the music and the concerts from the people that they want to be able to see. And they've been using a ton of analytics to address some of the challenges that the live entertainment industry has faced over the years. DICE is one of the presenting sponsors for Trapital's 2022 Culture Report that is out and available. You can get that on the Trapital website or if you're on the email list. And it was great to talk to Russ about some of those findings and also get a better understanding for the main problem that DICE is trying to solve. There are several aspects of the live ticketing business from scalpers and bots that are raising prices, with artists and fans not necessarily being able to have the most direct connection possible, and fans not always necessarily knowing what concerts are in their area, other people that they may want to see, and being able to get personalized recommendations there. So Russ really brought us under the hood, painted us a picture of what the events business looks like. This is a company that started in the UK, was able to get a good amount of market share there, and is now expanding into the US. So we talked about how they're focused on the venues, specifically, that have capacity from 200 people up to 10,000, what that looks like, what the opportunities are, what some of the challenges are, and what he's ultimately looking forward to most. Here's my chat with Russ. [00:02:36] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have Russ Tannen, who is the president of DICE, a company that is on a mission to help solve a number of the challenges right now in the ticketing and live events business. And I give you a lot of credit because this is a difficult business for a number of reasons, and you're entering a US market where I think there's so much opportunity for improvements with things. So it would be great to hear from you all, and for the folks listening, what your strategy is and why the US market's been so important for you. [00:03:08] Russ Tannen: Thanks Dan. Thanks so much for having me on. It's really good to meet you and to get a chance to have this conversation. I don't know why you think it's difficult. It's it's been so straightforward. It's been such a breeze the last nine years. No, it's definitely complicated. Before we jump into it, and I do want to tackle that one, I wanted to ask you a question first actually. What was the first concert you went to, Dan?  [00:03:27] Dan Runcie: Ooh, the first concert I went to. So I am Jamaican and my parents are Big Harry Belafonte fans, so I must have been nine or so, and we all went as a family to a Harry Belafonte concert. I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, so he had come through, so that was the first one.  [00:03:44] Russ Tannen: Wow. What was the first one where you, like, bought a ticket or you were, like, going with your mates and you were, like, excited to go?  [00:03:49] Dan Runcie: Okay. The first one where was actually, like, me going, it was a 50 Cent concert. He had come through, they had this concert venue, the Meadows in the Hartford area. So, yeah, we went to that. This is like right when he had, like, blown up.  [00:04:00] Russ Tannen: How was it? Amazing?  [00:04:02] Dan Runcie: I mean, at that age, it was amazing. I thought that it was the coolest thing ever. I mean, this was the person that everyone was talking about, Oh, you know, he got shot nine times. He's this mythical legend. And then you get to see him in this venue. And of course, you're also, you know, you're young, you're with your friends, you're finally, like, getting out, like, people are finally starting to go different places. So I really enjoy that. And yeah, I mean, that was with my own money for the first time. [00:04:25] Russ Tannen: Yeah. I love thinking about those memories. I found a picture of me going to my, like, first proper concert, which is, like, I used to have hair, obviously, when I was a teenager and it was, like, dyed green, and we were going to see Deftones and Linkin Park play. They were playing in London. And I remember just being with all my mates going, it was like the most exciting thing ever to, like, go to that show. And I love like, thinking about those things and that feeling and that emotion 'cause I think, like, if you have, like, a really amazing experience early going to a concert and feeling all of those emotions about going to see live music, then it can really stay with you, like, your whole life. And I think a lot of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to capture is that feeling for as many people as possible and to get more people having those types of experiences, like, more of the time, really just spending less time at home. Like that's what we're really, that's what DICE is all about. Like, more than being an app or being a company or all the other things that we're doing, like, it's really, like, how do you get more people to feel like they're going to the 50 Cent concert and just, like, this is it, like, but thanks for sharing that.  [00:05:26] Dan Runcie: Oh, definitely.  [00:05:27] Russ Tannen: Yeah, I moved to the US in April last year. So I'm joining on the call from New York at the moment. And we already had a presence here. We'd been building up the business in LA for a few years before, and obviously, the pandemic hit. And I think coming out of the pandemic, we realized that there was an opportunity to start working with a number of partners in New York and really focus on our growth here and building out a team. So when I got here in April, there were three people on the team here. We've built that out to 70 people in this office and a hundred people in the US team overall with other little posts in Miami and Nashville as well as the team in LA. And, yeah, I think it's an extremely competitive market, obviously, but I also think that one of the great things that the pandemic really showed us was just how big and how strong the independent music scene in the US really is. And a big part of that, I think, was the work that Dayna Frank did and founding NIVA and really uniting all of those independent venues together to lobby for the grants that they got to keep the businesses going. And I think that that was just like a really interesting thing t o come out of it and something that will go on for a long time and last for a long time. Now, that organization, and I think it helped to show everyone, you know, how strong the independent music scene is here and what a large opportunity for a company like ours that works only with independent venues and promoters has to build, you know, a very big business here, too, and to support all the artists that are playing in those venues. So we really focus between. 200 - 10,000 capacity. Those are the types of venues we work with. And for people that are listening that don't know what DICE is, you know, we're a mobile event discovery and ticketing app that's working directly with venues and promoters to, you know, increase sales for those shows and to do all the things you'd be expecting a ticket company to do. So, yeah, but that's really where we play. It's a very competitive space, but it's a bit different to thinking about arenas and stadiums and you know, maybe that part of the live business.  [00:07:19] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. I do think that, of course, that you have, whether it's ATG or Live Nation, having those arenas and stadiums and a lot of the partnerships there, the independent opportunity is much more flexible and I think there's less pure ownership there from a lot of the big players, but I do know that there's still competition from, whether it's your folks like Eventbrite or others. How have you been able to work and gain market share given that dynamic with some of the other players from that 200 to 10K capacity venue?  [00:07:51] Russ Tannen: Yeah, I think that we've been going for nine years now. And we had originally worked as promoters, we'd also run venues. We were working in artist management before starting DICE, and I think we had a number of different perspectives from day one in building the company and the kind of foundational things that we focused on were probably a little different to someone who's maybe more coming from a technology background and seeing a market opportunity and looking at how to build for the venue client. Whereas we always kind of still had a management hat on the whole time. And also we're really thinking about how to build for the fan, and we've had this kind of laser focus on building for the fan experience and that started all the way back with making it a completely mobile product, making the actual purchase of the ticket extremely easy, always showing the full price upfront so you don't get that sticker shock at the end of the purchase when it's suddenly more expensive, stopping the tickets from being sold on resale, introducing functionality like the waiting list where if a show sells out, you can join a waiting list and if tickets get returned to that waiting list, you can just pick them up at the same price. All these things that we did very early that just built a lot of trust very quickly, I think, with fans to become like their preferred platform for tickets and then through time thinking even more about social functionality connecting with your friends. We talk to fans all the time and fans would tell us the number one reason that they wouldn't buy a ticket for a show would be that they wouldn't know who to go with. But we would know that from all the fans that we had using the product, that there must be some that were already friends. So we made it so you could connect with your friends through the app, through your contacts, and then on an event level, you can actually see who from your friends is going to the show, who's been to see that artist before, who's saved that event? You can also go on a view where you can just pick, so me and you could pick this page where it will show us events to go to together based on both of our musical tastes and shows we've been to before. So there's all these things that we've built that are really just nothing to do with the person sat at the venue who's the ticketing manager, and they're all about the real end consumer being the fan. And I think that's just been a different approach to most ticket companies in the US previously that have built been more transactional. And so when we pitch, it's all about how do we actually significantly change how people are discovering the events at the venue and how do we increase the number of shows that they're going to by focusing all of their experience on the actual ticket purchase. And that's really paid off and that narrative is paid off. And when we think about a city like New York, where, you know, last when I got here, it was still events weren't happening. So obviously, you know, the number of users on the app was extremely low. We only had a few partners signed that think people were starting to think about putting shows on sale, but it was really early days. We were really selling a vision of what we could do in terms of driving sales and making people go to more shows. But now that we're 18 months in, we can see, you know, over a million people in New York City using the app every month. We can see over 40% of sales coming through discovery, which is sales that we are driving. That's really significant for the venues and promoters that we're working with and of course for the artists playing those venues. So I think that New York's a great case study for us, and we're excited to do it even more across the rest of the US and also around the world. We're already in London and Spain and Germany and France and Italy, so, yeah, we're just getting started really. [00:11:17] Dan Runcie: Let's talk a bit more about that consumer behavior aspect of this because this is where I think you make the distinction. So many of the other events promoters, it's more focused on their relationship with the artist, right? They're essentially the end consumer or the venue itself. But then it's the fan that then sees the after effects of it, whether that turns out in how tickets are resold or how they're initially sold and offered in the first place and the fees and all the other things that come up. And you all are making it more so of the destination for someone that wants to come to a show and wants to check that out, and by also with some of the other measures you mentioned, not having scalpers, resale value or resale, in general, going directly to someone on the waitlist, how do you feel like this piece of it has been? Because I think so much of this is just rewiring the psychology of how consumers think about attending live events. So of course there's the business aspect of it, but there's also a bit of retraining the customer because I think for so many years we've been trained to follow the way that it's been. [00:12:23] Russ Tannen: I know. I also think that everything is always in flux, right? And everything's always changing and shifting. And I think that the moment you stop innovating is the moment you start, like, failing, right? You've got to keep kind of pushing things forward and thinking about keeping the right north star, I think. And for us, keeping the fan experiences a North Star has been the thing that's really led to, I think, a lot of our success. And I think that with the resale piece, that's a really interesting one, how that's evolved even in the last kind of nine years since we started. And I think where we're at now is that we are so at odds with how, you know, some of the other ticket companies are doing it with integrated resale and this dynamic pricing debate that's obviously going on at the moment. And we're really at the complete opposite end of that, where we really believe that if you really rip off fans or give people an experience or perception that they're being ripped off, then the next time they think about what they're going to do with their spare money to spend on social activities or with their free time, they might not pick going to a concert, and we think it's such a short term view to be doing those behaviors. And I think definitely in the sort of capacity size of shows that we're doing and the types of independent festivals and promoters that we work with, it's just not what people want either. So when we are pitching to those partners or talking to artists even about how we do things, which is really about stopping the resale of tickets and having this completely fair waiting list platform, then a lot of them love to hear that, and that's what they want to be pitched. They don't want to be pitched that we've built a system that could squeeze every dollar out of a fan who can happen to afford it. So I think that's a better approach to be doing it. I think, like, with the resale piece, especially, a lot of the early success we had with artists was also on the fact that we could stop the resale of tickets. I was just thinking of when we worked with Kanye on the Project Wyoming launch parties around the US, it was very early for us when we just launched here. And, you know, that was one of the massive reasons that he actually wanted to use the platform was to stop the resale of tickets. So there's been lots of case studies like that that we've had where just really big artists are trying to use us just to stop resale, and I think it's a misconception that, you know, larger artists are actually all trying to just make as much money as possible from the fan using that dynamic pricing or participating themselves in resale.  [00:14:39] Dan Runcie: How did the Kanye partnership develop?  [00:14:42] Russ Tannen: It was really very last minute and unexpected, and it was all happening from LA, and Andrew who's on our team and was in LA at the time, running there and setting up the business there had a call very late. And so it all happened while we were asleep in London, and he'd been told to set up some links, no event details, all super secret. And then we were all in a meeting the next day and I remember him texting us saying, go to kanyewest.com, and it rerouted to a DICE ticket page for the show. So it was pretty wild. But yeah, it was via promoter that we'd been working with in LA who'd been sort of brought on to find you know, locations for those shows and stuff. And there's been lots of other examples of that, but great example of a large artist using the platform for protecting their fans, and, yeah, it was just a good one to do.  [00:15:27] Dan Runcie: Do you ever experience or see any type of pushback from any artist specifically? Because one of the underlying things about scalpers is that a lot of times it's the artists themselves who also benefit from the secondary market, just with the price that is seen as what people perceive as the value for going to a particular show of theirs. And also, since some of these artists have also participated in buying their own tickets and selling them on the secondary market. Have there been any artists or instances where artists have had any pushback on that?  [00:16:02] Russ Tannen: No. Like, the way that we see it is we really focus on attendance. So by having the waiting list, we're making it easy to return a ticket if you can't go, then we're going to be very, very close to a hundred percent attendance on any sold-out show. In fact, what we normally see is about a 15% increase in attendance when a venue switches from a traditional ticket company to DICE, which makes a big difference when you're in the room. And I think the artists get that. The other thing with the waiting list data that we have is that you can really see the true demand for an artist. So an example recently in London would be with Little Simz, where we did this small show and we had 11,000 people on the waiting list for her, and it's just, it was so easy for her to add another date on that show. So there's been thousands. We've had millions and millions of people on the waiting list and millions of tickets returned. But the really exciting story, I think is always when an artist sees those waiting list numbers building and actually adds a second date, and that's when they're really making money. That's a better way to do it, right, really fulfill the full demand, actually have the right number of people in the room, not just a load of tickets unsold on secondary, or use that data properly to make sure that the next show on the tour is going to be the right size, so not missing opportunity on the next go-round or on the next album. And that's one of the data pieces that we really pioneered and a lot of artists have used very successfully at this point.  [00:17:22] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. On the pricing piece of things, does the fact that the ticket price, once it's set is not going to be any higher and it's not going to change, does that change either how you or the artist think about what that initial dollar amount should be relative to what they may do with a more traditional platform? [00:17:41] Russ Tannen: Well, I think that the way that ticketing fees and fees in general on to tickets has kind of evolved, has made it sort of less relevant, I think, to have it kind of separate. It's kind of all part of the pie in a way. And we just always thought that the best way to do that was to show the fans the full price upfront and explain that that includes any fees that related to the ticket. We also fight to keep fees kind of as low as they reasonably can be. So we hope that, you know, the tickets are as low as they can be, but the idea of a face value ticket in a world where that ticket is not available at that price anywhere, there's no box office to go to to buy a ticket from. There's no, you know, that ticket is never available at price. So to show that price anywhere to us feels a bit disingenuous to fans and really the, I guess, the theory is that you hook people in with the lower price, and then you just sort of surprise 'em at the end and they won't care because they're already down the journey. What we decided was that actually fans are smart, and once you've been to one show, you know that's what's going to happen. So it's better just to be upfront with people and say, look, this is the full price of the ticket including any fees that need to be added. And, you know, that's it. That's the price you're going to pay at the end. In terms of how that informs pricing, you know, we don't actually inform pricing ourselves. That's always down to, you know, the venue promoter, agent, artist. And I don't know. I don't know, maybe sometimes, because we see shows coming through now where they'll say, actually, let's put it up in 10 and make sure that that includes any of the fees. Or let's put that up for 20 or 30 and make sure that includes all the fees. So maybe a little bit is starting to happen. And, you know, I hope that's the way that that it goes 'cause people should really always be thinking about the final price that people are really going to pay. And, you know, that's another thing that fans tell us all the time that they like about the platform. It felt a little bit, I think, to begin with, counterintuitive to show people a bigger price. Like, it feels weird, almost, like, to start, but then actually if you speak to fans, then they'll say, no, It's better to know. Be upfront. How much is it going to cost me? Don't surprise me at the end.  [00:19:38] Dan Runcie: And this extends industries as well, right? It's like the Airbnb thing. No one wants to be surprised to see the price double because of the cleaning and service fee ends up being twice as much as the rental.  [00:19:49] Russ Tannen: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's just the way that we think things should be, you know, so it's a change. Like, it's been one of the big things we talk in length about with partners, especially new partners coming on board. They've done it a certain way for a long time. But actually, you know, there's all types of legislation getting passed now to actually enforce upfront ticket pricing. And I do think this will be the way that everyone does pricing for ticketing, you know, over the next five years or so.  [00:20:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it'll be fascinating to see how that all develops. I know that DICE has invested heavily in analytics and how you think about offering the best service, and so much of this also ties back to ensuring that consumers themselves are the ones that can get their hands on tickets. So how do you address bots? Because I know that's an ongoing concern for ticketing. [00:20:35] Russ Tannen: Yeah, with bots, in particular, we were very fortunate that we started the company when we did, and we built this from scratch as a mobile company. The main thing for us really with any bots or any really anti-secondary measure is that for the most part, you know, everything is happening on mobile. We actually have two of the founders of Google Deep Mind were seed round investors of ours. And very early day,s we were terrified that one of the reasons that the company would fail would be that we would crash on a big on sale. And we used to call it the Radiohead test. Like, if we could survive a Radiohead on sale, we could survive anything sort of thing. And we actually worked and we had our CTO at the time go into Deep Mind and like work with a couple of the developers there, thinking about the architecture that would support, you know, hundreds of thousands of transactions to support on sales, but also to think about how we could protect against, you know, fake people trying to buy tickets. So we've done a lot there, a lot around security. And yeah, we haven't had a problem with it to date. So we hope that that continues. But I think, honestly, the biggest thing is that we've built this all ourselves. We have this huge, amazing product team who blow my mind every day, every year that we do this. And yeah, I think that they've built something really special. That's not something like many other ticket companies have been building on the same, they've been building on the same platforms for many, many years. And I don't think it's as, new or as, you know, as capable of handling some of these bad actors as we are. [00:21:59] Dan Runcie: And I think, too, on the analytics piece, you've also used a lot of that to inform how you think about whether it's helping artists or venues or promoters think about capacity or other dynamics involved with selling a show or with putting a show on together. Can you walk us through that process and how that informs the end product that the consumer sees when they go to a show? [00:22:22] Russ Tannen: Oh, totally. Yeah. Our first hire was a data scientist, so I don't know. It's, like, we're starting a ticket company, what do we need? Okay. Like you might think, I don't know, someone from another ticket company or, you know, an operations person or like someone from a venue. Like, we were like, no, let's hire a data scientist first, 'cause we knew that our superpower would be personalized recommendations and building an algorithm that was extremely sophisticated, that was going to show people the right shows for them., Shows that we know that they like and shows that we think they're going to like at the right time. And, yeah, so we hired this amazing guy, Greg, who still works for us and, shout out to Greg, and he's been part of the team now for many years that's been working on how to ingest all the different data points we have, starting with our onboarding process, which is all about you know, syncing with your music library, but also, you know, onboarding process, showing you different artists and genres and everything, and then starting to record all of your different behaviors in the app, which shows you're going to what you've been on a waiting list for, what you've saved, what you're browsing a lot of, and using all of that to inform your discover page, which is really the heart of DICE and the home screen when you go in there. And when we have like a critical mass inventory in a city that we're in, like, in London or Paris or Barcelona or New York, once we have that inventory, then you have an extremely personalized experience that feels almost as personalized as your streaming experience can be where there's enough inventory that you're going to see things that you're really passionate about and excited about. And we're going to package that up in different ways for you. We're going to show you things that your friends are going to, we're going to show you the genres you like, your favorite artists. We're going to show you things from your music library. We're going to show you all the shows that have been announced for you from the last seven days. Fans are always missing these announcements because there's no coordination between venues or promoters on when things announce. It's just all getting announced all the time, every day, hundreds of announcements. So, when you're looking at putting up, like in London, we're maybe 1500 a month. In New York, it's not far from that either. There's so many shows, right? Like, how as a fan are you supposed to filter that? So we filter for them using the data and the algorithms that we've built, so that we're only telling them about on a Thursday, here's the shows that announced to you this week. And that's really where all of that. You know, that's the biggest piece from a fan perspective of where that all that investment that we've made in data analytics really comes to life, away from the numbers and the stats and everything. That's, like, the real-world use of it. And that's what's driving, you know, that massive percentage, that 40 percentage of sales that we're seeing come from discovery and from the push notifications we're sending. And, like I said before, I think the person, the people that really benefit from that is the artist because that's just sales that are just happening organically through the product that we've built and not another post that they have to do or another ad they have to pay for, which always comes out of their pocket eventually. So, yeah, that's where that investment pays off.  [00:25:09] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That 40% number is quite high, and it's impressive, I think, just given that this isn't something where people are necessarily consuming their product itself on the platform, right? And I think sometimes that discovery versus on-demand breakdown, you would likely expect that more from, as you mentioned, streaming something where you aren't consuming the actual product there. So the fact that you've been able to do that there is quite strong. And I do have to assume that given the investment that's been put into the data science and the fact that you can direct people and understand what people like, are there any desires or goals to be able to use the platform and the insights you have on these customers to offer them things in addition to concert ticket notifications or things like that, or other ways to leverage it knowing that you're reaching music fans? [00:25:58] Russ Tannen: Yeah, there's two. There's two parts to that. One is, I think, uniquely with DICE, we've built it in a way that what we saw before was that people would discover the show in one place, then they would listen to the artist on their streaming platform. They would invite their friends through their messaging app, and then they'd buy their ticket from the ticket company. And what we tried to do was build that stack into DICE. So you're going to open DICE and discover the show. It's all integrated with Spotify and Apple Music to preview the artist, so you're going to listen to the artist in the app. You can invite your friend directly through the app and then obviously buy the ticket there as well. So what we see is more of the journey happening there. Obviously, the event itself happens off of the app, but a lot more of the actual process of the functional and the emotional parts of like, going to the show, like who you're going to go with, for example, that can all happen within the app and people just spend a bit more time in the app than I think that they would on a traditional ticketing site where it's more like search to purchase is the normal journey, I'm sure, almost all of the sales. So I think that's where we've managed to extend the amount of time people are in there. We are really excited about sort of commerce in general, and we'd made an announcement previously around merchandise and sort of doing more merchandise and things like that, and that's something you're going to see a lot more from us in the new year as well. So, absolutely, and that's something that we already do. We do some really interesting things with Rough Trade Records in New York and also in London where we'll do, like, vinyl bundles with album launch tickets and things like that. So there's already other parts of commerce kind of happening through the app. And ultimately I think the product is well-designed to make it very easy for people to buy things. So yes, whether we're selling them a ticket, or we're selling an artist something alongside the ticket, or we're adding something onto the ticket, I think that it's a natural progression for us and something that we're excited about exploring more.  [00:27:44] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I know a lot of the data analytics discussion leads we've had here is focused more so on the consumer side. Does it inform as well things on the business side, such as the artists, thinking about what size venues that they may want to be in or the promoters thinking about how best to organize things? [00:28:02] Russ Tannen: Yeah, we've been working, I'd say that there's definitely some artists and teams who have been really tapped into that. And, you know, we have a whole artist development team based out of London, New York, LA, and they're working directly with artists and agencies and managers on these data reports where we're really showing them not just where we're seeing a lot of activity from their fans, but we're doing things like suggesting support acts based on other shows that the artists' fans have been to see that might be smaller shows, or we're looking at what cities we think they should play there. We're doing a lot of that on a very kind of bespoke level with artists and also working with artists on getting them into more of the DICE venues and thinking about really make sure that from day one, they're treating their fans well and building that community on DICE, using that waiting list data to plan the next show. There's been lots of successful stories and artists that we've done that with, but just one that's top of mind, a New York artist that's coming up would be Ice Spice, who we're working with on just doing a first show somewhere, so it's not announced yet. But our artist team here is working closely with her team on planning something there, and I think that's really exciting, like, an artist that's blowing up, who's also really keen to make sure that the experience for the fans is going to be amazing from day one, from show one.  [00:29:11] Dan Runcie: So with someone like Ice Spice who is clearly having a moment right now, what does that onboarding, the initial process, look like? Is it similar to the Kanye example where these things happen, or did someone on your team looking and scouting to see who's bubbling and then reaching out to be like, hey, let's make this happen? [00:29:28] Russ Tannen: Yeah, I guess I kind of take it for granted now 'cause we've been doing it for so long, but, you know, we literally have a meeting that probably looks more like an A&R meeting at a record label where we are really saying, okay, what are people hearing? What arts are coming through? And that's how we've really, like, you know, a ton of artists now over the years, we've really identified very early as artists that we want to support and have worked with very closely on different types of shows that they want to do. Like, another example that's kind of top of mind would be someone like Cuco, who he identified very early and worked with on this huge block party that he did in LA a few years ago and continue to build that relationship with. But there's really, like, thousands of examples now, so, probably over a thousand artists this year. By the end of the year, it'll be over a thousand artists would have really worked with us very closely, not just on having a show through the platform, but whether we've informed which venue they play or which promoter they're working with or helping them with the marketing on that event or some other really tangible thing that we've done with them. And really that artist development team, I think is, part of kind of, like, the special source of DICE that's like just a bit different to what a traditional ticket company would do. And I really think the fact that we're able to do that is because of the brand that we've built around DICE, and it is a platform and a brand that I think artists do feel comfortable with and want to be associated with as well versus, like, maybe a traditional ticket company that wouldn't have that same kind of feeling to it.  [00:30:46] Dan Runcie: Right. For the A&R piece of it, 'cause I think that's interesting and I think that it makes a lot of sense, what are the factors that go into the decisions that you're looking at? Because I know I talked to a few folks and there's been a bit of debate around which stats make sense to follow, which stats don't make sense, what's more signal versus noise, how do you determine that?  [00:31:06] Russ Tannen: Well, I think, we obviously have, obviously, this really interesting data ourselves. So a lot of the venues we work with at the smaller level. And at one point I was booking in London a 150-capacity venue, and I thought it was amazing when 400 people would show up for the hundred 50-capacity show, and we try and cram them all in. And I always saw that was an amazing sign. Those shows were always free, but obviously, now we are ticketing around the world, you know, many of the best 100 to 200 capacity venues that exist in, in some of the best music cities in the world. So what's fascinating for us is to not just be speaking to the people that are running and booking those venues, but to be looking at the data of, okay, which shows sold out on and out at that level, and who's got the biggest waiting list at that level. And we see a complete global picture of that. So some of the data points that I think we are finding most interesting are actually the ones that we're seeing very early come from our own data. And then I think that that's always going to be the debate on the, you know, the taste versus, or the gut versus data kind of thing, and a lot of that comes from hiring amazing people, like, we have on our artist development team whose judgment we trust very much to pick the things out that are really going to cut through. But yeah, I definitely think seeing some of those early signals, which may, in the grand scheme of things, look quite small, but I think if you are playing a hundred-capacity show and you have a hundred people on the waiting list, that's a great sign because if you're already driving 200 fans to a show, and you are brand new then, I think that's harder than going from, you know, 3,000 to 5,000 and finding those 2,000 people, I think those first 200 is really difficult.  [00:32:39] Dan Runcie: How important is streaming data or social media engagement or following in your analysis?  [00:32:47] Russ Tannen: I have to talk to the team about how much they're tracking that. I think it feels more like, Ice Spice is a good example of this. So we are talking about Ice Spice, Morgan on the team who's working with her team is telling me about this track, and he thinks it's going to be big, and we're talking to them about doing a show. And then in the time from when we first started speaking to her team to today, you know, her Instagram following has gone from, you know, in the tens of thousands to in the millions. And so it's more like a, we're right about this one moment. It didn't matter a few months ago or whatever, that there was only 10,000 followers or whatever. We wouldn't have ignored it 'cause it didn't have millions of followers already. But I think that now it's more like, okay, yeah, that is a good signal that this is really going to blow up. [00:33:27] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think just given that large number, it's hard to ignore that. It's been interesting though. I've talked to agents on this platform and they've said that they don't see as much of a correlation between streaming numbers and ticket sales. And of course, I think there's nuance there. Yes, someone like Drake or Bad Bunny that's doing 10 billion streams a year is obviously going to be in arenas and stadiums, but I think it was more so highlighting that some of the newer artists, it can be tougher because you have people that have, you know, so much of a strong following, but they may not necessarily have that following because of their music or because of other things about them. So, and I think we've just started to see more and more of that. So it does create, in some ways, a bit of a unique opportunity for the promoters or events companies that can be able to determine, yeah, like what is the true signal and what are the things that have less weight? [00:34:19] Russ Tannen: Yeah. We really want to try and work with managers and agents more and more on providing this data that we see so that they get a sense of what is really happening 'cause it is just so different. I think if someone's put their hand in their pocket and spent $30 on going to a show versus hearing a track on a playlist, obviously, like, it's just not the same type of commitment at all. So we're working to keep growing that team and expanding the number of artists that we're having that type of relationship with. And, yeah, anyone listening who wants to get in touch with our artist team is very welcome to as well, and you can do that through the site. But, yeah, we are keen to be talking to as many labels and managers, agents everyone really who's interested in kind of digging into that, especially if their artists already have shows on DICE as well on in any of our venues. We'd love to get into that with them.  [00:35:04] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Switching gears a bit, going back to the entrance and really expanding things in the US market, one of the things that stuck out to me from your past interviews was how you talked about how live events and concerts is much more of a localized business, and I'm sure that the experience that you all had in Europe and everything in the UK, there's slightly likely some differences considering things being localized, whether it's in New York City or some of the other markets here. What are some of those notable differences that you've picked up on in the US and some of the cities in the US as opposed to things in the UK?  [00:35:41] Russ Tannen: I'd say that one of the biggest differences is more of a technical thing, I guess, for us, which is that in European markets, the people who actually control the tickets, it's much more spread. So on one show you could have 10 ticket companies selling tickets for the same show, and then it's really just like on the fan to have a preferred outlet or who's, you know, boosting their link the most, honestly. So it's a little bit different versus the US where it's exclusively with the venue. So every show pretty much has one ticket company and it makes the market difficult to break into honestly because of that. It's very binary. You're either working on the show or you're not. Versus when we started in London, we could say, hey, to a promoter, we want 10 tickets to the show, and we would be able to list the show. So if you were going onto the app, you could see all these amazing artists playing. But we didn't have more than 10 tickets sometimes or 20 tickets versus US, where you really have to have the whole inventory and you have to be in a position to do it. I also think that how the market worked in Europe was one of the reasons that we invested so much in the discovery piece because we were competing on every single show. We had to sell our allotment of tickets versus in the US. I think the ticket companies as soon as they've signed the venue, they're almost more lazy maybe about it. So they haven't spent so much on discovery piece. And I think that's why, you know, our discovery story here and the way that it's working here is kind of a rich one and honestly just better for fans. But we needed to do it that way around. I think it would've much harder to start here and then go into Europe. So I'm glad it works the way it did. But that's been one of the big differences. I think for us, really, we're just excited about finding all of the best kind of quality independent operators, whether they're promoters or venues, and really helping them grow their businesses as well. And we love venues that have just really well-curated programming, like, we love the programming. Elsewhere, for example, is another New York venue that we work with where super diverse, amazing program that just kind of ticks all these different boxes, but always hits this quality bar that just seems like almost impossibly high, like, every night. It's really special. So we are really, like, excited about working with people like that. And New York such, it's an amazing city for music. So it's nice that this is kind of our main base here at the moment in the US.  [00:37:55] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And given that in the US, things are much more all or nothing, does that have any type of impact on how the tickets may go throughout the entire process? I know at least in the US, I've seen a few things. If a ticket is on for a while. And we talked a lot about scalpers and just their influence when tickets and the demand increases, right? We haven't talked as much about when the demand decreases 'cause I know that at times, I've seen things where artists will have their tickets go on Groupon and places like that where they'd be offered for a much lower price. How has that piece of it been in the US where, let's say there's a show that you've wanted to put on and if the resellers are needing to sell for the same price, but the demand itself may not necessarily reflect where it is, or if the artist is struggling to sell, how does the pricing dynamic impact that? [00:38:43] Russ Tannen: Yeah, I think you obviously see that, and not every show can be a sellout with, you know, tickets being sought after. I think that there's different strategies around that always. I think that for a lot of our partners, they're more used to handling all of that themselves where maybe we might be able to work on doing like competition strategy or just doing discounts or looking at other marketing channels or extra support that we can give to a show, whether that's really checking that we've done and reached all of the different audiences we think might be interested in a show and really keeping that as mobile and really trying to stay away from email, honestly. I think that one of the changes, if you think about how event marketing has changed through the years from kind of posters to magazine adverts to heavy social media to email, I think those email days are very much on the way out and really focusing on our push notification strategy and just having a very sticky product that people going to keep coming into naturally to check. That's going to be the best way to really thinking about increasing sales on low-selling shows. I think it was also a really interesting summer for people just being very honest about their ticket sales. Like, there were literally artists just coming out and saying, you know what? We're canceling these shows. We haven't sold enough tickets. Like, that was kind of new. I think people haven't been that straight up before, but that was definitely happening a bit this summer. And I think that it was a hard summer for lots of artists and lots of events and also some people had some huge success. So it's definitely a kind of uncertain time still, only obviously one year or so out of COVID and shows being back. I think that people are still feeling some of that after effects. There was a, obviously, huge rebound last summer that we really felt here as we were putting together the team still, and then suddenly we had all these venues turning on and using the product for the first time. So that was an interesting experience. But this summer I think things kind of bounced the other way a little bit, and we're going to hit a steadier stride coming into the end of the year, and I think next year is one that people are going to find easier to plan for, hopefully.  [00:40:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I bet. And I think that we saw a few things happen this summer. As you mentioned, there was some success, but I think it definitely was a bit subject to that power law, right, where the folks at the top were able to sell out and have their tickets sell for whatever the dynamic pricing set them at. And then a lot of the artists that were either your middle class of artists or emerging definitely struggled. But one area that I do see huge amount of opportunity is Latin America and in our Trapital Culture Report 2022, we talked a lot about how much growth Latin Music has had. Of course, Bad Bunny, but there's many of other artists as well. What does your Latin American strategy look like for DICE?  [00:41:11] Russ Tannen: I saw that in your report and, yeah, it totally reflected what we have been seeing as well, actually pulled the stats to share with you as well as you've done such great work. So it was fun to kind of pull something back. So Latin ticket sales for us increased nine times in the past year, so, 829% 2022 to 2021. And Latin events listed on DICE have quadrupled 2022 from 2021. So we are absolutely seeing the same. It's obviously huge. We've been working with people like the Paramount in LA and for a long time, been working with lots of Latin artists. We just did a show last year with Karol G at United Palace, with the Cuco show I mentioned, we did Bad Gyal in Spain. And also we haven't touched on it yet in this interview, but last year we bought Boiler Room, and they've also had a lot of success with Latin and Reggaeton programming, and worked with many artists, especially at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, which was another one of the festivals we work with where we had Boiler on stage this year. And they had this amazing program there, which included lots of Latin acts. So I think that, yeah, like, I think the whole industry's feeling it. I think it's super exciting. I think it's so cool. And I think that people are still discovering a lot of this incredible talent, and it just feels like a nice moment to have that exposure. I think for us more on the venue side. We're also doing this big push into Miami, and we just signed our first venues in Miami. And we're really excited about building that up there. And we just signed Club Space there, but there's many, many more venues there that we're looking to sign. So yeah, I think this is just like an interesting time. We're probably a little bit further away from actually launching in Latin America itself. But, you know, our partners Primavera Sound are just doing, over the next couple of months, are doing their first festivals down there, which are selling really well. Like, they're going to be really, really well. So definitely got my eye on maybe trying to make it down for one of those and checking it out. But yeah, it feels exciting, doesn't it?  [00:42:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it definitely does. 9x is impressive, and it's especially impressive because I think that a lot of the folks in the music industry are seeing the top line numbers on Latin, and they may assume, okay, well, yes, the Bad Bunny effect, his album is dominating. The difference for you all though is that you don't have artists that are like the Bad Bunny level. Well, I know you're working with them, but since you're primarily focused on that 200 to 10,000 capacity, it means that you're seeing this at that level, too. And that says, and I think that should instill a lot of confidence that this isn't just one or two artists that are pulling up everything. This is an entire movement.  [00:43:30] Russ Tannen: It's a really good point. Yeah. I think that's a really nice way to look at that data. And that's, yeah, it's absolutely what we're seeing and I think definitely it's hitting that point where it's not just that kind of trickle-down effect, but it's also like this bottom-up ground swell of artists coming through. So, yeah, that's definitely the right way to think about that, I think, that's awesome.  [00:43:48] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think that Africa, with what's happening with afro beats and some of the other sub-genres there, that's next up. It's only going to, I mean, it's already happening, but it's only a matter of time.  [00:43:58] Russ Tannen: It's happening, yeah, yeah.  [00:43:59] Dan Runcie: You know, we see those numbers start to have even bigger and bigger market share.  [00:44:03] Russ Tannen: Yeah, it gets me excited 'cause we're, you know, it takes so much every time we launch into a new country, and we kind of have to do it kind of one by one, and it's a big focus. But we really want to build DICE into being a global business and be truly global. And that doesn't mean just the kind of markets that have this really established touring infrastructure, all these other things. We want to be everywhere and explore all of these different genres and cultures in a way that makes sense. And, yeah, we're excited to be everywhere in the next few years. But in the meantime, yeah, we are helping, you know, do what we can to support all different types of music and sub genres of music and subcultures within music, and we just keep an eye on what we think the next big thing is going to be as well.  [00:44:42] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Well, Russ, this has been great. Before we let you go though, what's one big thing that's on your radar for DICE that you're focusing on for 2023?  [00:44:52] Russ Tannen: I think for us the big thing for us next year is really going to be expanding across the rest of the country here. We are really excited to be in tons of cities, and there's so many amazing music cities in the US as you well know. And we're excited to keep building and be everywhere because we want to be sat having conversations with artists where we can talk about doing a full US tour with them, playing all in venues that we work with, and helping them to plan how to grow across the country. So that's going to be the big push for next year.  [00:45:22] Dan Runcie: Nice. Exciting stuff. All right. Well, if people want to follow along with DICE and if they want to set up their own profile, where do they go?  [00:45:30] Russ Tannen: They can go straight to dice.fm. So that's the best place if you want to partner with us, if you want to get in touch with the arts development team, if you are a promoter or a venue that wants to work with us, everything's there. If you want to buy tickets and play around with the app, then head to, you know, the app store, iOS, Android, and download the app and have a play around with it. And yeah, let us know what you think. And people are more than welcome to get in touch with me directly as well. So it's just russ@dice.fm and they can email me directly. It's great.  [00:45:57] Dan Runcie: Nice. Sounds good. And yeah, the next time that Kanye throws one of these impromptu listening parties or these Wyoming get-togethers, I'll look to see if I see that DICE redirect.  [00:46:09] Russ Tannen: Yeah, oh, well, I'll let you know if it's going to happen. I'll give you the heads-up.  [00:46:12] Dan Runcie: Right. Sounds good. Thanks again, Russ. It's a pleasure.  [00:46:14] Russ Tannen: Thanks so much, Dan. Thanks. [00:46:18] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Rory Felton has spent most of his past two decades in music being pro-artist. He developed talent and sold millions of records under his Militia Group label that he co-founded and eventually sold to Sony. In the early days of social media, Rory worked with Top 40 artists and majors to monetize on these new platforms. That’s why it was ironic that Rory was recently criticized for being anti-artist.  Rory founded HitPiece two years ago. HitPiece is an NFT marketplace focused solely on music collections. While in beta earlier this year, unauthorized NFTs from big-name artists became available for purchase on HitPiece. HitPiece was hit with wide-spread backlash from artists, the RIAA, and many others for copyright infringement. The company quickly went dark while the team recalibrated its business. Months later, HitPiece has now re-launched. This time with strictly-authenticated collections on-site from rising artists like ATL Jacob, Pyrex Whippa, and proven commodities such as Rick Ross. A metaverse add-on is also in the works to virtually display purchased NFTs. In many ways, the industry-wide blowback changed both Rory and HitPiece. The company’s intent has stayed consistent from the get-go: to make NFTs easy for both artists and fans. Rory joined me on the show to cover what went wrong with HitPiece earlier this year, why this relaunch is different, and the opportunities and challenges NFTs have inside the music industry. Here’s everything we covered: [2:58] Rory’s two decades in the industry pre-HitPiece [6:07] “Best time in human history to be an artist”  [9:19] What went wrong with HitPiece’s beta release [13:33] Re-gaining industry trust after the backlash  [16:22] Did HitPiece consider rebranding? [19:12] How HitPiece built a collection with rising star ATL Jacob [20:27] Web3 co-existing with industry, not replacing it [27:34] Building out a music-centric metaverse  [33:32] How HitPiece will compete against Facebook, Opensea, and other big players [35:57] Types of NFT collections on HitPiece [39:00] How to win the music industry in 2022 and onward  [43:17] HitPiece plans for 2023 Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Rory Felton, @Roryfelton   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Rory Felton: We think this space is for everyone. And we think that the smallest artists on the planet can actually benefit from Web 3.0 in a way that maybe streaming isn't changing the game for them right now. For instance, we've worked with baby developing artists that are making more money from Web 3.0 in one launch of an NFT collection than they would over two to three months from streaming. In general, we all think music's the coolest thing in the world. And so we want to revalue it in a way that maybe NFTs allow us to that technology hasn't enabled in the past. [00:00:40] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:60] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Rory Felton. He is the co-founder and CEO of HitPiece, a company that's bringing artists and fans together through NFTs in real life experiences, metaverse experiences and more. HitPiece is one of our sponsors this quarter for Trapital, and I wanted to have this conversation because Rory and HitPiece have had a very interesting past couple of months. Back in February, they launched a platform, but there was a ton of controversy surrounding it because a lot of artists had their music and their NFTs for sale on the platform without their consent, and understandably so, it created a bunch of frustration and news around some of the consent around NFTs, some of the perception around the space overall and how that impacted Rory and the team. So in this conversation, we talked about it. We talked about how that happened, why it happened, and what Roy and the team are doing now moving forward for that not to happen in the future. And then we talked about what does HitPiece look like now moving forward, what are the opportunities more broadly for Web 3.0 companies in music, what are some of the challenges, what are some of the artists that they're working with now, like ATL Jacob, who just signed with Republic Records. So we talked about that, and Rory has a ton of experience in the music industry, even before HitPiece. So we talked about how that shapes his current strategy and what he thinks successful look like, not just for HitPiece, but for the overall industry moving forward. Great conversation and tons of insights, and especially for a lot of the founders that have built stuff messed up and want to hear what it's like to keep things going. This is a good one to listen to. Here's my chat with Rory.  [00:02:39] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we are joined by Rory Felton, who is the co-founder and CEO of HitPiece. But before we talk about HitPiece or anything like that, I know you've worked in music for a number of years and you've had a few different hats in this industry. What attracted you to the space early on?  [00:02:58] Rory Felton: Oh, man. So when I was 15, I started playing music and I learned pretty quickly that I really couldn't write songs very well. So when I was 16, I started putting on local shows for artists booking regional acts, and that naturally turned into putting out records for artists. And in the nineties, we were manufacturing CDs, so I actually learned the process of printing, shipping it to a factory, calling distributors, trying to get them to ship out our CDs to retailers. And that's how I started. In 2000, I moved out to LA to go to school at SC, was a little bored and started another record label. Our first few records did quite well. I think our first record almost went gold, and so that created enough revenue to really fund the company and grow that record label. And for the next 10 years, we ended up selling millions of records. I developed dozens of artists, felt really proud of what we accomplished. Sony Music later invested in the company and later acquired the major artists that I worked And I took a breather for a moment because working with artists can be a lot of work and can be emotional and and challenging in so many ways, but also fun and exciting. And I ended up finding a real passion for the technology side of the music industry. I really wanted to have sort of a macro impact on the industry in helping artists create new technologies to connect with their fan base, develop new business models. And I saw, sort of saw the old record company structure or record deal structure is sort of a little bit antiquated, and there are so many technologies here that could allow artists to directly connect with their fans and connect and create new and unique revenue streams. And so I spent several years in the early 2010s helping top 40 artists sell music and merchandise in stream on social media like Gaga, Green Day, Snoop Dog, Tim McGraw, A$AP Rocky, all the major labels. And I did a couple years overseas on a volunteer trip and then came back to the music space really on artist management initially, but also in blockchain. I bought Bitcoin in 2014 and was always really curious about blockchain's application to the music space. And in 2018 I co-wrote a white paper on digital collectibles for artists and could not get anyone's attention back then on this space and the idea of fans buying digital merchandise from artists and connecting with them and the idea of an artist creating a layer of community ownership and what they were doing. And then obviously fast forward a couple of years, the NFT space, that specific protocol has really taken off four creatives and four artists. And I decided to jump in full time to apply this innovation to the music industry 'cause I saw so many opportunities for artists to take advantage of it. [00:05:43] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And one thing there before we get to the HitPiece part of it where you are today, selling your record label and everything there to Sony, what is it like watching the current movement now with other record labels being bought up by other record labels, especially the majors or just some of the catalog purchases there? Because I'm sure you did this in a very different market than what we're seeing now.  [00:06:07] Rory Felton: Yeah, so a lot of people don't remember this, but in 2006 to like 2011, it was really hairy for the record industry. There were a lot of unknowns. Downloading was here, digital like iTunes and its competitors, however, streaming as a paid streaming format really hadn't taken off or really been fully established. And so you had these massive problems still with file sharing and people just assuming music was free, right? And just downloading it without paying for it from all sorts of websites. And so there was this moment, an era where like, gosh, golly, we don't know if these major labels are really going to figure it out. And kudos to them, they struck some really savvy deals and made streaming something that really, really worked. So today's era has been amazing. I get really excited for artists that are able to have huge liquidity opportunities if they've built a catalog over their lifetime. And then also I get really excited just as more opportunities to finance your career than there ever have been. You can now borrow against your catalog. You can borrow against your master rights or publishing rights to fund something you want to do moving forward. You could never do that 10 or 15 years ago. So you have players like that in this space. You have distributors in this space, almost playing like record labels and advancing monies to artists, but allowing artists to keep their masters. And then you have record labels sort of playing as distributors. And so you have all these middle men kind of playing as different roles. And I think it's great 'cause artists have more opportunity now than they've ever been. I've been saying this for a few years. It is the best time in human history to be a music artist. It was so hard in the nineties and so hard in the early 2000s to stand out, and now even though we are in some economic challenges right now, and just the macro economy, it's still really the best time in human history to be a music artist.  [00:07:59] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's generally where I land with this too. I know that there's a lot of people that have a bit of the nostalgia and yearning for being able to sell CDs and being able to make the money off of CDs, but it was still a market that had tons of gatekeepers. And even without Napster, I still think that there would be a lot of challenges 'cause there were a bunch of CD sales that were of bad catalog that weren't exactly of new things, but we could go all day talking about that. But it was a fascinating time for sure. But fast forwarding a few years though, with HitPiece, of course you have the idea and you see the opportunity to be able to make it easier for artists to monetize and take advantage of what's here. And I know that earlier this year, the launch day didn't go the way that you had wanted it to. And there was a lot of press and some negative things written about just the intent and where you all were trying to go. And I know that there are also a few artists too, whether it's like Jack Antonoff and a few others that had some complaints about how it went down and after reading a few of those, I definitely saw some of the responses and from your perspective as well, but I never really got a good, clear sense for what was the . Intent and what would this have looked like if the launch had went as well as it could have, so it'd be great to hear a little bit about that, because I feel that's the part that was a little bit missing in some of the discussions about what had happened.  [00:09:19] Rory Felton: Yeah. So first and foremost, I really believe in innovation, and I really believe in enriching artists, and artists being able to control their music and what they're doing. And so we were looking at this space and thinking about like, man, if I put on my music fan hat, what's the ideal experience I want as a music fan? What would I love to have more than anything? And platforms like Spotify and Apple Music has sort of trained us to feel like everything could be in one place. And so we put together this idea to create an experiment where we tried to show artists and labels and rights holders, hey, this is what the future could look like. Here's sort of this private game experience that we think would be really fun to onboard a huge number of people into this space very quickly and create a massive revenue stream for artists and rights holders. And where we really messed up is we failed to put the proper guardrails around it to where too much of it was public too fast. And that was something that we definitely messed up with. We were having active discussions with hundreds of artists, managers, major record companies. We had showed them what we're doing. Hey, what do you think of this experience we're creating? And all the feedback that we received was highly positive. Everyone was really excited about this potential future for a platform that could turn on a whole new revenue stream for them without a lot of work. One thing I've experienced as a manager and a record company founder is that artists are so busy. They're in the studio making music all the time. They have to go on tour, they have to make content for social media all the time right now. They're so busy doing all these things you don't want to add just another thing to their plate. And so we've always tried to make it, what's the easiest way for them to onboard into a new space without having to create a huge amount of work for them? So that was our intent. Clearly, we failed to have the proper guard rails around it. And we took down the beta after a few weeks. And there were obviously some artists that expressed some frustration with it. And since then, we've had conversations with hundreds of artists and labels and managers and industry leaders, sharing with them how we feel about this space, what we think is coming, and the overall sediment has been really about excitement and enthusiasm. about what's coming in this space and the opportunities that are being created for artists and rights holders in this space.  [00:11:39] Dan Runcie: Got it. So if I'm understanding correctly, it's like you were trying to show, okay, this is what it could look like. Let's give you an example of what this could look like. Like, if your Taylor Swift, like this is a type of revenue stream that you could unlock, but the presentation of it was more so, hey, here's where you can buy Taylor Swift's, you know, access to her likeness or access to her music. And you were trying to more so show a demo as opposed to an actual marketplace. Do I have that right?  [00:12:07] Rory Felton: Yeah, it was definitely a live demo. There was no music used on the website. As a music rights holder myself, as someone that's worked with artists for decades, we would never utilize music in a way that was infringing on their rights or unapproved in any way. And that's something that I think really got lost in the storm of it all is the fact that there was no music on the website. We had some marketing language on the website, and again, we've looked at this as a beta experiment for a small audience. It was by no means built or intended to be exposed to the world at large. But we did have some language on the website that was not fully fleshed out at the time, again, like many beta experiments are.  [00:12:49] Dan Runcie: So was part of it also as well that the beta was meant to be a bit of a closed opportunity, but then it leaked, or then it got out?  [00:12:58] Rory Felton: It was public and that was an error on our end. You know, we failed to have the guardrails built around to cut off certain sections or functions of the website that shouldn't have been made public. [00:13:08] Dan Runcie: Got it. Okay. So since then, how has it been having a lot of these conversations? 'cause obviously you were able to drum up a bunch of support leading up to February and you still had plenty of connections now with artists that we'll get into soon. But what was it like having those conversations, whether it's with labels or others where you're trying to communicate not just what happened but also build up a bit of trust given the impact? [00:13:33] Rory Felton: Yeah. What we found is that, well, having been in this industry for two decades, I have a huge number of relationships from, you know, the tops of the major record companies, major publishers to many, many, many managers of both developing artists and some of the biggest artists in the world. And they know me, right, so they knew my heart, they knew where I was coming from, and I just was able to be honest with them, and say, look, we moved a little too fast here. We built this product a little too fast without fully flushing out where we should put certain guardrails in place, and the response was, hey, look, we get it, no problem. We're looking for solutions in this space. We need easy ways to launch collections to audiences that might want to be interested in this. And right now everything on the market feels a little too complicated, right? NFTs and Web 3.0, it feels nerdy and it feels complex. And I think a lot of the early people in this space may have made it that way on purpose so that there feels like there's a level of like seniority or gatekeeping to it. And we've approached this and been like, no, this is actually pretty simple. This is actually making what has existed in the world of music already, such as VIP experiences, and fan clubs, and even, like, DRM music, and it's creating it on a layer of new technology that actually gives more ownership to fans and actually deepens relationships between artists and fans. And so that response has been really exciting and I think that's what's contributed to us being able to onboard the large volume of artists that we have onboarded so far and continue to have exciting conversations every single day with folks across this space.  [00:15:14] Dan Runcie: Have there been any lingering impacts since then? Like, obviously there's the initial response and things have happened. But since you've relaunched. And it does seem like, as you mentioned, you still are stable of artists and there are a bunch of folks that you're working with but are there any lingering impacts from what had happened?  [00:15:30] Rory Felton: I would say there's probably still some artists that just don't want to have anything to do with the NFT space. I think that in general, there's still a lot of misunderstanding around what Web 3.0 is and what it can enable, and there seems to, generally speaking, a level of negative sentiment towards NFTs in some categories of the music industry. But that seems to be sort of a blanket feeling or sentiment towards NFTs, not necessarily what we're doing. [00:15:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I've heard that from, was just talking to a few people about this earlier this week, and we've heard it as well, just the polarizing nature of it that's bigger than HitPiece. And I think it's something for a lot of companies to navigate, but it's not necessarily at one company itself. But, I guess, leading up to the relaunch recently, were there any talks at all about rebranding or anything like that? 'Cause obviously I know that staying with the name is also a statement in itself.  [00:16:22] Rory Felton: Yeah, clearly, we thought about every sort of path we could take. You know, we even thought like, do we want to do this? Like, is this worth the battle, right? And what we decided at the end of the day was, look, some folks thought we were doing something we were not doing at all. Our intent was completely misconstrued, and we felt like if we were to shut it all down and say, you know, good night. It's almost like the people that were creating this narrative would've won or that narrative would've become true, right? In our hearts, in our feeling, and everyone at the company that's at the company that was experienced all that, we all felt together, like, look, this isn't what we are doing. This isn't what we're all about. Like, we should stick with it and see this through because we felt like the brand was now very well known for better or worse, and it's up to us to sort of, to see it through and show to the world that, no, this isn't what we were trying to do. We're actually making something amazing, we think, for artists and so far, in the collections that we've launched has done really well for the artists that we've worked with. So that's what led to our decision to stick with the brand and keep going. We could have posited to a whole other brand, but everyone would just say, oh, those are the same folks that did this. So what would be the point of that? Because it's still me. Unlike a lot of people in this space, I've never been anonymous, right? I've always been completely public with who I am. HitPiece was on my LinkedIn, on my branding since early last year. I didn't hide from any of this. I engaged with anyone that wanted to have a conversation and still will. So it's not in our nature to hide or to run away. We think that Web 3.0 is still a huge game changer for both developing and establishing artists, and we want to provide incredible solutions for artists.  [00:18:10] Dan Runcie: And what was the hardest part for you personally during all of this, as the founder, as the leader of the organization, but also as a human being dealing with the fallout and just trying to keep things moving? [00:18:22] Rory Felton: Oh gosh. I think for a little bit, like, you know, personally I'm a father. I'm a husband, and so for me, it's just not letting what some people in social media or in the media might say about me impact who I know I am and who I am to my family. First and foremost, that's always most important to me. So that was probably the biggest challenge and, you know, clearly, it's not something that we wanted to happen, but we're really excited and bullish on the future right now.  [00:18:48] Dan Runcie: For sure. And I think you have a lot of reasons, too. One of the artists that you have, ATL Jacob recently signed a deal with Republic Records. And I think he's someone who's definitely been rising quite a bit, and I assume that's a partnership that you are able to land in the most recent months. So what did that look like and what has it been like working alongside someone like him and then seeing the growth continue? [00:19:12] Rory Felton: Yeah, Jacob was amazing. We are so blessed to really have just the perfect time to connect and meet him and hear about what he thought about this space, and what he wanted to do, and had that sort of build a collection together that really made sense for his brand and offer value to his super fans that really you can't get any other way. And so that's what we're really excited about. We, of course, knew he was in conversations with major labels at the time and knew something would happen in that space. We just feel honored and privileged that we get to be his partner for Web 3.0 because he's clearly an incredible talent that's had huge success on the producing side in the last couple of years, and I think we're going to see him break out as an artist over the next year and reach completely new milestones as well in his career. [00:19:57] Dan Runcie: And what was it like for what he was able to do specifically on HitPiece? 'Cause I think a lot of people that see artists, they understand what it's like to be on a major label, but from an economic standpoint, like what they were able to do with a platform like yours, there still is a bit of questions, and this honestly may lead to some of the confusion some artists may have about NFTs, Web 3.0 in general, so obviously you may not be able to share all the details, but, like, what did things look like for him right now with what you've all been able to work on and what he's released, and what that ends up looking like for him?  [00:20:27] Rory Felton: Yeah, so he's building a beautiful collection of art that's going to be completely collectible, and those tokens will be connected to incredible in real-life experiences. So some of those tokens can be redeemed for a studio session with ATL Jacob. So rather than, typically in the music industry, right, you have to go through a manager or you have to go through a record company. You have to go through gatekeepers to get to someone on Jacob's level. Here we're saying, no, let's break down all the barriers and say, actually through Web 3.0, you can have an incredible experience, and you could work with, you know, a producer that spends six months at the number one rap producer chart on Billboard. Like, you can actually work with them and make a record together, right? Experiences like that we think are incredible, exclusive merchandising items. And being able to essentially build a really connected VIP club of sorts that will get you access to experiences, to events, to really in- person, one on one time with these artists and producers that people love. You know, this is what I think Web 3.0 is all about. It's creating experiences that are unparalleled in other parts of the music industry.  [00:21:40] Dan Runcie: So given those experiences, and I think those are definitely things that fans and everything value and things that he could likely build a career standalone on. Is there any particular question or thought about when an artist-producer like him goes in, does a deal with a major label as a bit of it like, oh, well why did you need to do that? Like, you could have continued working here, like, part of the promise is getting more inherent value for the work itself. Was there any tension there at all with him or even with some of the other artists?  [00:22:11] Rory Felton: No, because every artist is different, and every artist gets different types of opportunities. And to me, Web 3.0 is not about being in Web 3.0 only and forgetting about the rest of the industry. It's not like you release your content or your music only as NFT and you don't do streaming, right? It's not like you do that only and you don't go on tour, or you don't sync your music to film and TV, or you don't do brand partnerships. It's just one part of the bigger puzzle of connecting with fans and connecting with bigger audiences. I think this huge opportunity for artists to connect with fans through Web 3.0 while also doing partnerships on the record side that they want to do that work best for them and their brand. For Jacob specifically, he has a whole record label, Wicked Money Family, that he can do. He can sign new artists, too, and they all can go through this bigger system. That's not something that not every artist can just do on their own, right, being able to plug into a bigger system is great for him. What it does do is it may limit what type of content an artist can mint as an NFT on their own, such as if you're in an exclusive recording contract, it may limit or prohibit what specifically you can do with music. But those are always open discussions, and every single recording contract is unique and specific and different, and provide artists and labels with all sorts of different rights. [00:23:35] Dan Runcie: Got it. So for someone like him, and I guess as well thinking about how you're building the business, I do feel like your stance essentially is that a company like HitPiece can work, and they don't necessarily have to be exclusively here. They could work with majors, they could work with others. Do you feel like that mentality is similar to other founders you may talk to in Web 3.0 or with NFTs? Because some of the folks I talk to, there's a bit more of that dogmatic approach where the purpose of our platform is that you don't need to do that.  [00:24:08] Rory Felton: Yeah. So first and foremost, every partnership we have with an artist is non-exclusive. They could do a collection with us and go to a collection with anyone else or on their own using their own software at any time. That's something that I believe in. I believe in, like, we're not here to be an exclusive partner in any way. So I believe in artist freedom. Artists should have the freedom to do a record deal if they want to. Artists should also have the freedom to say, hey, look, I'm going to stay independent. I'm going to build up a balance sheet of masters and publishing that I own, and I'm going to leverage that in the way that I want to. I think every path is different for each artist and some work for others, and some don't work for others. And I've seen artists stay independent, build balance sheets of masters, and publish they own, and be tremendously successful. They build these multimillion-dollar businesses that they can operate and function like their own business. And then at the same time, that can just build up their leverage for if a major label wants to do a deal with them, they're saying, hey, look, my business is already doing millions of dollars a year. If you want to be in business with my business, you've gotta make it worth my while. To me, it's about, I think Web 3.0 increases leverage for artists if they embrace it and engage that community. But by no means would I look at it as a dogmatic Web 3.0 anti-record company approach. I don't think that's it at all. I think we're already seeing major labels enter Web 3.0 and allow their artists to try things in Web 3.0 that I think is really exciting. And every conversation I have with major labels and people at those companies is it's curiosity, it's intriguing, it's fun. They are by no means looking at it as a do-or-die or like you said, a dogmatic approach. I come from the music industry. I think maybe some other founders in this space don't have two decades of music experience, and so they're wanting to disrupt an industry that they think needs disruption. Whereas I know all these, all my friends that work at labels or at management companies, I mean, they bleed for artists. They put their heart and soul into trying to break new artists, and these are the people you want to be a part of your business, right? You don't want to just alienate them and cut them off. That being said, historically, some record deals have been a little unfair for the artists, right? And I'm not trying to say that that's not the case, but I think innovation like Web 3.0 is continuing to increase artist leverage and continuing to give them more options. More options is really what it's all about.  [00:26:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think even the point that you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, just your stance on streaming itself and what it unlocked for the business, that is a bit more of that holistic perspective as opposed to some others that, you know, I think the belief that music should have inherent value, which it should. I think it's a bit of that dichotomy, and to be honest, you hear less of that from the record labels with, most of the time, it maybe from some of the founders and folks outside of the industry. But it's a fascinating time. It's a fascinating time. And I know that with you, you're not just thinking about NFTs and things minting for HitPiece, you're also having a metaverse, you have the Lounge and having that as an opportunity for artists, and I know that's something that's continuing developing as well. What does that look like and what does that opportunity look like for artists?  [00:27:34] Rory Felton: Yeah, so one, we realized there's a small but growing population of people that love to collect music as NFT format. I think of NFT as it applies to audio music as a new format, just like there was vinyl, there was downloads, there was streaming. NFT is sort of a new type of format for music, and there wasn't really a centralized place to play all your music. There are a couple of apps butting up that allow you to sort of plug into your wallet and play your music collection. We wanted to create a space that allowed a collector to display NFTs that they're collecting from music artists on the wall, but also put them on a record shelf if they're music NFTs and allow people, allow them to come in and play their own music, allow other people to come into a fans room and play their music. I've seen that a lot of these metaverse spaces that fans are using to share their NFTs are almost like part business card part, like, showing off and bragging to their friends and their community what they own, what they collect. It reminds me a lot as being a teenager of collecting CDs and records that were hard to find from really, really new artists and sort of bragging with your friends that you got to them earlier than they did. And we wanted to sort of mimic this experience in a really cool, beautiful, metaverse space and also be a space that artists could brand and create their own version of, as well as invite their VIP community to be a part of, be it virtual record listening parties or virtual tour kickoffs where they could display or present new music. One functionality we have that artists are taking advantage of is token-gated releases. So they might release regular releases like they always do but put out maybe a limited edition mixtape that is only available to people who buy an NFT to access it. And so you go into the Lounge, our system reads that you have that NFT in your wallet and it unlocks access to music that you wouldn't otherwise have. That doesn't just have to be music. It can be all sorts of content. So the idea is you're rewarding your most engaged community token holders with really cool experiences. We speak with artists that want to create experiences that get updated every single month, so keeps fans coming back to this space that they almost treat like a social media platform or like a website, but the artist gets to control it entirely themselves. [00:29:58] Dan Runcie: I feel like the fan piece of this is the unique piece of this, and I know that's a bit of the broader conversations that people have had about the metaverse, but being able to have that type of way to actually physically show what you have, and I think this is a piece that was missing a bit from, I'll call it the first stage of the NFT boom, right? We saw a lot of people changing their profile picks, but ultimately, how do you create the opportunity for people to have some type of visual that you can see, right? Like, people are buying vinyls right now. People want to be able to have those vinyls visible or no different than buying DVDs or VHS tapes back in the day. Part of it was the medium itself, but you also, it was a statement of who you are. Having some type of collection that can show that I think it's valuable, plus all of the exclusive perks that they can get from their favorite artist or from their type of experiences. I do think that that is something that a lot of fans would value, assuming that it can be somewhere where the people that they want to see those things also are engaged in. [00:30:59] Rory Felton: Yeah, we see there's millions of people around the world that build up massive record collections on their wall. And when you go into their house, it's often the main feature of their house is their record collection. And oftentimes, that's tied to a really high-end audio system as well, depending on where you're at and your lifestyle, right? And we wanted to sort of create that experience for anyone or everyone in the metaverse space. And so that's what the Lounge is built around, is sort of to cater to that type of collector, if you will. I think we're still very early in the Web 3.0 NFT space, clearly with where the economy's at. I think we're going to start to see some huge growth over the next year or two, but we wanted to build these tools now for people so that when more and more people start to come into this space every month, every quarter, they're already ready for them to sort of plug into. And in fact, in a certain sense, it provides more utility for all NFTs. So you could buy music NFTs anywhere you want to on the internet and be able to pull them into this Lounge space we've created for them to perform, to play, and to share with their friends and their community. [00:32:05] Dan Runcie: So this leads me to the age-old question I'm sure every venture capitalist asks at some point, how do you compete this against Facebook or Meta and their offering to eventually try to do this similar type of thing? But obviously, you have a more of a specific community. But I do know that with a lot of the different types of metaverse experiences, that type of thought is something that's likely in the back of the minds for a lot of founders. [00:32:30] Rory Felton: I think that there's clearly dozens of metaverse spaces that already exist. We're not necessarily looking to create an entire universe. We just want to create experiences and artist-branded experiences. And I think potentially we see a future where these artist-branded virtual slash metaverse experiences can be interoperable with a metaverse space that Meta is building or with the other ones that exist right now, such as Sandbox and Decentraland. We, of course, being a blockchain-based company, we believe in decentralization. We think that that's a value to be recognized and to be held up. And so if we continue to see other metaverse spaces built on the same or similar blockchains, I think we're going to see them be interoperable in new ways that may currently just not exist yet.  [00:33:22] Dan Runcie: And would the same type of logic apply as well for the marketplace that you all have, given folks like OpenSea or some of the other broader platforms?  [00:33:32] Rory Felton: So our big differentiator from a platform like OpenSea is we only allow authenticated artists to mint NFTs in our platform. One of the big challenges I see with some of the secondary-focused NFT marketplaces is that it's a wild west still. There's an insane amount of content that infringes on other people's rights that use all sorts of artists' name, image, like this audio without any sort of permission, right? And unlike a lot of people in this space or some people in this space, we actually believe in copyright. We think that's really valuable for artists and artists investors, and we really wanted to make sure that we prevent it as much as possible, people minting content that they didn't control through our platform. And so when fans or collectors come to HitPiece.com, they can feel assured that everything on our platform is authentic, is real, is coming from the artist that says it's coming from. And that's also why we were the first NFT company to integrate with Audible Magic. Audible Magic allows us to scan every single piece of audio file that gets uploaded to HitPiece to be minted as an NFT. And we test that against their massive database of over a hundred million songs to see if that song has been registered previously or as a copyrighted work from a record company or an artist. And we've already been able to say, hang on, that song's copyright. We need to confirm whether this artist actually controls the copyright of this audio file. And so we want to make sure that only the authenticated parties, the owners of works are actually able to mint NFTs of their creative content through HitPiece. So that's a big difference I see versus like the secondary markets of the world. But we also think ours is a little bit more just music-focused, right? Music NFTs are a little different than PFP projects or artwork NFTs, and so it really requires a different experience than maybe what some of the secondary markets that appeal to every one offer, if that makes sense. [00:35:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. And I assume that some of the guardrails there to make sure that things are authenticated, to make sure it has the right copyright and licensing, also tie back to ensuring that what had happened back in February doesn't happen again. So part of that authentication, I'm sure likely may slow down some of the process, but it is how you ensure that everything that is there and what is transparent and seen is ultimately what you're trying to actually sell.  [00:35:57] Rory Felton: Yeah. I don't think an experience that we've built, that you can go to HitPiece.com and see right now really exists anywhere else, and we've really tried to focus on making, one, authenticated protecting rights holders. And two, just make it super simple and easy for both artists who are new to this space that may not fully understand all the language and this new terminology that's come around, make it super easy for them to create their own collections and start minting NFTs with their creative content. And then also just make it super easy for music fans, you know, that haven't purchased an NFT to be able to collect one. I would say that really a small, small number of music fans overall have still entered Web 3.0 or acquired an NFT, be it for free or purchase, and there's still a huge amount of education that platforms like ourselves need to do and others about how to onboard into this space. [00:36:52] Dan Runcie: So for you all, specifically, with the folks you have on board before and up to this point, is ATL Jacob, is he the most successful artist or the artist that's made the most money on the platform so far?  [00:37:04] Rory Felton: So ATL Jacob's collection has not launched yet. We have launched a variety of collections from artists like Surf, and we have a couple of collections dropping tomorrow. This interview, of course, will be out after this date. From King Midas, who's a Baltimore artist, and from Pyrex Whippa, who's a multi-platinum producer slash artist, a part of the 808 Mafia. He's worked with artists like Future, Juice WRLD, DaBaby. And his collection also involves granting people rights to collaborate with him in the studio. Some actually get a limited-edition skateboard from him. And also some of them actually get a limited edition beat kit from him as well. So there's all these cool, both digital and in real-life experiences, tied to token ownership, which we believe in.  [00:37:50] Dan Runcie: No, that's solid.  [00:37:51] Rory Felton: But beyond those, we do have some other, like, multi-platinum slash diamond level music artists, Grammy-nominated artists that we're looking to announce really, really soon. [00:38:02] Dan Runcie: Any hints as to who they may be?  [00:38:05] Rory Felton: I'll just say we have a lot of love for Atlanta.  [00:38:08] Dan Runcie: Okay.  [00:38:08] Rory Felton: Atlanta moves the culture. Atlanta's, like, where my heart is. I love going to Atlanta. I think everyone in Atlanta is just coming. Being in LA for 20 years, like Atlanta's so nice. You have that southern hospitality, but you have that hustle and that combination of both. Like, I just love being in Atlanta. I love the vibe of Atlanta.  [00:38:25] Dan Runcie: All right. We'll definitely look out for that one, for sure. Thinking about the company and hearing how you're building it, though, it does make me think about this article that you had written a couple of years back. I think it was an article you posted on LinkedIn actually is like, How to Win the Music Industry of 2019-2025, and you're describing what the type of company would look like and what type of things they need to have in place. And now that we're a couple of years past that, what are you seeing in the industry now, and is there any specific company that you think is checking all those boxes?  [00:39:00] Rory Felton: Oh, man. I think when I wrote that, it was one of those, like late night, man, why doesn't this company exist? You know, if I had a hundred million dollars, this is what I would do, right? And it's interesting, I see companies doing bits and pieces of that, and what's fascinating is like I sometimes forget that I published that article, and I've even had, you know, investors and venture capital people reach out, nothing to do with HitPiece. They're just really curious about what I wrote, and they're like, this is it. How do we do this? And it's been fascinating to see that piece impact, if you will. No one's doing all of that, but I'll gladly compliment folks that I think are moving in that direction. United Masters and what Steve Stoute built, I think, is incredible. If you would've told me several years ago that someone could enter the music distribution space with a similar offering to other platforms out there, I never would've thought someone could truly compete. But kudos to him and his team, they've completely proved me, and I'll think a lot of people wrong. They've made a huge impact in, again, creating more opportunities for artists who can own their own content and not necessarily feel like they're stuck to have to do the traditional record deal. I think what they're doing is pretty amazing. Let's see, who else? I got to give out props to Downtown Music Holdings group. I think they're doing a huge amount of innovation in this space, both on the record side, on the distribution side, and on the publishing side. I'm a huge fan of Songtrust and what they built and that offering. I tell every music artist to work with if they do not have a publishing deal, sign up with Songtrust. It's a super easy admin deal that just creates a great solution that captures money that you just cannot capture any other way. I try to tell every music artist, I'm like, look, if you're writing your own music, you're writing your own songs, you're not going to get all your money that's due to you, just through your PRO. Artists, unfortunately, they're so busy, so much going on, they don't fully understand that. And so it's, like, the artists that I've seen turn on to a platform like Songtrust, they've literally turned on five figures plus in revenue in a quarter because that money is just sitting there if they don't capture it, eventually just goes away, which is really sad. So those are my shout-outs. Those are companies that I think are doing it well. I think with that piece, if I were to critique it now, I think it's a little too broad. There's a little too much going on for one company to do. But I'm a big fan of companies that, you know, believe in artistic freedom and innovation and providing more tools and opportunities for artists while also actually creating real success for them. [00:41:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think what sticks out about those two companies is both the partnerships and the fact that there's, you know, overall companies that are tying both of them together, right? So United Masters is obviously tied to the work that Stoute had done with or is currently doing with Translation on the ad side. And then that also informs so many of the partnerships and just how he has been able to help think and expand things there. And then Downtown, specifically how they've been able to just reorganize a few of the things and then restructure to just understand, okay, what could that stack look like. What could it have to have all of these companies underneath, but in this way that feels practical, but not in this way of, you know, a company trying to check every box that's the hottest topic right now.  [00:42:12] Rory Felton: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think companies are wise to, that are established in at scale. They're wise to take their time with Web 3.0 versus jump into it head-on per se. And I would encourage everyone to experiment. I think you can experiment in this space and try new things without having to go completely in. And of course, we're a great solution to experiment with. But there's clearly a variety of opportunities out there to do things. And quite frankly, no one knows exactly how the NFT innovation's going to be utilized in a few years from now, right? We have our hunch. We think it's going to be connected to real-life experiences and real amazing virtual experiences. However, I think there's all sorts of innovation that maybe hasn't even been created yet for its application, such as to ticketing and other categories as well.  [00:43:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah, there's so much more to explore. We're still in the early innings with this. I'm excited to see what's next. But before we wrap things up, let's talk about what's next for you all. What does 2023 look like? What are the big things on the roadmap?  [00:43:17] Rory Felton: Yeah, so as you mentioned, we've been building the Lounge metaverse space to connect artists and fans as well as give fans a great way to display and show off the collections that they own. So that's going to be launching soon. We clearly have some really amazing collections coming up from some really top-tier artists that we're excited to announce really soon as well. And then we fully built out now this completely self-service solution for independent artists to come in and start minting NFTs with their content. We haven't really focused on presenting that or pushing that yet to the independent community at scale. But that's something that we are looking forward to. We felt that it was best, hey, look, we want to establish that there is interest and demand for this space. That's why we focused on more established artists, artists with audiences initially, but really we think this space is for everyone. And we think that the smallest artists on the planet can actually benefit from Web 3.0 in a way that maybe streaming isn't changing the game for them right now. For instance, we've worked with baby developing artists that are making more money from Web 3.0 in one launch of an NFT collection than they would over two to three months from streaming. And I think this again goes back to humanity and society sort of revaluing music. In general, we all think music's the coolest thing in the world. We all think music is the most divine thing that we get to participate in as humans. And so we want to revalue it in a way that maybe NFTs allow us to that technology hasn't enabled in the past. And I think more than ever this concept of a thousand true fans is truer than ever, right, if an artist doesn't need to be a pop star to make a living. They really just need to cater to a niche of dedicated fans that love what they're doing. And NFTs and Web 3.0 really allow that artist to benefit from that type of model more than ever before.  [00:45:08] Dan Runcie: I know. It's fascinating. It's an exciting time to see all the developments and what's going to come down the pipe for you all, what's going to come down for everyone else. It's going to be an exciting time. That's why so many of us are in this industry, right? But before we let you go though, where can people follow along with HitPiece if they want to stay and tap with what you have coming on, or if they want to follow along, where should they go? [00:45:28] Rory Felton: Yeah, so clearly you can go to HitPiece.com. You can just put in your email if you don't want to sign up yet and just follow updates from us on our email list. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @joinHitPiece. You can even follow me on Twitter or Instagram if you'd like, @RoryFelton. Everything's open and my life is really an open book for everyone. [00:45:48] Dan Runcie: Awesome. Thanks, Rory. This is great. Thanks for coming on.  [00:45:51] Rory Felton: Thanks, Dan, for your time. We really appreciate it. [00:45:54] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Most artists want career growth and they want it fast — sometimes to a fault. This is where Curren$y is an outlier. From the jump, Curren$y set out to grow both his career and fanbase slowly but steadily. He successfully did that and it’s a reason why he’s not only stayed in the rap game for almost twenty years, but is now still earning more money, and at a career point where most of his peers coming up have already fizzled out. Curren$y and his longtime manager, Mousa, joined me on this week’s episode to explain how zigging when others zagged contributed to their career longevity. One instance is leaving his hometown Cash Money Records label to create their own, Jet Life. The two have been able to morph the brand into a full-on business empire that now includes apparel, athlete management, products, and more verticals on top of the music label.  The duo built Jet Life on the back of touring and being true to their audience. To do so, they turned down more brand partnerships they can remember and even music festival appearances at times — no matter how good the bag was for each. These trend-bucking moves were covered at length in our interview. Here’s what we covered: [3:15] New Orleans folks are immune to heat [4:44] Mousa and Curren$y relationship began in 2005 [8:49] Growing Jet Life business beyond a record label [11:45] Turning down non-authentic business opportunities [15:59] Emphasizing touring early in Curren$y’s career [19:21] Releasing an EP as an NFT [23:52] Curren$y’s take on streaming farms [29:47] Macro-view of Jet Life revenue streams [34:47] Touring is cornerstone of Jet Life business [37:08] Performing on own shows vs. music festivals [43:48] Festival money goes to sports car dealership [45:16] Curren$y’s partnership with NASCAR (and problems with Coca-Cola) [50:37] What’s the secret to a great artist-manager relationship?   Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Mousa Hamdan & Curren$y, @MOUSA504 & @spitta_andretti     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Curren$y: You can always expand and try new things, but if it feels wrong on the core, then you're setting yourself up. We never made a move like that. No matter what deal comes across the table 'cause he's money first. But he'll tell the people, the check writer like, man, just let me talk to bro. Because at the end of the day, he's going to hear me say it's half a million dollars, but he might say it's a boring job and he might not want to do it.  [00:00:32] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:54] Dan Runcie: Listen, you're going to love today's episode. It is with one of the most successful independent artists in the game and his longtime manager. We got Curren$y and we got Mousa. If you've been following Curren$y's journey for a while, you know that he was originally on No Limit Records 20 years ago. He left the record label. He then went to join Young Money. He was a little early on the Young Money Train, but he ended up leaving the record label before Nicki and before Drake blew up and he started his own. He started Jet Life, and he's been building up his career as an independent artist, and it's been great to see how he has navigated both how he releases music and also how he approached his business overall. And that was a big focus of this episode. We talked about his strategy for releasing music, and Curren$y is someone that is very prolific in terms of the amount of music that he puts out, but it also gets him plenty of opportunities to be able to go on tour, to be able to have several other business ventures that they have through Jet Life and through other areas. We talked about what they're doing in cannabis as well. We talked about the nightclub that they have, the apparel business, and a whole lot more. We also talked about a few partnerships that you may be surprised by, but I still think that fit well within the ethos for what Jet Life is and what Curren$y is trying to build. We even talked about some of the movie deals and opportunities that Curren$y had turned down. I don't want to spoil it. It's a really good one, but this was a really fascinating conversation, is also been great to just see how long these two have stuck together. If you're a big fan of this podcast, these are the type of episodes that you come for. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Curren$y and Mousa.  [00:02:41] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we're joined by the duo themselves. We got Curren$y and we got Mousa here, the artist-manager combination. How are you guys doing?  [00:02:49] Curren$y: Man, we can't complain. The weather is nice outside and it is been pretty bad out here in Orleans. It's been a hundred degrees and raining every day, but right now it's sunny, 86 degrees, you know what I'm saying? I got long sleeves on, top down, having a good day. I can't complain.  [00:03:07] Dan Runcie: See, that's the one thing about folks I know from New Orleans, like it could be 86 degrees and y'all are still in long sleeves. Y'all are still in hoodies.  [00:03:15] Curren$y: Well, it is, well, because it is the heat, we're already adjusting. It's just hot in here. So now we've gone more fashion-forward, bro. It's like, just fuck it, bro. Wear what you want to wear because it's still going to be 190 degrees no matter what. So just go for it. I don't really condone that lifestyle unless you have a car. A lot of my younger brothers I see walking up and down the street, and they definitely look like they're about to commit crimes because it's a hundred degrees and they got on the hoodie and I'm, like, weary of, I'm like, hold on, you know what I'm saying, because, fuck, that don't make no sense. You dressed for action. But if you are in the car, you are in the office, you are in the studio. That's where that look really originated. People always tell me, II'm dressed like that forever, but it's been because most of my life has been like tour bus, studio, even when it wasn't me, I was like a little guy on Masterpiece bus. It was 60 degrees, you know what I'm saying? And these big mansions, it's cold as shit. So I just grew acclimated to dressing like that. I think I might have spearheaded that. I honestly, I think that I may have spearheaded that, but what haven't we spearheaded over here, you know? [00:04:25] Dan Runcie: It's true, especially folks at New Orleans, folks like y'all are trendsetters. And one of the things that I feel like sets y'all apart is that you've been doing this for so long, and you've been doing this for so long together. I mean, Mousa, you've been managing Curren$y now for, since '05, right? I know you do 'em before, but you started managing, like, '05, right? [00:04:44] Mousa Hamdan: We're friends before, but definitely since '05, since he joined in with Lil Wayne, with Young Money, Cash Money. So I think that's when he brought me on and asked me to come on as his manager.  [00:04:53] Curren$y: Yep. Yeah.  [00:04:54] Mousa Hamdan: And you know... [00:04:55] Curren$y: As soon as there was business to manage.  [00:04:58] Mousa Hamdan: Right.  [00:04:58] Curren$y: You know, right? While I was just slinging t-shirts, like ordering 28 t-shirts on a month, pressing CDs upstairs at my apartment, that was easy to do. When it began to grow and I saw, like, my two homes wasn't going to be enough to handle it, you know, what could I do but reach out to the one homie who I knew forever who don't want to smoke no weed with me, who don't want to get drunk with me, you know what I'm saying? Like, who's just like totally, his high is the business, deals closed and stuff gone successfully is him having a drink, you know what I'm saying? So it worked. It works like that. [00:05:36] Mousa Hamdan: Definitely. I like achieving goals. You know, I'm a goal seeker. And once you achieve one goal, set another one, you know? And that's my inspiration is to see how big we could really take this Jet Life, how, you know, how big deal this will be, and how long we can make it last. I mean, I thought about this morning, I was talking to one of my other homies, I was like, we've been in this game a minute, bro. Like, and he was like, look, I've been home for a little while and y'all been doing this a long time. So I say, yeah, definitely, but we not done, you know. We’re nowhere near done. We really just starting, we really starting to grow even more now.  [00:06:12] Curren$y: That's crazy to say that, and that's really the truth, to be here in the game. Like, Jet Life, we're like over a decade, and each year it just gets bigger. That's really what you want. It's not a big, hasn't been just one big explosion. It's a slow burn. But it is guaranteed. And we've always grown. A lot of times you see people struggling, like, not to lose ground in the game, you know, and stay relevant. And that's never been a problem with us because we've been blessed to be able to, like, generate or, like, create our own world, you know what I'm saying? And the people who listen to our music or who dress, some people dress only in Jet Life apparel. And it is because they don't give a fuck about nothing else, you know what I'm saying? They've had their time to see what the world had to offer, and they saw that ours was just uncompromised. So they lend themselves to it a hundred percent. And that's been enough to sustain, like, the lifestyle that we have. And the people that support us, they like to pass by the Jet Life store just to see what cars we might have outside. So they continue to support us because now we're going to park more and more shit. Like, they the ones who help us do it, you know? So it's good. It's good.  [00:07:27] Mousa Hamdan: It definitely is. It's really a lifestyle, you know? I think it's, you know, from the beginning I remember, Curren$y said in interviews as well as told me directly, like, you know, his vision of seeing how Jet Life and how he wanted to grow. He always said it was like a balloon. And I listened, I heard that, and I was like, he's right. He's like, you could either, you could blow air in it fast and it's going to blow big and then it's going to explode and it's over. Or you could blow in it slow and it's going to slowly blow.  [00:07:57] Curren$y: Yeah. Fucking right.  [00:07:58] Mousa Hamdan: Then you show the longevity. And that's what we did. We're blowing it slow.  [00:08:02] Curren$y: Yep. [00:08:03] Mousa Hamdan: But look at us. We're still here. There's a lot of people that we saw that came before us and during us who we feel like, oh yeah, they got the light quick and they blew up fast. But then what happened? And you know, they're not around no more. [00:08:16] Curren$y: Something explodes, it ceases to exist. [00:08:19] Mousa Hamdan: It's done. [00:08:20] Curren$y: I've never seen anything, you know what I'm saying, explode that still had it ever, you know?  [00:08:26] Dan Runcie: Right, oh yeah. You know, and I feel like with y'all, specifically, you're able to see the trajectory. You're able to see everything that you've accomplished, too, because I look at Jet Life, and it started as the imprint for your record label, but now you have your apparel, you also have the other businesses you have. How would you describe the current businesses? What are the current things under Jet Life right now?  [00:08:49] Mousa Hamdan: Well, we got, of course, like you said, it started with records, Jet Life Records. And then it went to, we started doing tour merch, which grew into Jet Life Apparel. We were in now Jet Life Athletics. So we started to do deals with managing athletes and growing that brand. Then of course, we've other stuff that's not necessarily labeled Jet Life, but we've opened up a nightclub in New Orleans, so so that's something that's coming.  [00:09:16] Curren$y: We got a big footprint in the cannabis community. We got a couple of other startups, like a coffee shop and a cereal bar we're going to launch. We already have two films out, so, I mean, if you want to say Jet Life Films is in existence, that is true. It's so much stuff that we do, but the circle is so tight, like, nobody's going to tell the other one. Like, bro, you realize what we doing because we are still in the midst of doing it. Like, an outside person would have to come in and really show us how many businesses and what's all under the umbrella 'cause we really just wake up and try to, like, just make sure we make something happen, you know, every day. If you want to label it and put a name on it, then, it was news to me, right now just listening to how much stuff we have going on.  [00:10:04] Mousa Hamdan: We forgot Starting Line Hobbies. [00:10:06] Curren$y: Yeah, we got hobby shop bro, like that. See? So the more you sit down…  [00:10:11] Mousa Hamdan: We forget some of the business. But they exist and they're profitable, right? [00:10:16] Curren$y: He's got an auto body shop, it's still in existence. That's really where a lot of it comes from, his whole foray into it all was being able to survive if one thing fell down. Even though the music was the one that paved the way and drew the attention, the industry is fickle. So you see people like, we see them rise and you think they going to build this whole empire, they end up with a warehouse full of shit. They can't move bobbleheads of themselves. Nobody wants t-shirts, nobody wants home furnishing. Nobody wants it, fucking goes that way, you know what I'm saying? And we've been blessed to like, now we got two or three warehouses, you know what I'm saying? But we're moving the shit, you know. So it's just about staying true and not, we never really tried to do too much, nothing outside of what felt right to us. You can always expand and try new things, but if it feels wrong on the core, then you're setting yourself up. We never made a move like that. No matter what deal comes across the table 'cause he's money first. But he'll tell the people, the check writer like, man, just let me talk to bro. Because at the end of the day, he's going to hear me say it's half a million dollars, but he might say it's a boring job and he might not want to do it even though it's half a million dollars. So he'll just check with me, you know what I'm saying? We probably go and do the 'shit anyway 'cause it's half a million dollars. But he checks with me because in my heart of hearts, I might want to say no, but I got a kid and shit.  [00:11:45] Mousa Hamdan: I'll definitely ask him. Do you want to do this though?  [00:11:49] Curren$y: Yeah. And I got respect for him for doing that. The fact that he compromised his money mentality that asks me that much, gives me the strength to be able to say, you know what, fuck it, bro, you gave, I'll give. I'm going to come and do this shit, you know what I'm saying? And then lo and behold everybody wins, you know?  [00:12:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah. What's an example of something that you have turned down? Like, Mousa, 'cause it sounds like you're the one that's seeing the things and you're thinking about, oh, this is the bag, but is this something that fits with the Jet Life lifestyle? [00:12:18] Curren$y: There's a lot of those, like, TV shit that'll come across, you know what I'm saying? I hope that he knows, I don't care. So he would say, I'm going to jump out in front of you, like, you don't see because these people still come up with more and more ideas. And eventually, they might put, they might table something that we want to pick up. But we've slammed them because it's like, bro, you know, just looking at something where they say, well, he can say it in his own words, but the way they phrase it makes me like, I'll never put this in my own words, I don't want to fucking do it. You know, just fuck it, you know what I'm saying? Or like post, they'll try, you know, they'll pay you for social media stuff just to say you like something or you can't wait for something to fucking hit the theaters. And I'm like, you know what? Fuck no. I don't want to say that. Because as soon as I post this, my fucking true audience is going to say, you know, how much did you get, bro? They'll say shit like that. I don't want to play them like that.  [00:13:15] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah. I think we've known each other long enough and I know his answers on some things. Some things I won't even bring to him. [00:13:22] Curren$y: For sure.  [00:13:23] Mousa Hamdan: You know, we had some stuff like, you know, I'll be honest with you, like, you know, media companies that come and say, well, you know, let me post this on your page or do this, that, and the others, and it's clickbait. And he was like, nah, bro, I don't want my fans clicking on that.  [00:13:37] Curren$y: Yeah, I don't want that. I'm the one who have to answer for this shit. [00:13:41] Mousa Hamdan: I don't care how much it is. And the fans aren't crazy. They'll be like, Curren$y, that shit was clickbait, bro.  [00:13:46] Curren$y: They're like, what? Or you had to, bro? Like, I have all that kind of shit. So I'm just like, let's save the company who wants to pay us the embarrassment of when they realized this was not organic and it didn't cross over. Like, now they won't want to spend any money. They may not want to spend money with us later on, on something that might actually work, you know? So it's just better to just say, you know, it is better to protect yourself that way. You end up in the long run, you still make that money. A few times people have double-backed because they realize, you know what, that was kind of lame. I can't believe we asked them to do that shit. And then they come back with something way dope after they've researched me, you know? 'Cause immediately you do a Google search and you are like, all right, cool. We'll get him to do the new weed spray. Let's get him to endorse this new air freshener that kills the weeds, man. Like, bro, the fuck? Like, I'm not even living like that. I'm actually a boss and I don't have to conceal the weed smell in my fucking life, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not promoting shit.  [00:14:46] Dan Runcie: I'm even come to you with a deal like that though, knowing you.  [00:14:50] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah, yeah. They'll bring all type of deals, bro. They'll try and get you out of character if you let them. You know, they'll push the button.  [00:14:57] Curren$y: But it feels like trolling a lot of the time. Like, are they trying to see if I would do this, you know what I'm saying? [00:15:03] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:15:03] Mousa Hamdan: I don't think they understand that he's not saying he's true to his lifestyle. He is actually true to it. He's not going to do anything that's going to bend.  [00:15:11] Curren$y: It's not about money. We got enough pots on the stove. It's a six-burner stove. And we have pots with food and all of them are cooking, you know what I'm saying? So when somebody comes with the bullshit, it's like, all right, let's just go dip in this, right, quick. You know, like I I've done that with music, when I feel like, it is just sometimes I get a little down on myself just based on the climate of music, you know? And I'll fall back and maybe I'll just come up here and we'll just make a whole collection of clothes at that time, you know? And we were able to keep the lights on and shit through the apparel. If I said fuck it from here on end, you know what I'm saying? But it just so happens, like, I get my win and it is fun again, and I want to do it. You know, so we're lucky as shit. [00:15:59] Dan Runcie: That makes sense, yeah. It's a good position to be in, right? You understand your brand, you understand what makes sense. You're only going to do certain types of deals. And I feel like this goes back to the way that you just go about this industry overall, right? You were early in terms of, let me put out my music and if people get it for free, they may get it for free, but let me go make the money on tour. Let me go make the money with these other business interests.  [00:16:24] Curren$y: Yeah, because I mean, it's, shrinkage. It didn't matter how much music, like, what you do, how much you put behind the budget and what the labels do and all this shit. These people were just, our music was being stolen. This was during the time of, like, manufacturing jewel cases and all this shit that the company had to do, so that affected how much money they could give you. And then at the end of the day, everybody had the album a week before any damn, you know? So you can't feed your family like that. But what you can do, and what I did do is, and also when I did that, it was out of necessity. I didn't have no money to pay everybody for beats. But I could download Dr. Dre's instrumental for free. And as long as I don't sell this bitch, he's not coming for me, you know? I'm going to put it out for free. People going to love it. They're going to want me to come and wrap the motherfucker and they're going to pay however much it costs, you know, so that's how we did it. You know, that's just, like utilizing your natural resources. Like, what's growing in the land? Like, what's there? Just looked around and worked off what's growing out of the ground when you don't have the funds to do it. Like, you know, and you're creating business. Like, that's all we've ever done. And the more resources and the more materials we gain, you know, from gaining leverage or going up a level, then we start another joint, you know? Cause we got more to start with, 'Cause we, we did it with zero. So now it's insane. Like, we're just throwing darts at the board, like, fuck it, let's try and start a speedboat racing team tomorrow, you know what I'm saying? Like, fuck, whatever is whatever you want to do. And I've seen people do it. I’ve seen Master P do it because he had, like, with the bread to try it, you got to go for it. But what you had, but his circle is, was so large at the time with no limit. Like, first crack some ideas, not the best ideas, but you got love for everybody, so you going to roll the dice with everything they come with. You going to try, see, but what's working for us is we don't have that many people, like, around, you know what I'm saying? Like, as far as where the love is, it is right, it is in the room, so we not going to bounce. So if we try each other's ideas, one of 'em going to work 'cause it was just to, you got 19 people in here trying to, you know, tell you what to do and you want to keep everybody happy. You try, you going to end up trying to, like, start a golf cart company and, like, do spacewalks and sell reptiles and wild pets and then just doing everything that they ask you to do. And some of it's not going to work.  [00:18:59] Dan Runcie: And I feel like with that, too, is just understanding your brand, understanding what's effective. And I know last year you had released an EP as an NFT, and I know this was the time when a lot of people were first discovering what an NFT is and things like that. What was that like? Because I know that was something that you didn't necessarily need to do to reach your fan base and do everything you wanted to do. [00:19:21] Curren$y: It wasn't to increase the fan base. It was to make our listeners aware that we are in touch with what's going on, and we are going to make sure that you guys aren't left behind as far as having Jet Life representation because we know you wear this shit every day. We know this is all you're listening to. So if the whole world converted to the metaverse, and everybody just wore headsets and live like that, how will you survive if your life is Jet Life? We got to give you something in this shit too. Rather we understand it or not, we have to learn to understand it, to become a part, to take care of y'all out there because it's real, you know? No matter how imaginary it may seem, it's real, you know what I'm saying? It's intangible, but it's a real thing. So we had to be able to provide something for our people 'cause they were there, you know? You look out of touch and, like, not sharp, not able to move, you know, then people wash their hands of you. Other companies won't want to collaborate with us that much because it won't appear that we are in the know, where if you have a big company that's not doing anything in that world, they're like, oh shit, look at Jet Life, well, let's just fuck with them. Let's put some bridge in them because they can handle this for us, blah, blah, and that be our representation 'cause we're far too big to even try to learn and far too big and far too old to even try to learn that shit, you know what I'm saying? So once they saw we did, that makes us look, you know, mobile, you know what I'm saying?  [00:20:51] Mousa Hamdan: We have to exist in the future. You know, at the end of the day, we got to do what we have to do to let everybody, like he said, we're in the know, you know, we're aware of what's going on, what's coming, what's worth getting involved with, what's not. [00:21:05] Curren$y: And we going to ride with y'all because if it crashes, all us, then it did it off of us. You know what I'm saying? Fuck it. We going to roll too.  [00:21:12] Mousa Hamdan: And even back a long time ago, I don't know if Curren$y even remember this, we did a deal back then with BitTorrent that we released a mixtape on BitTorrent, and it was 'cause the relationship we had with BitTorrent, they wanted to move away from everybody feeling that BitTorrent was a piracy site, and they wanted to like, well what if we give away something that we actually want shared?  [00:21:38] Curren$y: Yeah.  [00:21:38] Mousa Hamdan: And I remember we did that, I think we had like 156 million shares. [00:21:45] Curren$y: Yeah.  [00:21:45] Mousa Hamdan: I told the record label that we were in a deal with at the time and they was like, nah, I got to see that. They didn't believe it. Well, like, what? Don't worry about it. You don't have to believe it. And that's why we're not with y'all now, because y'all don't believe the future. Y'all believing what y'all were taught to believe. [00:22:05] Curren$y: Yep.  [00:22:05] Mousa Hamdan: Rather than having your own mind and realizing things change, the world changes. And you just got to be in the mix. You got to know what's going on. You got to get involved where you fit in.  [00:22:15] Curren$y: You got to appear agile, man.  [00:22:18] Dan Runcie: Stories like that, I feel, is what set y'all apart because if you think back to that time, no one wanted anything to do with BitTorrent or even LimeWire, BearShare, all these places where you could stream music and I get it. It was all the piracy, all the copyright. But at some point, someone asked to be able to say, all right, this is where folks are at. This is how they're getting our music. How could we get our music onto these places? Or how could we just think about it in a different way that isn't just no, don't do that? [00:22:46] Curren$y: Watch it come all the way back to the beginning because we stayed true the entire time, that company that needed to wash his hands and kind of rebirth themselves, needed to stand next to something that was pure the entire time so that they could get some of our life, you feel me? Like, that was the way that shit worked. Their name was so sullied that it was like, okay, as far as music is concerned, people know Jet Life will not falter. They won't fold. They don't go for fucking the dangling carrot. So if we fuck with them, then they would know, like, well, Jet Life wouldn't fuck with us if we were really this pirate fucking factory. So it made everything, you know, legitimate. You know, we saw good in them, so it was cool, yeah.  [00:23:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's interesting too, to make me think about the current thing that people are pushing back on, whether it's streaming farms, you know, people trying to drive up these streams and stuff like that. What's your take on that? Because I feel like, for you, something like that's almost irrelevant because you're not in this to, like, sell your music, so you don't care about charts or probably any of that stuff.  [00:23:52] Curren$y: I can't blame them because it's not like streams, not like that shit pay you a lot of money, you know? I'm saying it takes a lot of streams to make, like, you know, substantial money. It takes a lot of people. A lot of artists don't even understand, you know what I'm saying? Like, the motherfucker call me like, bro, you did a million streams in the day. Like, so what do you think? I'm going to buy a yacht tonight, like, that was worth $12,000, bro, you know what I'm saying? That was worth 12 grand. I was like, don't trip. So I know they need those machines and shit to try and run those streams up. That could be check fraud. Like, they're trying to fucking, they're riding the clock, like, here man, we did 80 zillion billion streams in Apple music. Here's the paperwork. Fucking pay us, man. It could be that, it could be, we need to fucking this shit up so we could get a deal from some other people, maybe Pepsi Cola will reach out to us because they think we going to bring 'em all this attention and fuck them if we can't. The check's already here. You know, everybody's hustling though. It's not righteous, you know, but none of this shit is righteous. And that's kind of the ceiling that we set on ourselves by trying to, like, be legit, you know, it's not like that, you know what I'm saying? So I don't trip off the stream machines and people with the padded streams or, because I understand why they do it. We're blessed to not have to exist that way. And on the other hand, we do a decent amount of streaming because I put out a good amount of music, so I'm not going to do a million every month on one project like these other dudes, like, dude, some people only got to come out two times a year because that project will stream a million fucking streams a month every month all year. But what I will do is probably drop every month and still make it that way, you know what I'm saying? Or drop every two months, you know, and I'm still making that same bread. We just work harder, you know, because we're not doing a lot of the extra shit.  [00:25:56] Mousa Hamdan: It don't hurt that he likes to record and what you're going to do?  [00:25:59] Curren$y: Yeah, for sure.  [00:26:00] Mousa Hamdan: You going to hold all the music? The music's going to sound old. He was writing about a '96 expedition, right? You got to put it out, bro. Next year, that thing's old.  [00:26:11] Curren$y: Yep.  [00:26:12] Mousa Hamdan: So at the end of the day, it don't hurt that he likes to record and the fans like to consume the music. They like the new drops. They don't feel like they're oversaturated with his music. They want more.  [00:26:23] Curren$y: Yeah. The only time we hear that word is from, like, somebody outside. It's like when I'm doing, like, a press run and the people who had to Google me while we were on the elevator and we get up there to interview me, and that's like some shit they say like, so do you think you know about oversaturation? Like, fuck no, I don't think about oversaturation. I only think about my folks, like, you know what I'm saying? That's you. Y'all don't know. Y'all just tired of saying that Curren$y is coming out again with a project. I'm just tired of saying that. It shows up on y'all fucking thing. You have to mention it. You're just tired of saying this shit.  [00:26:58] Dan Runcie: That's them trying to put you into a box. That's them trying to put you into what they know. But like a lot of people that serve their base, you know what they want and you are giving them exactly what they want.  [00:27:08] Curren$y: Well, I mean, we interact with and we're around motherfuckers that come to this store all day, sometimes not even, to buy a shirt, like to be like, bro, when is this dropping? Like, you know, to play something for Instagram, when is this coming out? So we got our finger on the pulse of what's keeping us alive. Like, we check our posts often, you know. [00:27:28] Dan Runcie: For sure. Mousa, I want to talk to you a bit about the business of Jet Life and everything you have going on. And I know we talked a little bit about how touring is a big place where you all are getting a lot of the money, but what does the breakdown look like from a high level? Like, how much of the money you all have coming in is from touring compared to the other businesses and then compared to streaming and the music itself? Like, from like a percentage?  [00:27:53] Mousa Hamdan: Well, I think, of course, since pandemic, the touring has slowed down. We haven't done anything, but I don't think, for a while, I didn't think the people were ready for a tour, you know, because different cities still had different COVID restrictions and vaccination card restrictions, which would limit the fans of coming to the venues. So it wasn't a good look. I spoke to some other artist manager, who is like, yeah, he's on the road, but he's kind of depressed because shows are not selling out. He feels like he lost it. And it's not that, it's just that the environment wasn't for that. You were going out there too fast looking for the money. The good thing with us was, like he said earlier, that if one thing wasn't doing what we wanted, we had something else that was doing it. So, crazily, the apparel skyrocketed during the pandemic.  [00:28:47] Curren$y: And I was the one who thought we needed, I thought we had to stop.  [00:28:51] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah.  [00:28:51] Curren$y: I was like, nobody is going to buy a fucking hoodie.  [00:28:55] Mousa Hamdan: He was like, bro... [00:28:56] Curren$y: There's no toilet paper. There's no fucking lights on in the store. Who the fuck is going to order a shorts, and fuck it, we're selling out of shit.  [00:29:05] Mousa Hamdan: Shit was flying.  [00:29:06] Curren$y: I was watching the news. There's just one, like, who are these people that are buying? Are they aware that this shit's even happening? Do they know they have nowhere to wear it to? And they're just posting the shit in the crib, in our brand new drop. Like, just fucking kicking it. The love was real, and they kept us alive, bro. I bought like fucking three or four cars while the shit was locked down. You couldn't even, we couldn't even go to dealerships, and I was buying cars because people were buying fucking sweatshirts. I'm sorry. I'm going to go back here. Y'all continue with business talk.  [00:29:42] Mousa Hamdan: Definitely. [00:29:43] Curren$y: You know I'm saying? He knows, he knows, he knows.  [00:29:47] Mousa Hamdan: So I think when he drops some music, there's a jump in streams, you know what I'm saying? There's a bigger check coming, you know, apparel, same thing. We drop some, a new line or a new drop, it's bam. You know, everybody wants that, and depending on what it is. But, you know, we tend to drop a good little bit of apparel. So I think now apparel and the music kind of coexist, and both have their times, that one makes a little more than the other and vice versa. The other businesses that are fresh starts are creating a revenue. Of course, we don't expect the nightclub business to make the money that the record label makes, but it's an addition. So it is always like our thought of keep putting in the pot. Eventually, that pot will get full or, like he says in the songs, we're trying to fill up a safe. Once we fill that safe up, we just got to get another safe. We're not going to empty that safe. We're going to get another safe. Now we got to fill that one up, you know? So if, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it is Jet Life, we're going to spread our wings, we're going to see what we can put our hands on that will create a revenue and at the same time, sticking to our morals and beliefs of what we feel like Jet Life should stand for. A lot of people don't know, Jet Life, at the beginning, Jets was just an acronym. Just enjoy this shit. So that's what we're doing. We're enjoying it. Or like I tell people, Jet Life has just enjoy this life. So that's where we're at with it, steadily growing, steadily trying to get involved in everything that makes sense. You know, If it doesn't make sense, we leave it alone. So the revenue streams, like I said, it kind of goes back and forth. Apparel definitely is a world of its own now. Apparel is great. You know, we moved from, originally, like you said, with touring. That's when I realized that the apparel was so good because at touring, we were selling so much what I consider tour merch, you know, which is just the name of the show, the city's on the back, a picture of Curren$y on the shirt. You know, all the fans want it. They're like, man, they really love this shit. They're buying it.  [00:31:56] Curren$y: That was just a tour shirt.  [00:31:58] Mousa Hamdan: So then I was like, well, damn, I'd rather wear our own clothes when I want to go to the nightclub, when I go out to eat, or if I just want to hang around. I don't want to wear a tour shirt all the time, but I want to wear something.  [00:32:12] Curren$y: And I didn't want to wear no shirt with my name on it. [00:32:15] Mousa Hamdan: Right. He doesn’t want pictures of himself. [00:32:17] Curren$y: I don't want no shirt with me on it, no shirt with my name on it 'cause like, who the fuck am I? You know what I'm saying? Who am I, you know, to even do that?  [00:32:27] Dan Runcie: Right. 'Cause that's more like merch, right? And I didn't know that people use merch, but like, no, y'all have a clothing apparel. [00:32:33] Mousa Hamdan: Tour merch. And then we changed it to apparel. Apparel, which you wear on a daily thing, every morning you wake up and you put apparel. You were sleeping in apparel. So we had to reach that. And then every couple of months we just think, what else can we make? What else? 'Cause you know, we started with just t-shirts, you know, then went to hoodies and long sleeves. And then we're like, we got to start getting bottoms and we got to get hats and you know, so now we're, you know, building into accessories and whatever else people may like. And at the same time as well, like I said, we test fitted on ourselves. If it's something that we don't want to wear, I'll always show him stuff like, look, these are some of the new designs. This is some of the stuff that you talked about with me that we created. Now it's on paper. Do you like it? If you like it, let's push the button. Let's go with it. If it's something you would wear. 'Cause at the end of the day, if he doesn't wear it, if I don't wear it, if the other artists on Jet Life don't wear it... [00:33:33] Curren$y: It will sit in the warehouse.  [00:33:35] Mousa Hamdan: Why would we expect a fan or a fellow lifer to wear it? They don't want to wear something that you don't even want to wear yourself. So if we don't want to create nothing that we don't like. You know, and that's just, I think our business model with everything we do. We don't want to do anything that we don't agree with. We don't want to do anything that goes against what we stand for.  [00:33:58] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And the point again about the merch, too, I think Curren$y, you had this line in maybe it's an interview, I think you said, but it's like, no one's calling you Sean John merch, right? As you're telling Diddy like, oh yeah, I like your merch.  [00:34:12] Curren$y: Right. You know what I'm saying? And just, we have to stand on that, you know? And I think we have for a long time, and it made people change the perception of it, you know. Before, like, just, the fact that we stand behind it like that, it made people buy it who maybe weren't even thinking about it because it made people want to look at it a little more to not like it, you know, like people came in to find like what was wrong. And then it's like, well, shit's just actually, you know, I'm going to buy the shirt, you know what I'm saying? Like, they were coming to point out why it was just merch and it wasn't, you know?  [00:34:47] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Yeah. One other question for you, Mousa, about touring itself and just doing live shows. Because of how well the apparel's going right now and how the business overall may have changed since the pandemic, do you ever think that you'll go back to doing the same number of shows that you were doing before the pandemic because of how much success you have with everything else? Do you think it'll scale back a bit at all? [00:35:10] Mousa Hamdan: In my mind, I've always lived thinking never forget where this started from and never forget what created this lane for you to get into. Without the touring, I never knew how much the merch sold. And I noticed that with a lot of artists, there's a lot of artists that don't sell merch, and they don't know the money that they're missing. So without the touring, without the shows that we do, like he said, we put a finger on the pulse of the fans. Well, we'll know who's coming to these shows, you know, and you can see when, all right, well, the shows are getting a little light, so what is it we're doing wrong? There's something that we're missing. Same thing with the apparel. When sales are a little low then I'm like, well, what are we doing that we used to do better? Or what are we missing? Are we getting laid back? Are we feeling like it just is what it is now? But being involved in it like that, I think, keeps us on with whatever else we're doing 'cause it's going to keep telling us, like, this is the pulse of the people. This is what you're doing. So I think we'll always do tours. Maybe we're not, you know, one time we did, I think it was 60 shows in 70 days, which was crazy.  [00:36:23] Curren$y: 63.  [00:36:24] Mousa Hamdan: Yeah, it was, yeah, crazy. Show every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And they're like, whoa, when is the break, bro? Like, when are we? So I don't think we'll do that. But we're going to stay out there, you know, as long as the people want to see, and he's got fresh music that he wants to perform. And you know, he's an artist, I think, that feeds off the energy, you know. And if the crowd doesn't have the energy, he's like, why am I here? Why am I performing for these people? They don't really want to see me because the energy is not there. So as long as we're feeling the energy, then I think we're there. Hopefully, I don't see it going down no time soon. You know, we're going to keep doing whatever it is that allows us what the universe puts for us to do, you know? And we're just going to be there.  [00:37:08] Dan Runcie: How do you look at doing your own shows versus doing festivals? Do you have preferences? I feel like for an artist like you, your own shows where your people are going to be at, right? [00:37:18] Curren$y: Yeah, bro. This is a whole other show. Don't do it. We love, we love, we love festival checks. If I had to pick, I like, you know, me at the House of Blues. I know exactly that the people who are in there, like, are there for what we going to do, you know what I'm saying? The festival, I've been blessed to be a person that you kind of, you can't get around me in the game, you know what I'm saying? So when you don't fuck with me, people speak out to you. You look stupid, you know what I'm saying? You look crazy. So people put me on shit, like just, no, we got to have him on this festival. We got to put him on this. We got to put him on this, you know what I'm saying? And my core people are there, but they're surrounded by people who are, like, waiting for like the next person to come out and like spit fire, you know what I'm saying? And walk on the crowd, pop, you know, like, I can't do it. I'll never do it, you know? So I'm like, I don't want to put my listeners through it because and they're in there like, shit, man. There's, like, a kid who kept, like, elbowing me, you know what I'm saying? Like, some of my listeners are, like, there's always somebody to put me to the side, like, yo, I'm 51, my nigga, like, this is the shit I'll listen to. So them, them dudes don't, they don't want that. Those ladies, like, who pull me to the side, like, boy, look, you know, I could be... I'm like, Yeah, you don't have time for, you know, for that. So I like to do just my thing. But the festival checks go directly to the sports car dealerships. Like, those are the checks that get you off the lot though. So, you know, you're being a fool not to do it, you know? And that's just business.  [00:39:03] Mousa Hamdan: The checks are good, yes, but I think as well... [00:39:08] Curren$y: He makes sense with this. I know what he coming with this, but I'm going to tell you, they're coming to business. He makes sense.  [00:39:12] Mousa Hamdan: Sometimes, I honestly, in a lot of things that we do, I always tell him, I think he underestimates his reach, you know, and he's too humble to the point of, nah, bro, like, they're not really here for me and this, that, and the other. Now, I'll be honest with you, we had one festival show. I was a little worried. We got on stage. He wasn't on stage. He was backstage, so he didn't know nothing was going on. I literally walked to the DJ. I said, bro, this is probably our last festival 'cause it was like, there was literally 10 people in front the stage. I said, bro, if he gets out here and there's 10 people out here, he's liable to walk off stage, bro, so listen to me. The intro started and it looked like a rush. Like, I didn't know who. They had about 5,000 people or better rush to the stage. And I like, whoa, that's more like it. Then he came out, he didn't see the dead part. He saw that part. He was like, oh, my people are here. They're here. They showed up. They showed up. I'm like, you just don't know. They really did show up 'cause they wasn't here five minutes ago.  [00:40:22] Curren$y: They just showed up. [00:40:23] Mousa Hamdan: Bro, but then that's understanding the festivals. You got six stages.  [00:40:28] Curren$y: Yeah.  [00:40:29] Mousa Hamdan: They're trying to catch everybody. [00:40:30] Curren$y: I was posting one time, there's a way to do it, you know what I'm saying? As long as you are vocal about what time you go on, your people will navigate through to get there for you, you know what I'm saying? But you also, you got the people who're waiting for somebody else 'cause I'm like, it's a gift and the curse, 'cause, like, I'm, like, the most known unknown. So it's, like they know they can't put me on at fucking one o'clock, you know what I'm saying? So then when you put me on at, like, eight, and then there's, like, whoever the fucking, whoever name was written this big on the flyer, this guy's coming after me, all right. The kids who are waiting for this guy are, like, have been pressed against the barricade for hours, like since 11:00 AM. When I come out there with my low-impact workout, like they're fucking dying, like looking at me and I'm like, I get it. Don't trip. I fuck with this guy's music too. He'll be out here in a minute, and I hope he does a backflip on top of you when he does, you know what I'm saying? Like, that shit kind of fuck with me because I'm delivering a real message. Like, every word I write, like, I mean it. So I really don't want to say it sweating to a person who's like this, like on the barricade, just like, bro, please stop. We get it. You like Chevys, you want us all to get rich? Fucking shut up. We want to fucking rap about drugs. Where's the next guy? So that shit kind of make you not want to do it. But then this guy, fucking, he's also the person who says this like, okay, you also woke some people up to the music you make. Then there's always, like, when I get done, the people who work the festival, the grounds, are, like, bro, I never heard this shit, but this was real music. Like, I couldn't understand nobody else's words, you know what I'm saying? This is fucking good. So I'm like, well, that's cool. I do leave out there with more listeners than I did, you know what I'm saying? It might be 12, it might be 150. He going to count every dollar for each one via stream, so I understand where he comes from with that. But I always like, I say it to myself sometimes, and sometimes when it gets too heavy to me, I say to the people around me, I'm like, bro, I'm actually the only one who fucking have to go and do that shit. Like, I get it. We all here, we all fucking supporting, but they're not looking at you, like, get the fuck out. And you got to do this shit for 45 minutes, you know what I'm saying? Sure. There's some people who are enjoying it, but the motherfucker who's right in front of you is dying, and you have to continue to have a good time. Like, that shit is like being a fucking Disney World animatronic or, being like a Chuck E. Cheese thing. Like, that's a rough time for me for sure. But it works, you know? That's anybody's job. [00:43:27] Dan Runcie: It's a balance, right? [00:43:28] Curren$y: You know, a hundred percent love any fucking gig that you have, any job you have, bro. I'm sure everybody at NBA, that was their dream, to go to the NBA. Some of those days sucked though for those dudes, you know what I'm saying? So it ain't always going to be the shit. The situation overall is one that I wouldn't trade for the world.  [00:43:48] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And you mentioned too that the money that you're getting from the festivals is going to the sports car dealership. Can we talk a little bit about that? How's that business set up and how's that been going?  [00:44:01] Curren$y: Oh, well, me and Mousa, we've always been kind of into, like, bringing cars back to life, restoring things, and shit. But I've been holding on 'em. But as of late, we're building a stable of vehicles to kind of release onto the public, but it'll be like a collection, the same way we come out with clothes. There'll be like six vehicles put up for sale at one time that we cultivate and put together. We putting together a BMW, a few vintage sports car that we putting together. We're going to roll 'em all out at one time, you know what I'm saying? So I expect them all to be gone, like, within the week. I expect it to be like shoes. Like, I expect motherfuckers to try it and everybody will blow. You know, everybody try their hands at the shit we do. So another motherfucker with a bigger audience and shit will try to do the same thing, but you know, who cooked that shit up first.  [00:44:52] Mousa Hamdan: Okay. They know, They know where they got the idea from. [00:44:56] Curren$y: Yeah, they know, too, so it don't matter.  [00:44:59] Dan Runcie: Speaking of cars and trendssetting, I know you got a partnership with NASCAR as well, and I feel like there's another thing, too, where not a lot of hip hop artists are doing those deals, but we are just seeing the way things are trended now. Everyone will be following to that. And you got the Jet Life cup series. All right, let's talk about it.  [00:45:16] Curren$y: Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Well, yeah. People of any other nationality other than the original rebel down home boys were not involved in NASCAR and they fucking, they had it that way. They built it that way, executive-wise, it's not like that anymore. Now, you know, doors have been broken down, kicked in, and open-minded. People are now there, and it's made it more accessible for fans. I was shocked when I went that I saw like groups of different people, I don't want to just say black people, just different people in general because the other side of it, the way it was, they weren't picking what nationality or what people they didn't want, they didn't want nothing else, but what the fuck they had, you know? So it's way different now in all aspects. It's not just minorities selling nachos. They driving the cars. They are the ones like turning the wrenches and making sure shit is right. They got headsets on, they out there doing the real thing. And I brought one of my younger homies with me, it blew him away. He's at school for engineering, and he was just, he was nervous for us to even be out there. I made a few small jokes to my friends when we first got there based on the appearance and how it looked. But it really wasn't like that once you got down into the meeting. And I read on social media, like I read a few comments. There were some people who were not excited about our presence. There's some people who weren't into the collaboration. I saw one thing under a video that I was so sad 'cause I was like, I hope my mom don't see it. Because the motherfucker was like, what is he coming to steal? And I was like, damn, if my mama sees that, she'll probably cry, you know what I'm saying? Like, it'll take a minute for me to get her over that shit. But what are you going to do? You know what I'm saying? This shit, you can't blame the behavior 'cause it was taught a long time ago. Like, they didn't pop out like that. That's what that motherfucker told him to do, you know what I'm saying? And what we doing is playing the hand and telling the people who are receptive and the new people, the younger generation, like, it could go this way instead, you know what I'm saying? Like, we were up in all the suites and eating NASCAR food, you know, and actually, I'm going to say this, I was a little bummed with the NASCAR because we couldn't get a Coca-Cola badge on our jersey. We wanted to have it because the race that day was actually Coke Zero, Coke Zero 400, all right. So, when they originally had the design meeting for the package, they included Coca-Cola logo because that was the race, you know, that's when it was coming up. And I think like they did the same thing, like, whoever is involved with the collaborations just did a little brief overview of who I was or what I was about, and they're like, oh, no. So like, that kind of fucked me up.  [00:48:17] Mousa Hamdan: They'll be back though. They'll be back.  [00:48:19] Curren$y: Yeah. But you know, like, I was like, well this still, you know, shit is still hard, you know? But with time, with time, yeah. And I don't know. And then, and I didn't like the you got gang with you. I heard over there, I'm sorry.  [00:48:32] Mousa Hamdan: Oh, yeah. [00:48:32] Dan Runcie: That's from fans or was that from NASCAR?  [00:48:35] Curren$y: No, no. [00:48:35] Mousa Hamdan: Coke exec.  [00:48:36] Curren$y: Just one of the brass at Coca-Cola. And I drank a lot of Coca-Cola, so I really do need to stop, but for health and maybe for business, because motherfucker was like, to the representative from NASCAR who was showing us to where we were going to go to sit down, like, in the suite. He's like, oh, you got a gang with you. And I was just like, damn, like. I'm sure maybe I'm looking at it with a microscope, you know.  [00:49:01] Dan Runcie: But still though, you can't say that, yeah.  [00:49:04] Curren$y: I really don't know, I just don't know. I just was on the fence. I thought about it a lot. I think about it.  [00:49:09] Dan Runcie: But like, they wouldn't say that if, like, Jason Aldean walked up in there with a group of folks. [00:49:13] Curren$y: You got a lot of people with you, you know I'm saying? It wasn't like he said the gang's all here. If he said the gang's all here, that would not have hit me like that. People say that the gang's all here, that doesn't mean that you got a street gang here.  [00:49:29] Mousa Hamdan: Right. [00:49:29] Curren$y: But, whoa, you got a gang with you.  [00:49:33] Mousa Hamdan: He could have said, Hey fellas and just kept it moving. [00:49:36] Curren$y: Yeah.  [00:49:36] Mousa Hamdan: How y'all doing guys?  [00:49:38] Curren$y: Yeah.  [00:49:38] Mousa Hamdan: And you didn't have to make conversation with us. You were just passing. [00:49:41] Curren$y: It felt like it was a Chappelle show skit because it could have been where keeping the real goes wrong. Because I was like, half step, like, trying to see if I could make eye contact with one of my friends who felt like maybe that was wrong and I had support in, like, hey man, like, what? But it could have went way south. Like, there could be no more NASCAR 'cause shit if we could, would've did that. You know, we just might not have the Coca-Cola on the next one. Or maybe we will, maybe they're like, oh, shit, man. We didn't mean that. I thought I did say that gang's all here. Let's put a badge on the fucking next jacket, you know, it might work that way. And that's business and that's why we're here talking, you know? And and that's why it it pays to be true to yourself within your business. And if your circle is small, it's easier for you to be honest and not worry about if something sounds stupid or anything because, like, we have a yin and a yang, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's what makes it work.  [00:50:37] Dan Runcie: Right. And I think that's a good note to close things out. And I want to get your thoughts on this question because as you started with the beginning, y'all have been together for a while, even in this conversation, we can see that chemistry between the two of you, that yin and the yang, you understand each other. What do you think is the secret for having the artist and manager that just stay with each other? 'Cause there's so many times that, either other artists or other managers that have been on this show and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, so and so fired me.  [00:51:04] Curren$y: Somebody lied in the beginning. [00:51:07] Mousa Hamdan: Right.  [00:51:08] Curren$y: Just like, who fucks up anything. You know, like, just somebody lied in the beginning. The artist was signed to nine different managers. Everybody loaned him $1,500 to help him do something. He's just signing with whoever's going to fucking give him a fucking chain or watch, and he's not being honest. Or there's a fucking, like, a discrepancy on this stack of paperwork or something, and this guy's outsmarting the artist and fucking going to rob and blind, you know what I'm saying? Like, if that happens in the beginning, the intentions are bad in the beginning, then you'll see where it looked good and then it fall into pieces because you find out, you know what I'm saying? Like, fucking, when we read for fucking N.W.A, which is one thing I didn't turn down, I was down to do that. He's coming to me with movie shit. Do you want to read this? Do you want to do this? No, no, no, no. They're like, do you want to be Easy-E? And I was like, no. At first I was like, no, like, they should call his son, you know what I'm saying? But then I end up reading for it, and then they end up getting a guy from New Orleans anyhow. So that was cool. I'm like, damn, I probably could have got that shit. But nonetheless, the part that we were reading, it was after Easy-E's wife went through the paperwork that he did with Jerry Heller and she brought, like, so much shit, attention to him. And when E and Jerry had this talk, it made Jerry cry because he was leaving even though he did so much wrong shit. But in his heart of hearts, he probably didn't think it was wrong 'cause he took dude from nothing. But it was still bad and he couldn't believe how quick Eric was ready to shut the shit down. But it's because he was wrong. Like, once that, there's nothing you could do after that. Once it get like that, it shut down. That shit is heartbreaking. And we never, like, we have not hurt each other like in that aspect, you know what I'm saying? Like, when I came to him, I was like, look, I don't, you know what I'm saying, I ain't signed nothing yet, but this is what's going on. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's that, you know. I don't know, I'm going to go talk ahead, I'm going to do this and get this and then not say this. You know, he don't fucking pop up and see I'm doing the show in Colorado and, you know what I'm saying, I didn't say anything. I just went, flew out and oh no, I made just 30 grand right quick, you know. That there's just, it's all on the up, bro. So with that, you know, you stay friends, we friends first all.  [00:53:28] Mousa Hamdan: That's I think the biggest thing.  [00:53:29] Curren$y: Yeah. If he wasn't in my homie, then we wouldn't do business.  [00:53:31] Mousa Hamdan: We started as friends, and then we continued to be friends in this.  [00:53:36] Curren$y: Yeah. All the way through. [00:53:38] Mousa Hamdan: We're business partners, but we never was just business partners. We was always friends to begin with.  [00:53:44] Curren$y: Right. So that make you not be able to do no fucked up business.  [00:53:48] Mousa Hamdan: And then we trust each other.  [00:53:49] Curren$y: You know what I'm saying? You can't do that to your friend. [00:53:52] Mousa Hamdan: Trust is big, you know. I think he trusts my decisions, I trust his decisions. And then we talk about things, like he said, we were going to always converse about whatever decisions we want make. If there's ever a thought, I think, you know, this may be wrong or whatever, I'm going to consult with him as if he was my manager, you know what I'm saying? So we're going to talk and the trust issue, I always hear that, you know, how, why y'all been together so long? I'm like, if you build a business, who builds a business to separate, right? We build a business together  [00:54:24] Curren$y: Who are these people that you're with? Who's in your car? Who the fuck are you riding with in the car? Like, who? That's why. That's why I said, like, having 19 and 30 motherfuckers. Like, now there might be 30 people in this building at a time, and they all could have a Jet Life chain, they all be a part of what's going on. But at the end of the day, you know what I'm saying? When it'll come down, it'll come down. Like, we got to sit down and fucking, you know what I'm saying, and put it together, you know. Everybody respect that because when we come out the room, we come out the with the right answer. I might have the wrong answer, but this ain't here. When we come out the room, we present the right answer.  [00:55:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, no, a hundred percent right. And I feel like y'all got the right mentality. It speaks to everything that you've accomplished up to this date and excited to continue to see where it goes, right? Like you said, this is a balloon, and we want to keep seeing how this balloon continues to grow slowly. So, I mean, congrats to y'all on everything that've done. [00:55:17] Curren$y: Got new music dropping Friday, so if this don't get to them this week, you, bro, you know for sure, Friday, I got music dropping. [00:55:26] Dan Runcie: Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask you what else you got coming up and if people want to follow you, where's the best place for them to check in with you, both of you. [00:55:32] Curren$y: Car is outside, but I don't suggest you follow me. @spitta_andretti, Instagram. S P I T T A underscore A N D R E T T I. Twitter, well, I have a lot of fun at Twitter. Instagram has gotten really weird. It's really, like, tough to figure that out. It's nuts. Twitter is staying true. Curren$y with an S because they don't recognize a dollar sign. So C U R R E N S Y underscore Spitta, S P I T T A. And you know what? They had a fake Curren$y when I first got to Twitter. That's why I had to make that name like that, @CurrensySpitta, because there was already somebody who was saying he was me and he had like pictures and everything. That's fucked up, yeah, but nah.  [00:56:17] Dan Runcie: And what about you Mousa?  [00:56:19] Mousa Hamdan: I'm on, pretty much all the handles are the same, @mousa504, M O U S A 5 0 4, that's going to be on whatever, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, anything, you know. I stick to that same handle.  [00:56:33] Curren$y: Oh, we also got the partnership with Sovereign Brands, Villon France, this is our cognac that we are standing behind. That's just one more thing on the number. I forgot. It doesn't help your memory. It tastes good. It doesn't help your memory. I forgot to mention that we were doing it. [00:56:49] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. We could do a whole follow up episode on all of that. All of these deals. Role you've turned down, too, but we'll have to check it the next time. Appreciate you both, man. Thank you.  [00:56:58] Mousa Hamdan: Appreciate you.  [00:56:59] Curren$y: Cheers, bro. [00:57:00] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

It’s the perfect time to revisit one of our more popular episodes. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are still at the top of the music industry despite the newer artists that do well on streaming and TikTok. That said, can today’s new class of stars ever match that same level of superstardom? . In this episode, I’m joined by Tati Cirisano from MIDiA Research to explore how artists like Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and Bad Bunny are navigating the ever-changing music landscape. What does it take to break through the noise, and is music stardom evolving into something completely different? Let’s get into it 02:00 Streaming's Impact on Music Industry 07:06 The impact of streaming and TikTok 11:09 Olivia Rodrigo's Streaming vs Sales 15:03 Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, SZA 23:23 Morgan Wallen, Bad Bunny 30:28 "Music Industry Aspirations and Realities" 33:39 Emerging Artists: Success Through Unique Roots Trapital Summit tickets are on sale! Super early bird discount until April 30. Register here. This episode is presented by State Farm, the home for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Make sure you check out TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, Equity. Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week. If you enjoy Trapital, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform!

The dominance of Atlanta’s hip-hop scene has been discussed often, but not in the way Joe Coscarelli covered it in his new book, Rap Capital. Joe, a New York Times music reporter since 2015, spent four years and interviewed over 100 sources to get the contemporary story about Atlanta’s culture-defining music scene. Characters are what move the story forward in Joe’s book, not discography, record sales, or cultural relevance. Lil Baby is featured prominently, as is his mom. Joe’s relationship with the hit rapper dates back to 2017 when Lil Baby was still a mixtape artist. Another recurring character is Quality Control Music’s Kevin “Coach K” Lee, who has deep-rooted ties with the city’s most well-known artists across eras. Joe came onto the show to take us through the book’s journey — both for him to write it and the characters themselves. Here’s what we covered: [2:40] How the book came together and finally clicked [6:42] Role of Quality Control’s Coach K in Atlanta story [10:11] Lasting effects of pandemic on music industry [12:38] Which era of Atlanta hip-hop to focus on?  [14:09] How streaming helped launch Atlanta rap into the mainstream [16:10] Building trust with his sources despite racial differences [18:10] Did Joe receive any pushback while reporting? [20:19] Evolution key to Atlanta rap’s longevity  [25:05] Adapting Rap Capital into a movie [29:45] The crumbling of mainstream culture   Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Joe Coscarelli, @joecoscarelli     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Joe Coscarelli:  I wanted to tell the story through characters, through people, not just, you know, you can run down the discography of all the amazing Atlanta musicians, right? You can go through the label history, read the reviews. But I always want to sort of pull back like, who's behind these people? Who's behind that person? So that's why I think, you know, mothers were huge, fathers, you know, friends, people who are around these artists growing up, I wanted them to be human characters, and I wanted the side characters to be as big of a part as the famous people 'cause I think they're as crucial to the equation.  [00:00:30] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.   [00:00:58] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Joe Coscarelli. He's the author of Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story, and he's a culture reporter at The New York Times. And this book that he wrote, Rap Capital, I cannot recommend it enough. If you listen to this podcast, if you read the newsletter, if you watch any of the clips from our conversations or any of the posts on social media, this book is made for you. It's a street-level epic about the most consequential music culture today, Atlanta Rap. Joe put so much thought and care into how the book came together and tying everything from the Atlanta murders that happened decades ago and how that shaped the rap culture and the broader culture for black folks in Atlanta that we see today, and how that led to someone like Lil Baby, how that led to someone like Coach K having such an influence over hip hop music and the culture for decades now. This book was a great opportunity as well to have a trip down memory lane. A lot of us understand how influential Atlanta's been, but it was great to have it be told from a unique way. We also talked about broader trends happening in the streaming era right now in music, what a movie or film or TV show adaptation could look like for Rap Capital, and more. Here's our conversation. Hope you enjoy it. All right. Today we had Joe Coscarelli, the author of Rap Capital: An Atlanta story and read the book, really enjoyed it, and I got to ask because I was going through the synopsis and you said this was four years in the making, and I got to imagine with a book like this, there was some point when things started to click in that four-year process. When did you feel like things were coming together for you?  [00:02:40] Joe Coscarelli: So I knew that there was a book in this stuff because I had done a handful of stories through my day job at The New York Times about Atlanta. I started this beat in late 2014. So., You know, my first couple years on the job, streaming was really taking over and specifically rap music and streaming. So I just found myself over and over again talking to the same group of people, right? I did a Migos Story, did a QC story that featured Lil Baby, one of his first interviews. I wrote about Drew Findling who's a lawyer in the book that's all over the news these days in various capacities. So I knew from those stories that there was something here. But I didn't know what it was going to be. I knew I wanted to not just tell a history, but follow characters in real-time as they tried to make it. That's something I always want to do in my work. You know, so my favorite art ever is like Hoop Dreams or a music documentary like Dig!, which follows two bands across a long period of time. One of them makes it, one of them doesn't make it. That's always what I want to bring to my reporting is this idea of a journey, right? And it doesn't even matter what the destination is, but following, specifically artists and musicians as they're trying to make something out of their lives, that to me, is just a timeless tale, right, of ambition and dreams, and so I knew I had a handful of characters that I wanted to go on this trip with, but I didn't really know how it tied into the broader story of Atlanta until a real marathon brunch interview with Lil Baby's mother, Lashawn. He was, you know, he and I had a rapport at that point. I'd interviewed him a few times. I did talk to a lot of people around him, and he was kind enough to set me up directly with his mom. And, you know, we sat down at a brunch place outside of Atlanta. And, you know, she said, I asked him, I asked Dominique, her son, we're like, what do I tell him? And he told her tell him everything. And she really did, her whole life story became part of the book, especially the foundation of the book, in the first part. And she had such an incredible life on her own. You know, I hope she writes a memoir someday. But when I learned really that she had been friends in school with an early victim of the Atlanta child murders, which were happening on the west side of Atlanta in the late seventies, early eighties, that she had a firsthand relationship to that historical event that I feel like really left its mark on the city. And she was open. She said it sort of affected the kind of mother that she became, and I think ultimately helped set Dominique, Lil Baby, on his path. And all of that could be traced to, like, something she went through as a kid that also spoke more broadly to Atlanta and the way it has developed socially, politically, culturally, especially Black Atlanta over the last 40, 50 years. So that was a real breakthrough moment for me, and I knew that I could start with her story, which in many ways was also the story of Atlanta in the last, you know, half a century.  [00:05:30] Dan Runcie: And in reading that first piece, too, I could see how much care and thought was put into it from your perspective of going through what happened with those murders and then how that traces directly to someone like Lil Baby because it's hard to tell the story of Atlanta hip hop without doing all of that. And that's something that I think is often missing with so much of the discussion about Atlanta's run, which is why I feel like your book does stand as its own and is able to have a unique voice and perspective on this. [00:05:58] Joe Coscarelli: I appreciate that. Yeah, I wanted to tell the story through characters, right, through people, not just, you know, you can run down the discography of all the amazing Atlanta musicians, right? You can go through the label history, read the reviews. But I always want to sort of pull back like, who's behind these people? Who's behind that person, you know? So that's why I think, you know, mothers were huge, fathers, you know, friends, people who are around these artists growing up, I wanted them to be human characters, and I wanted the side characters to be as big of a part as the famous people 'cause I think they're as crucial to the equation.  [00:06:31] Dan Runcie: And of course, Lil Baby is one of the central characters. Another one is Coach K, who's one of the folks leading up Quality Control Music. Why was it important for him to be a central character in this too?  [00:06:42] Joe Coscarelli: So Coach K is amazing because you can tell basically the last 30 years of rap music only through his career, right? When I said I wanted to be able to trace characters back through the years to artists and eras, like, Coach has seen it all, right? This is a man who was passing out Church fans to promote Pastor Troy and the congregation in the mid-nineties. Then he goes from that to representing all these producers who were, you know, crucial to founding the trap sound, someone like Drama Boy. And then he's working with Young Jeezy, right, as the Snowman mythology takes over and, you know, Def Jam South and the explosion of trap music on a national scale. Coach is behind that, right? You know, there's a moment I talk about in the book where they put the commercial on the radio right, in Atlanta, when the Jeezy's mixtapes, Trap or Die are coming out, right, and it's All Traps Closed today, like National Holiday, you know, like these are the things that Coach was cooking up behind the scenes. Then he works with Gucci Mane, right, who was blood rivals with Jeezy. And then that brings you up to the present day, and in 2013, he and P, his partner Pierre Thomas, they founded Quality Control, and then they have Migos, right, and then they have a Lil Yachty, and then they have Lil Baby. And through Coach K, you could talk about every single one of those careers and so many more that he was on the periphery of, even if he wasn't the main executive or manager involved. So I just think, you know, there's nobody more crucial to that ecosystem at this moment and through the last couple of decades than Kevin Lee, Coach K.  [00:08:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think one of the things that stands out about their run, too, is that it wasn't just one artist and they faded and rose with that artist. And I think that's what we've seen a lot in the streaming era, frankly, from a lot of the record labels that have rose up. They had the runs, and even when one star started to fade from a group that was the hottest group in the moment, they had others that came through, and you're seeing that infrastructure. I feel like that's one thing that sets them apart from a lot of the others at this moment.  [00:08:42] Joe Coscarelli: Totally. For them, it's all about artist development, right? Like, I remember being around them in the office, you know, in late 2017 and they were talking about whether they should have gone after Bhad Bhabie, you know, the Cash Me Outside girl. And like they would see little things pop up and think like, oh, should we get in on that viral moment? And then they would be like, No, that's not what we do. We build artists, we build careers, we build brands. And something that's so special about Quality Control and why they were able to, you know, be the backbone of this book is because they are invested in that sort of old school Motown-esque record business thing of I'm going to pluck someone who might not even think they're a musician, and we're going to believe in them, and we're going to back them, and we're going to build it from the ground up, right, and we're going to build it Atlanta first. Whereas so much in the viral marketing, streaming world of today is going top-down, right? It's a TikTok hit, then it's a major label deal, and this person's probably never even played a show before. They're still very invested in the grassroots bottom-up approach, and I think that's worked for them so many times now that the playbook is, you know, you can't deny it. [00:09:48] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think that also that goes with something that I've seen you talk about even outside of the book as well, just some of the challenges that a lot of the artists and labels have right now in terms of now that the pandemic has, at least in this stage that we're in right now, there's still some lasting effects in terms of how that's shaping the charts, how that's shaping how music's released. What have you been seeing there from that perspective?  [00:10:11] Joe Coscarelli: I mean, you know, a lot of people have been writing this year, yourself included, about the sort of stagnancy of the charts, how, you know, there aren't a lot of new breakout hits, especially in rap music, which had been so dominant for the last decade, essentially, as things started to move online and towards streaming. And I think you're right that a lot of that is pandemic hangover, right? Like, people were not outside like they used to be. Artists were not sort of feeling that energy, that creative energy. They were creating often, like, in a little bubble. I'm sure you get projects like a Beyoncé's RENAISSANCE that comes out of that pandemic moment and maybe speaks to some people's hopes and dreams for what the next few years will be, a little freer. But you don't have any chance for that sort of grassroots development, right? So we saw a lot of things come off of TikTok, but as I was getting at, like, those people, they haven't had the opportunity to touch their fans, right, to speak to the sort of ground swell of support. So you get a lot of things that feel fleeting and then you have something massive, right? Bad Bunny or like Morgan Wallen that's just like lodged up there at the top of the charts 'cause I think those guys had a fully formed thing going into the pandemic and were able to ride it through. You know, when you think about a lot of rap, especially regionally, that's bubbling now, there's a lot of drill, right? Like, you think of the stuff coming out of Brooklyn and the Bronx and that sound traveling all over the country. And I think, you know, since Pop Smoke, we haven't really had a sort of mainstream emissary for that sound. And it is such a local, such a hyper-local, such an underground phenomenon that you haven't really had someone translate it for the mainstream, you know, maybe that's going to be Ice Spice, maybe that's going to be Fivio Foreign, and like, you know, maybe it's going to be someone younger. But I think we're still waiting, right, for what that next wave, especially in rap, is going to be. You see the sort of sun may be setting on the trap era that's described in the book in the rise of drill as the default of what a rap song sounds like, but again, that hasn't really crossed over quite yet.  [00:12:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's been fascinating just to see how the streaming era has shaped things, specifically with how much you focused on it in the book. And with a topic like Atlanta hip hop, there are likely so many sectors that you could have dove in on, and of course, Lil Baby being a central figure did lend itself to the streaming era. But how did you decide which era to focus on? Because there's so many time spans that you probably could have done and equally deep dive on. [00:12:38] Joe Coscarelli: I always knew I wanted to tell a contemporary story, right? Like, I'm more of a reporter than I am a historian. So I'm not a musicologist, I'm not a music critic. You know, I've never really written criticism in terms of album reviews or show reviews, things like that. So I knew I wanted to be able to witness as much as I could firsthand and write about that because that's what I love to do in my work, getting back to this idea of, you know, being a fly on the wall for someone's journey, for someone's rise, for someone's fall even. So it was always going to be contemporary, right? And I feel like you have to tell a little bit of the history, right? You have to talk about Freaknik, you have to talk about OutKast, and the Dungeon Family, and LaFace Records, and So So Def to be able to get to this moment. But I think for me, like, I'm not someone who writes about music nostalgically. Sure, I love the stuff I grew up on, but I'd rather look forwards than backwards. And I think, character-wise, I just want to stay with the cutting edge, right? I want to see what's next. I want to see who's changing things, who's, you know, who's moving things forward. And that's just what I seek out in my life and in my job. So I think it was always going to be as contemporary as possible.  [00:13:46] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that streaming also allowed us to see more growth from the areas that I think, in a lot of ways, were a bit held back from gatekeepers controlling everything. And I think Atlanta's a perfect example of that, even though they had the massive rise, you know, nineties, early 2000s, it went to another level this past decade.  [00:14:09] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah. And I think you know that sort of in-between time, right, when you think about post-Napster and file sharing, post-CD crash in the early 2000s. But pre-streaming, like, a lot of what became the go-to playbook for streaming was happening in the underground mixtape scene, especially in Atlanta and in the South. And you think of things like DatPiff or you know, sites like that where free mix tapes were coming out and it was all about quantity, right, in a way that really set these artists for the streaming era, right? You think of Lil Wayne's mixtape run, Gucci's mixtape run, and then Future's mixtape run. It was just about music, music, music, music. And so Migos sort of got in at the tail end of that and they released, you know, whatever it is, 5, 7, 10 mixtapes before they put out a proper debut album. And then when they finally hit with something like Culture, their second proper full length, the world had finally caught up to them and the rest of the Atlanta artists. And yet there's this whole group in between that gets left behind, right? Like, I'd love to read a book about Travis Porter and Rich Kidz and you know, these Atlanta rappers who are really, like, laying the groundwork for a lot of this, even like Rocko or you know, early career Future. Like these guys, I think if they would've come out once Spotify was as big as it is now, they would've been huge national and international stars. And instead, they sort of get caught in this in-between zone. So, you know, I think, I love to see when art lines up with the technology of the moment, and I think these Atlanta rappers were in the perfect place at the perfect time to take advantage of that explosion.  [00:15:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I agree. And then even reading it too, and thinking about this conversation we're having, so much of you framing this as you're a reporter, you're capturing what's happening contemporary, and given the insights and the things that people are sharing with you, the amount of trust that you were needed to develop with them, and we talked a lot about the aspect of race and how that plays in. How did you navigate that yourself as a white man and trying to tell this black story and making sure that you're capturing it in the best way possible?  [00:16:10] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah. You know, obviously, I thought about this a lot in the reporting, in the conception of the book, and certainly in the writing and the editing. I think the job of any journalist, right, is to be like a respectful, humble, open-minded guest in other people's worlds, right, and to be well aware of what you know and what you don't know. Like, that goes for when I'm interviewing a female artist, a trans songwriter, reggaeton star. I think, like, to navigate spaces where you're not an insider, like, it's best to come prepared and engaged and curious. Like, I did my research, I knew what I was talking about to the extent that I could, but I also was eager to, like, defer to people who are the experts, right? I made sure that everyone from artists to managers, family members, like, they knew that I wanted to take whatever platform I had with the book and with my work at The New York Times, and sort of take their work seriously to shine a light on it, and recognize it as important as it is, right, this cultural product that has this immense influence and impact. So I wanted to really preserve these moments to the best of my ability for the history books. And I think that my subjects got that right away. You know, I don't think it took a lot of time for them to spend with me to see that I was really dedicated in that mission, that I was going to be respectful of their time and space, interested in the work that they were doing and the lives they were living. And then, like, your credibility travels, right? One person can vouch for you with another, you know, with a collaborator, with a family member. And I just wanted to just defer to them and their experiences. And I think I took that with me in the writing of the book. You know, of course, there's analysis, there's observation, but I really wanted people to speak for themselves. The book is very quote-heavy. I really wanted to capture people as they are, do an accurate portrayal of what it is they've been through. Hopefully, I think the quality speaks for itself. But I wanted to, you know, give these people whatever, spotlight, whatever platform I can offer. And then tell the truest version of how they relate it to me.  [00:18:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's the best and the most fair way to do it. Along the way though, did you receive any pushback or any type of challenge as you were doing this? [00:18:10] Joe Coscarelli: There's very little. I think I'm fortunate enough to, you know, have an institution like The New York Times behind me. I think, you know, people take that name seriously. It opens a lot of doors, whether or not I was a good reporter. And I think when you can open the door and then when you show up, and you're thorough, and you're accurate, you know, I'd written a lot about these people before the book, I think that the trust just grows and grows. And I was also finding people really at the beginning, right, of their careers in a lot of cases, like Lil Baby, like, you know, he may not be able to spell my last name, but he knows that I was that guy with him listening to his mixtape tracks as they were deciding what was going to be on, you know, his second, his third mixtape. And he's seen me for years along the way, supporting that journey, you know, engaging with the work, like I said. And, you know, meeting people at the beginnings of things, they remember, right, who was there with them and who was supportive and who got it. And I think that that went a long way for me with my subjects. I think the other thing is like, you know, in the music industry, whether it's rap, you know, southern rap, regional street rap, like, there's always a white guy around, you know. I talk about this in the book, whether it's a dj, a producer, a manager, you know, this is a trope, this is a tradition. And I think, you know, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes poorly. But I try to always be above board and respectful in my dealings. But I think, you know, when you're riding around in Atlanta, with a rapper and you look like I do, you know, someone's just going to assume that I'm either from the label or I'm from The FADER, you know, something like that. [00:19:41] Dan Runcie: Exactly. Exactly. But no, I think that, given this, as you mentioned, yeah, there's plenty of precedent for people having done this before. And yeah, I think the care that you bring into it with the book is clearly shown. And thinking about that, as you mentioned, just you driving around Atlanta, getting a feel for the vibe of the city and everything else, spending so much time there, how do you feel about the run that Atlanta's currently having and how this will continue? Because I think that like anything, people are always thinking of what is the next thing. How long does this last? We, of course, saw the east and west coast rise and fall. What do you feel, like, the next decade or so it looks like for Atlanta in hip hop?  [00:20:19] Joe Coscarelli: I mean, the thing that's been so amazing about Atlanta, the reason it can be the subject of a book like this is because every time you would think it was over, they would just come up with a new thing, right? So like, you know, you think back to OutKast, you think back to So So Def, you know, you have the run of Ludacris, who becomes, you know, this crazy mainstream success story, you have Gucci, and Jeezy, and the rise of trap, and T.I., you know, becomes this huge crossover star. And then you think that that's over. And then you have crunk, and you have Lil Jon, and you think that's over. And then here's comes Waka Flocka Flame coming up from under Gucci, you know. Even someone like Gucci, he's helped birth three, four micro-generations of Atlanta rappers. And, you know, someone like Young Thug comes out and you're like, oh, like, this is too eccentric. This is never going to happen, right? Like, this is only for the real heads, only for people listening underground, and then all of a sudden he's on SNL, right? And he's in Vogue. And just over and over again, you have these guys sort of breakthrough with something that seems like it's too outre. It's too avant-garde. You know, even Migos and their sort of like punk repetition, you know, people heard Bando and said like, oh, this is annoying. Like, this is going nowhere, and then all of a sudden the whole radio sounds like that. So there's a part of me that does feel like, you know, this book is sort of capturing a contained era, right? The first 7, 8, 9, 10 years of streaming and the intensity and the tragedy of the YSL indictment. Like, maybe that's a hard stop to this era. But I think you can never count Atlanta out, right? So like, you might not know exactly what's coming next, but there's always more kids like this, like coming up with something new, taking what came before them, putting like a twist on it, and then all of a sudden it's on the radio, right? So like, even me, like, I see like a real post-Playboy Cardi, you know, sort of experimental streak in a lot of these rappers. I think there's some drill influence coming into Atlanta. And I don't think the next generation has really revealed itself yet, but I'm very confident that based on the infrastructure that's there, based on the amount of talent, the artists who call it home, both from there and not, like, I really think there'll be another wave, and there's just always another wave, in a way that even New York, you know, has struggled to bring the championship belt back that many times, you know? But I think, you know, Atlanta's regeneration has always been sort of its calling card.  [00:22:41] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think one of the things that stands out about Atlanta too, and this is a bit of a sad way to frame it, but they've been able to withstand the jail time or the charges that happen for a lot of the rappers that are in their prime. Of course, we saw that happened with the West Coast in the nineties, Death Row, and you know, everything with Suge Knight and Tupac. I think we saw that a bit with the East Coast as well. But Atlanta, unfortunately, whether it's T.I., Gucci, like, a lot of them have served time, but the city still has been able to still thrive in hip hop because there was always someone else coming through. And I think even more recently now with Gunna and Thug, dealing with the RICO case and everything, who knows how that'll end up. But I think the difference for them and the city now as opposed to other areas is that even if you know, let's say that they may not be able to make music or this hinders their rise, there are other folks that can continue to have the city continue to rise up in the music around it. [00:23:38] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah, and I think so much of this music, right, the music that's come out of Atlanta in the last 30 years, like, it comes from struggle, right? It comes from necessity. And the things you're describing, whether it's, you know, violence, death, you know, the criminal justice, the weight of the state on these young black men, mostly. And they do tend to be men, especially in this scene, though that's changing too. You know, I think when people feel backed into a corner, like, art can come from that, right? So whether it's YSL directly or it's the people, they influence, the people from their neighborhood who are going to fill that void. I think, you know, the people hear the urgency in this music, right? They hear the, whether it's the joy or the pain, you know, there's a lot of feeling here. And I think, yeah, the tough times, people bounce back out of that. And trap is so much about that in general that I think it'll just continue to happen. [00:24:29] Dan Runcie: Definitely. And in the beginning of this conversation, you talked a little bit about how Hoop Dreams and that type of story was definitely an inspiration, and of course, that was nearly a three-hour long movie, if I remember correctly, the timeframe there. In terms of this book, already reading it, maybe through the first few chapters, I was like, oh, this is going to get turned into some type of TV or series or a movie or something like that. I could already see that happening. Was that in the back of your mind as you were thinking about what this could look like? Obviously, I'm sure you're so focused on the book, but were you, as you're thinking about the inspiration, were you thinking about multimedia adaptations?  [00:25:05] Joe Coscarelli: You know, I wasn't as much as I should have been, right? Otherwise, I would've been recording my audio better to turn it into a podcast, to then turn it into a doc series or whatever it is. I'm very much like a print writer, right? Like, I'm a newspaper reporter. I don't even think about images really as much as I think about words. And yet, like, so much of my influence, like, you know, Hoop Dreams was always the sort of the north star of this, but, like, I'm a huge consumer of television and film and stories of all kinds. So I knew I wanted the scope of the story to at least have that potential, right, to feel grand, to feel cinematic, to feel like it was about a time and a place and characters, which I think, you know, is often easier to do in a visual medium. So I had it in mind. But I was really too focused on just getting the words down on the page and getting the material I needed. I hope you're right and that now that this thing exists, right, this big book, like you said, Hoop Dreams is a three-hour movie, and this is like the book equivalent of a three-hour movie. It's almost 400 pages, so it has that sort of epic quality. And I think there is, you know, hopefully, more to mine there, not necessarily in recreating the stories that I've already captured, but in that essence, in that spirit and the way that Atlanta sort of goes in waves and goes in cycles. I hope there's a way to be able to capture that visually as well.  [00:26:23] Dan Runcie: If you could handpick any director you would want to lead a project on Rap Capital who'd you pick? [00:26:29] Joe Coscarelli: Oh, man. All time. I mean, that's a tough one. Look, I mean, what Donald Glover and Hiro Murai have done with their Atlanta series, you know, it's much more surreal than this. It's fictionalized, but the parts of it that are based, you know, more on earth and more in the music industry, like, are just captured so well. I think, Hiro, as a director specifically, was able to, you know, all the aerial shots, like the highways, the roads, the woods, like that version of Atlanta is really seared in my mind. And, you know, I know they've done their version, but I think there's more to do. But then there's like the younger generation, right, of video directors and stuff that I'm just waiting to be able to see their worlds on a larger scale, you know, someone like Spike Jordan or someone like Daps who have their hand in, or, you know, Keemotion, like people who have their hand in a lot of the visual representation of this music on YouTube. And I think I would love to see what they would do, right? I would love to see the present-day music video directors' version of Belly, right, in Atlanta. Like, Belly, one of my favorite, you know, top five favorite movies ever, and has that sort of that music video quality to it in a lot of ways, but then blown up for the big screen. Like, I want some of those guys to have a canvas like that to paint on.  [00:27:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's a good answer because I think that, especially the Hiro one, because I think that Atlanta, as a TV show, does capture so much of it. And you're right, the episodes that are set in earth and not the surreal, you know, messages. But yeah, the ones that are set in earth do capture a lot of the intricacies about the music industry and I think the reality, which is I think something you do in the book as well. I also think that some of the newer music video directors, too, just given the world that they're capturing, do so much of that well, too, and I think having that is key because, of course, some of the more established names have a picture of Atlanta, but it may be more relevant to that, you know, LaFace era of Atlanta, which, while very impactful, isn't what your book is about. [00:28:27] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah, I think there's a new wave, right, and the people who are responsible for the iconography of this wave. You know, even the crazy run of Young Thug videos, I think the director Be EL Be, is that his name? You know, just super, super surreal sort of dream world stuff. But I want to see what those guys can do with the present day, given the budgets, you know, if they were given a Hollywood-size budget instead of a rap video-size budget. [00:28:53] Dan Runcie: Well, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that because I feel like it's one of these inevitable things and it'll be fun to watch for sure.  [00:28:59] Joe Coscarelli: Fingers crossed. Yeah.  [00:29:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. All right. Well, before we wrap things up, I do want to go back to one thing about the music industry because you had tweeted something out, I forget how long ago it was, but Punch from TDE had, shoutout to Punch, he had asked a question about when did the personalities become bigger than the music, and you had responded and said, well, there's some nuance here. Look at someone like Rod Wave who is, you know, selling multiple times more than someone like Megan Thee Stallion. And I think Rod Wave is someone that, unless you know the music, you're not necessarily tapping in, versus Megan who's someone that's performing at all the big award shows and has a lot of the big features, how do you make sense of that dichotomy between those examples and maybe what it says about where we are in the industry and how to make sense of it? [00:29:45] Joe Coscarelli: I think there's just been a real crumbling of the monoculture, right? Like, before. You would expect, if somebody had a number one hit, if somebody had a number one album, everyone would know who they were, right? I would know, you would know, your mom would know, my grandma would know. They would at least have some vague idea, right, of who Shania Twain was, or you know, Katy Perry, whoever it may be, even Ed Sheeran, to name one of the last, I think, monoculture stars. Whereas today everything is so fragmented, right? You write about this in your newsletter, whether it's streaming TV or movies or music, like, everything finds its own little audience, and it's sometimes it's not even that little, you know. Jon Caramanica, the pop music critic here at the Times, and I collaborated on a piece, you know, I think probably almost four years ago at this point, saying like, your old idea of a pop star is dead. Your new idea of a pop star is, you know, it's Bad Bunny. It's BTS. It's Rosalía who's not selling a ton of albums, but can pack out two shows at Radio City Music Hall without saying a word of English, basically, you know. And people are finding these artists on their own, right? You think of NBA YoungBoy, another one who's like, basically, the biggest rap artist we've had over the last five years, and he gets no radio play. He's never been on television, he's never played SNL. He has, you know, maybe one magazine cover, national magazine cover in his past, that happened when he was, you know, 16, 17 years old. And yet, like the numbers on YouTube are bigger than Ariana Grande's, for instance, you know. So I think these audiences have just splintered. And there are a few people who permeate, right, personality-wise, you know, Megan Thee Stallion or whatever. But often the music is somehow divorced from that, right? Like, I think there's far more people who know these next-generation stars from being in commercials or, you know, Bad Bunny in a Corona commercial or whatever it is, then can sing one of their songs word for word. And I think that's fine. You know, I think that a lot of artists have found freedom in that, right? I keep coming back to artists who sing in Spanish primarily. Like, before I would be that to cross over, you had to change, right? You had to start singing in English, at least somewhat, like a Shakira or whatever it is. But now, that's no longer a prerequisite because your audience is going to find you on Spotify, they're going to come to your shows, they're going to buy merch. And even if you're not getting played on Z100 or, you know, Top 40 radio, you can still have as much of a footprint. It's just not in that same everybody knows the same 10 people way, you know?  [00:32:10] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think that the fact that someone like Bad Bunny has an album that's not in English, that has been on the top of the US charts for, what, 30%, 40% of the weeks of the year is incredible.  [00:32:24] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think that he is a celebrity, right, he is in films, he's in Bullet Train, he's in commercials, whatever. But I still think if you, you know, maybe it's different in New York, but if you went on the street and you asked, you know, your average 42-year-old white woman who Bad Bunny was, or to name a Bad Bunny song, it might not happen. But he's still selling out Yankee Stadium, you know, so it's this weird give and take of, like, what makes a hit these days, what makes a superstar. I think, you know, to bring it back, like, Lil Baby is in this boat too. Like, he's as close to, we have, I think, in the new school as a mainstream superstar, right, headlining festivals, you know, he's performing at the World Cup. He is sponsored, you know, Budweiser sponsors him. He's in, you know, all sorts of commercials, and he is really moved into that upper echelon. But he is still not a celebrity, right, in the way that a 50 Cent or a Jay-Z is to everyone. But he is to a certain generation. So it'll be interesting to see if he can sort of push past that last barrier and become a household name. But he doesn't need it, right? He doesn't have to be a household name to be the biggest rapper in the country.  [00:33:28] Dan Runcie: Right. I think the part that I'm really fascinated by, too, is how this separation of, yes, you can be someone that is more known for personality than music, how that will translate to the labels they're assigned to, which of course are in the business of people actually streaming and listening to your music, and they're not necessarily in the business of selling personality or selling brand deals, right? Like, they're not getting the Pepsi deals or they're not, like, that's Pepsi doing that, you know what I mean? So it'll be interesting to see what that looks like 'cause obviously I know that there are legal challenges and transgressions with maybe why someone like a Rod Wave or like an NBA YoungBoy may not be getting asked to perform at the Grammy's, right? Like, I think that's pretty easy to understand. Or even someone like a Summer Walker who I think that does very well from a streaming perspective, but I think, you know, personally, just isn't the personality type to want to be all out there, right?  [00:34:21] Joe Coscarelli: Yeah, has no interest in being a celebrity, but I think it's almost healthier, right, for some of these artists to be able to say, like, I've seen what happens on the fame side, and I don't want that part. I just want to make my music and play for my fans. Like, I think that's becoming maybe more and more of a possibility, where you can speak directly to your fans and not have to play the game, right, with the gatekeepers that might not actually be turning into anything at this point other than mind share. So, yeah, there's a lot of different kinds of stardom right now, and I think, like, the cult star, the, like, mass cult star, Tyler, the Creator, you know, the way he built up his career. You've written about this over so many years. Like, he doesn't have a smash hit, he doesn't have an Old Town Road, you know, or a Call Me Maybe, or whatever it is. He doesn't have that defining record or pop cultural moment. He just has years and years and years of solid growth, and people respond to that, and that you can pack arenas on that just as easily as you, and maybe even more effectively than you can on the back of one or two massive hits. [00:35:25] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely now, for sure. It'll be fascinating to watch and I'll be looking out for your continued reporting and thoughts on this, yeah, such a fascinating time in the industry. But Joe, it's been a pleasure, man. Hey, if anyone listening, if you are a fan of this podcast, believe me, this is a book. I can't recommend it enough. You'll enjoy it. But Joe, for the folks listening, where can they get Rap Capital?  [00:35:47] Joe Coscarelli: Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story, out October 18th, available wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Get an audiobook, should be out soon at your local bookstore. Yeah, hopefully, you'll be able to find it. Rap Capital. Thanks so much for having me.  [00:36:00] Dan Runcie: Awesome. Thanks for coming on and great work again.  [00:36:02] Joe Coscarelli: It was really fun. Thanks.  [00:36:03] Dan Runcie: Really good. [00:36:04] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Mona Scott-Young is best-known for producing the Love & Hip Hop reality TV series on VH1. The franchise debuted in 2011 has remained a TV fixture today through industry-wide changes with TV and around 30 different seasons aired. However, it’s Young’s ability to permeate hip-hop culture into the mainstream that’s been the true calling card. Before Love & Hip Hop, Mona managed talent in music. She was a co-founder for Violator with the late Chris Lighty, and was behind memorable brand partnerships such as Busta Rhymes and Courvoisier, Missy Elliott with Reebok and Adidas, and the landmark 50 Cent-Vitamin Water deal, among many others back then, such deals were harder to cut than nowadays. It was during this time in music when Mona was introduced to the fascinating lives of hip-hop wives, which led to Love & Hip-Hop’s creation. But Mona, who also founded and runs Monami Productions,has more stories to tell about the hip-hop industry. She’s teaming up with another well-known TV producer, 50 Cent, on “Hip-Hop Homicides,” which debuts later this year. Mona’s influence on the world of hip-hop reaches further than most realize. To hear how Mona moved the culture forward, you’ll want to listen to our show. Here’s everything we covered:  [2:59] How does Love & Hip Hop stay fresh? [4:45] Biggest challenge for reality TV in social-media age [7:55] Love & Hip Hop success stories  [9:07] Influencing other hip-hop-related series [11:15] Increased programming around hip-hop [14:21] How reality shows fit into today’s streaming landscape [19:00] Mona’s career in music and artist-brand deals [24:52] Brand deals for Love & Hip Hop talent  [28:27] Network pressures to expand the Love & Hip Hop brand [30:06] Scrutiny on the show’s content [34:01] Future of Love & Hip Hop  Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Mona Scott-Youngs, @monascottyoung     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   HitPiece is your place to discover new NFTs from your favorite artists. Learn more today at hitpiece.com   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Mona Scott-Young: These were women who were living in the shadows of the men in their lives who had achieved all the fame and the success, and how were these women leveraging the relationships that they were in and the things that they were doing to get to where they wanted to be in life. So I always framed it as an opportunity, so you're getting these stories, right? All of the heartbreak and all of the joy, the highs, the lows. But in exchange, these women are also getting this platform where they can build their brands, build their businesses.  [00:00:39] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:59] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is the producer and entrepreneur, Mona Scott-Young. She is the mind behind Hop. She also was a music executive for a number of years, worked with Violator and put together some of the more memorable hip hop branding deals of the time, such as Busta Rhymes in Courvoisier and Mountain Dew. She worked with 50 Cent, Vitaminwater as well, and a bunch of other deals, and she's been someone I've wanted to have on this podcast for a while. We talked a lot about the business of TV and how things have changed specifically for a docu-follow show like Love & Hip Hop. This is a show that has been going on for more than 10 seasons now and has had different franchises, different spinoffs, and has had plenty of copycats as well. So we talked about the business of the show, what it's been like producing it, the platform that a lot of the talent have had that have come up from it, one of the most famous examples is Cardi B and what she'd been able to do after the show, but we also talked about some of the other talents that's come from the show as well. We also talked about how Love & Hip Hop is positioned and some of the perception that it's had, whether or not that perception is more so chatter and criticism, or has that actually made a material impact on the business of what Mona's doing. She also talked a little bit about some of the other projects coming up from Monami Entertainment such as Hip Hop Homicides and a whole lot more. It was great to talk to her, get her perspective on streaming, the industry, where things are, and overall the brand deals that are happening in hip hop. Great conversation. Glad we finally had her on. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Mona Scott-Young  [00:02:38] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we are joined by the one and only Mona Scott-Young, producer and one of the great folks in media and entertainment today. And I feel like for you, you've been more than a decade in with Love & Hip Hop, you have several spinoffs. How do you keep things fresh? How do you keep everything coming year after year? [00:02:59] Mona Scott-Young: You know, I always say it's about reinvention. It's about evolution, making sure that you are constantly growing, whether it's me as a producer and applying that to the franchise. You know, what's great about the way that that concept was built is it's that it was a world, right? So we could always populate different folks in and out of that world. So it gave us an opportunity to, you know, cycle in new talent who had fresh stories to tell. And I think that has a lot to do with the staying power and the longevity of the franchise.  [00:03:31] Dan Runcie: I think the other thing that's impressive is just how the show's been able to stay consistent with all of the changes that are happening with media and streaming and anything else. Have there been any big shifts that you've made from that perspective as things that have continued to move, whether it's from cable to streaming networks to where things are now?  [00:03:50] Mona Scott-Young: You know, not necessarily in terms of the concept, right? 'Cause like I said, the stories are what keeps it fresh and different, but we definitely loosened up our shooting style a lot and we became, you know, more free-flowing, I think to be in line with the fact that folks were able to tune into social media and see things happening in real-time. You know, when we first started the franchise, a big part of it was this very soap opera-like feeling that it had. And over the course of the years, we loosened that up a little bit just so that the stories were able to, you know, track a little more closely to what was happening in real-time in their lives. [00:04:30] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Do you feel as if social media changed the overall feel and the flow of the show itself? I know that's something that, I've talked to a lot of people on TV and they felt like they've noticed that. How are some of the ways you feel like social media either impacted things for Love & Hip Hop? [00:04:45] Mona Scott-Young: Absolutely. You know, because there's such a lead time with production and editing. It's really hard to stay up with the fact that these folks are out here living their lives on social media, and so the audience gets a chance to just tune into their IG lives and get a blow-by-blow of everything that's happening in their lives so that by the time our show is edited, it's hard for it to feel fresh, right, because they're like, oh, I saw that happen months ago. And so it's finding those other stories, getting the cast to keep things exclusively for the show so that there's this sense of discovery for the audience. 'Cause I think that's the biggest hurdle for reality TV is the fact that, you know, everyone has access to their audience and can broadcast their lives, you know, on a minute-by-minute basis. And so how do we offer something that's different, something that's entertaining, something that feels fresh and current and relevant? I think that's the biggest challenge.  [00:05:44] Dan Runcie: Have you noticed that shift with social media at all changed based on what platform has been popular at the time? Of course, the show is popular as ever in Black Twitter, but how about with TikTok now with things picking up there? Have there been any unique things you've seen with the reception there?  [00:05:58] Mona Scott-Young: Not necessarily. You know what, I'm not a big TikToker. I don't know if I should say that. I probably just aged myself a thousand years, but, you know, I haven't really noticed a big shift based on TikTok viewership. I know that, you know, or usership, 'cause I know that that's mainly what music, dance, or are they doing skits on there as well? [00:06:21] Dan Runcie: I mean, they're doing skits. I feel like with the show like yours though, it's unique because I think that you're reaching a bit of an older demographic than the folks that are really in TikTok. But like with all these social media platforms, they do tend to scale up at some point, right? So the younger community...  [00:06:37] Mona Scott-Young: We'll see what happens, yeah. One of the biggest things that we saw happen on social media were the reenactments, right, the recreations where you had all of these social influencers and social comedians doing their takes on the scenes from the show, and that gave it a whole another life. And I think, you know, what people enjoy about the show is the cast's ability to be self-deprecating. They make fun of themselves, so sometimes you'd see them participating in those skits. You know, social media has always played a huge role in the success of the franchise, even dating back to the very early days where we gave bloggers and the video influencers, the social media influencers, the sneak peek at the show so that they kind of had first dibs. And the immediacy of, you know, them talking about the show and having that engagement was a big part of the success of the show. So I love it when I continuously see the show showing up in different ways on social media. [00:07:34] Dan Runcie: Can we also talk about how social media has been a big piece for how a lot of the folks on the show can use Love & Hip Hop as a platform to do other things? I think Cardi B, of course, has been one of the hallmark examples of this. But what are some of the other folks that stick out for you in terms of, yes, what they were able to do at this show, and then social media took them to another level? [00:07:55] Mona Scott-Young: I mean, if you think about everyone who's like started a business, right? Most of their products, they're hawking them online and via social media. So, you know, whether it's the waist trainers, the hair clips, makeup, all of that stuff kind of came from seeing it on the show and then watching them blow it up. And then you have some of it that was reverse engineered like Cardi was huge on social media already as kind of a, you know, influencer, comic, and having an opportunity to be on the show expanded her audience. But I just think seeing those two things come together, that was probably the biggest example of how, you know, social media and linear TV worked really well to really expand her brand. [00:08:40] Dan Runcie: Yeah, especially with her specifically. I mean, she's giving you the shoutouts in the songs, too, but just seeing what she's able to do creatively with the brand, and I think that's something that's been unique that we've seen with reality TV overall. But I feel like with your type of show specifically because you do get some of those characters that come back, you have some that go off and do their own thing, you see a bit more of that variety than some of these other shows where it's like one season that you may never see that person in the season.  [00:09:07] Mona Scott-Young: That's very, very true. I mean, one of the big mandates for me, 'cause a lot of these shows were just about chronicling lives, right? This is about your life. For me, it was always, this is an opportunity, right? If you think about at its core, these were women, or the core of the original concept, these were women who were living in the shadows, right, of the men in their lives who had achieved all the fame and the success, and how were these women leveraging the relationships that they were in and the things that they were doing to get to where they wanted to be in life. So I always framed it as an opportunity, and what I love to see is how, you know, they go out and they take advantage of that opportunity. So you're getting these stories, right? All of the heartbreak and all of the, you know, the joy, the highs, the lows. But in exchange, these women are also getting this platform where they can build their brands, build their businesses. Everyone from Yandy, right, who went from being behind the scenes to having her Yelle Skin Care and all of her other numerous businesses that she has. Cardi with her music, who, you know, was doing her music, didn't have that massive success, had a huge following on social media, but was able to kind of connect the dots in a way that allowed for her music to take off. Oh, God, Rasheeda, Karlie Redd, and K. Michelle, and when I think about all of the success stories with their businesses and their brands, that for me is the big differentiator for Love & Hip Hop 'cause I think these ladies understood the assignment, understood that this was an opportunity, and took advantage of it to, you know, level up in their lives and what they were doing with their business. [00:10:50] Dan Runcie: And I feel like I've seen your own career and your own opportunities take a similar evolution as the show has continued to have its own success, and you had started your production company years ago, but I think right now we've just seen more and more opportunity for creators like yourself that have been able to establish their franchises and just have the success and have different networks have interest in them year over year. What has that process been like?  [00:11:15] Mona Scott-Young: Yeah. You know, it's the most gratifying thing because I think, you know, the first to market with anything always is a double-edged sword, right? So Love & Hip Hop was the first docu-follow of its kind that focused on the genre of hip hop and the way that we did, and really gave a different look and feel to what we're used to seeing on reality television. And what we've seen since then, I think, are a lot of shows that I would say Love & Hip Hop paved the way for. You know, shoutout to shows like Power and, you know, Empire and even Rap Sh!t that Issa Rae has on right now. I look at that and I go, yeah, the fact that, you know, we're now giving space to scripted shows that are set in this world and shining a light on the culture and, you know, the women in the culture specifically, if you look at Rap Sh!t, I feel like that is a direct descendant of what Love & Hip Hop was able to pave the way for. [00:12:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, those are good examples. I feel like that moment in the end of the 2010s, you started to see more shows, I feel like that whole Empire run and a bunch of shows around that, we're able to see a lot of success there. I also feel like around this time too, especially in the most recent years, we've also seen a lot more studios and a lot more folks get different opportunities, whether it's folks getting these overall deals from the streaming services or some others getting big interest from private equity firms that are trying to invest in these studios. As someone that runs a studio, runs a reduction company yourself, how do you view that landscape, and how do those opportunities come up for different folks? [00:12:55] Mona Scott-Young: I mean, I think it's fantastic. I think it's a wonderful thing. I still don't think there's enough of it happening. I always say that during, you know, Black Lives Matter, when we were at the height of that movement, there were so many overtures, right? So many calls were made and people wanting to be in business. And I do believe you're seeing an increased number of programming that caters to our audience and opportunities for those content creators. But I also, you know, hope that this trend continues, and I hope this isn't kind of a performative gesture in order to check a box or to satisfy, you know, their contribution. But, I think it's great. I think the more that audiences understand that their viewership matters, that their support matters, and that's really what is going to dictate it at the end of the day, because we can, you know, get those dollars in and we can get those opportunities. But if those eyeballs don't tune in, then you know, we're not going to continue to see the programming and have those opportunities. So I think it's, you know, nice to see it happen. I'm very interested in seeing what the staying power is for this and how those opportunities increase and not, you know, level out.  [00:14:10] Dan Runcie: Do you think that there is any sort of fear or thought that folks should have about the staying power of those eyeballs? Like, does some of these things seem a bit more fleeting in nature?  [00:14:21] Mona Scott-Young: I don't think we get the same commitment to staying with something and giving it an opportunity to grow, right? It's like if we don't have instant success, if we don't get those eyeballs instantly, the idea is, oh, this audience is in here moving on to the next, right? I just think that sometimes it takes a minute for a show to catch on. I don't ever think the same marketing dollars are put towards the programming so that folks even have the awareness level that's usually left to us to figure out what are the ways that we're going to bring visibility to, you know, our shows and make sure that, you know, folks know that we exist. Again, I just hope that the commitment extends beyond just the initial overture and that there is promotions and marketing and commitment to seeing these shows grow and find their audience like every other programming has an opportunity to do.  [00:15:18] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. It also makes me think about whether or not there are specific differences as well for folks who are making shows, whether it's something for streaming versus something for cable TV or for a network specifically, because I know that with your shows and some of the others that are doing reality things, most of your audience still is, at least from my understanding, still tuning in through cable and watching it through those areas, but. Even though we started to see some reality TV that's been exclusive to these streaming services, it still hasn't been to the same extent that we see, like whether it's with Love & Hip Hop on VH1 or some of the other services. Why do you think that is? And do you think that'll change at all?  [00:15:59] Mona Scott-Young: I think the formats have to evolve in order for us to find the right formula to live on the streamers. You know, those shows are about repeatability and about, you know, the binge-watching and, you know, for reality, there's something about that appointment television that tuning in week in and week out that I think plays into the idea that what is happening is happening to some extent in real-time, even though we know it isn't, and the ability to, you know, watch it all. I think it's just a different, it's a shift. It's a paradigm shift, and we have to figure out what the right formula is, what the right content play is to work in that arena. So there's a lot of conversations around that and everybody's trying to find like, kind of what is it right now what you're seeing on streamers are. Formatted docu-series, like real estate shows and, you know, those kind of, I'm trying to think of what are some of the docu-follows that are living. Probably the Kardashian show in Hulu is an example, right? That's kind of a beast of a different nature, right? There's a rabid audience there for the Kardashian clan that I think will watch no matter where it exists. So, you know, I'd love to see more conventional docu-follow find its way to the streamers. I think there's going to have to be a little bit of a fine-tuning in what that format looks like for it to really work there. [00:17:29] Dan Runcie: Right. Because it isn't necessarily a binge release. I don't feel like that necessarily makes sense if you're trying to follow things. I think back to, it was Rhythm + Flow. This is almost three years ago at this point, but the show, you know, the competition show Cardi B and Chance and T.I., I think they did every week or every other week for three block episode of release, and I felt like that was okay. It wasn't too long that felt like it didn't make sense for Netflix, but it was just enough to capture some momentum. And I think back about that, I was like, Okay.  [00:17:58] Mona Scott-Young: They're doing that as a format, right? It's a competition show. So those work. The competition shows work. The format shows, the real estate, the cooking, the anything, it's just that finding that right rhythm, that right lane for docu-follow is going to be the challenge. [00:18:14] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. That's your point. And then, of course, the Kardashians may be a bit of an outlier just given the size of them, but you are, in a lot of ways, bringing either new stars or people who haven't necessarily had their headlines everywhere in quite some time to the stage, and that's a little bit of a different... [00:18:31] Mona Scott-Young: That's a little bit of a different, yeah, a little bit of a different proposition, if you will. [00:18:36] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. The other reason why I wanted to chat with you is because even before Love & Hip Hop and everything else, you had spent years in music, and you were one of the early ones that were looking at the opportunities for artists, working specifically with brands and looking back at whether it was 50's Vitamin water deal or Courvoisier with Busta. [00:19:00] Mona Scott-Young: For Mountain Dew or Missy with Adidas, or I should say Adidas, and Reebok, and you know, A Tribe Called Quest and Sprite, right? It goes all the way back to that.  [00:19:12] Dan Runcie: What do you think it was? 'Cause I felt like Violator was here when everyone else was here in terms of just pushing those things. There were a few others I know that were doing their thing, but it felt like you all were at least five years ahead of where everyone else was pushing them, pushing those things.  [00:19:26] Mona Scott-Young: Well, and I appreciate that. For us, it was really always about how do we maximize for our clients, right? We were managers first. And then when we realized that there were all these other areas that we needed to educate ourselves in and get involved in in order to really manage our clients to the best of our ability, and help them expand their brands, and fully monetize, you know, their talents and their contributions to a culture that we saw was taking over every area of advertising and pop culture. We realized that, you know, the opportunities were way beyond just their music, way beyond understanding how to conduct the business of their music. It was about their branding, their cross, you know, marketing value, their ability to bridge the gap with brands and sponsors. So that was just a function of us really wanting to represent our clients not just the best of our ability to help them maximize to the fullest what they, you know, they were bringing to the table with their music and with their cultural relevance. So we understood that it was bigger than just the music.  [00:20:41] Dan Runcie: And do you feel like a lot of the brand partners that you were pitching and talking to with about these opportunities at the time saw that it was bigger than just the music and wanted in because I look at the way things are now and the amount of deals and partnerships we see now. It was nothing compared to what it was like when you were doing these deals back then.  [00:20:59] Mona Scott-Young: I mean, you know, it's interesting 'cause there was that period where they didn't quite understand what was happening with this, you know, music and the culture because it was always just across the board, Black, White, Asian, and understanding what that kind of point of connection was, right, with all of these kids. Was it the music? Was it the clothing? Was it the lifestyle? What exactly are they buying into? And I think we serve the very important role in helping them bridge that gap, right, giving them that understanding of what hip hop was culturally and all of its different touch points. And then it became about, well, can't we just tap this thing without having to necessarily put this talent front and center? We can just use the music. We can dress, you know, our folks in the clothing and getting them to understand that there was an authenticity, right, that came with the culture that you couldn't fake, and that if you were going to do it, it had to be done in a way that was mutually beneficial because we also couldn't afford to risk our clients' viability with their core audience. Because if they, you know, sold out, then they were done with the music. And that exchange, that dialogue, that conversation I think is what allowed us to position ourselves in a way that benefited our clients, that allowed us to become a gateway to the culture and to the music for a lot of these brands. And that allowed companies like Steve Stoute's Translation literally to exist based on being that, you know, cultural bridge. So it was a step up process of getting them, one, to understand what this thing called hip hop was, and then how it was influencing their consumers, and then how best to tap it in a way that, you know, didn't hurt the artists that they were exploiting. And I'll use the word exploit 'cause I think, you know, exploiting is simply taking full advantage of a situation or, you know, a space. And that's what it was at the end of the day.  [00:23:12] Dan Runcie: And we definitely saw a lot of the success at the time with the number of deals that we were seeing. Were there any that you look back on that you were like, oh, you may have pitched that client, or you may have tried to push this one, they just weren't ready, but if this was now, it would've been, No question, this would've already happened?  [00:23:27] Mona Scott-Young: You know, I always look back at that time fondly because I realized that we were at the forefront of, you know, an industry that nobody knew exactly what it was. Now when I hear, you know, branding, brand partnerships, you know, I'm like, okay, I guess that's what we were doing way back then. But I think I look back more fondly at the way we were able to leverage our talent into those deals, right? Busta with Mountain Dew started out as a print campaign, and by the time we were done, it had grown into this multimillion-dollar, you know, 360 television spots, everything. It started out as a radio campaign, actually, not even, it was just going to be his voice, right? And then it blew up into something more. It's just now it's par for the course. Now, you know, if you don't have a brand endorsement deal, if you're not, you know, aligned, people think you haven't made it right. But back then, I think it was a lot more challenging, a lot more difficult, and, you know, I think we broke a lot of barriers with the kinds of deals that we did.  [00:24:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. And I could imagine now that with the stars that are on Love & Hip Hop and the talent that you're working with now, some of them are probably trying to see, okay, can they reach out to you to get advice on these types of deals that they're getting? Do you get involved with any of that ever?  [00:24:52] Mona Scott-Young: Yeah, you know, every once in a while. But the interesting thing is now they're sought after, right, because of their following. And all of these brands want them, you know, creating these organic posts so that folks can really believe they're drinking this slim tummy tea or whatever it is that they're hawking. But I think the value, understanding the value of their engagement with their fans is the most important thing for these guys, and I think they're all doing a fantastic job. I mean, I'm always surprised when it's like, oh, okay, well that's, you know, I don't really believe that they're eating or drinking or engaging in this activity, but more power to you. Go ahead.  [00:25:33] Dan Runcie: Does any of this ever find a way to get itself into the show itself where folks are like, Okay, I have this partnership now, they'll give me extra money if I wear this Fashion Nova t-shirt in this season of Love & Hip Hop?  [00:25:47] Mona Scott-Young: It's funny that you mentioned Fashion Nova because they are extremely aggressive, and they have, you know, they were very smart about the way they built their business, right? They just went out and got a bunch of brand ambassadors, and I think in the beginning it was for a box of free clothes. They had all of these people hawking their product, but the networks and the buyers, they're pretty savvy now. And, you know, they've got their ad sales departments, they still rely probably more than ever on their ad sales dollars. And so they're very, very leery of any kind of integrations, and there are opportunities to kind of go through the front door, do deals with them, buy ad time, and get real, you know, integrated placements. And sometimes, you know, they're also good about if it's an organic, you know, partnership with the talent and it's something potentially that factors into their story, they'll let it slide and let it make its way into the story. But they're a little bit savvy to the fact that, you know, sometimes the talent is getting paid for this and is promising the placement on the show as part of their deal in leveraging that. And yeah, they put the smack down on that.  [00:27:01] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I could imagine because it's one of these things where, of course, it's more money into the show and I think everyone generally could benefit from it. But from the other perspective, you don't just want to turn the whole thing into sponsored content, right?  [00:27:12] Mona Scott-Young: Yeah. I'm constantly saying to the talent, this is not going to be one big message commercial, you know? But listen, a lot of times the network isn't even participating in that income. They're just letting the talent, yeah, whatever deals that they have in place with these brand partners, they just let the talent hang onto it. So it doesn't really bring money to the show's bottom line. And depending on who the partner is, like somebody like Fashion Nova, the network definitely, you know, their antennas go up. But some of you know the smaller brands and especially. If it's the talent's brand, and they know that it's their business, like you'll always see Yandy washing her face with Yelle Skincare. You'll see Rasheeda doing a scene at the Pressed, you know, store or at the Frost Bistro. So if it's their businesses, the network is always happy to, you know, give them the opportunity to promote their brands and their businesses. [00:28:05] Dan Runcie: Is there ever any pressure from the network to try to capture all of the value that the show is creating? 'Cause I know I'm hearing that from so many other areas in media and entertainment, where they're seeing what's being captured in their area, or they're seeing what's happening and what they're creating. They want to be able to capture more of that. How have those conversations been like with the network if they come up at all?  [00:28:27] Mona Scott-Young: When you say capture more of it, you mean with the content or trying to find ways to exploit the brand?  [00:28:32] Dan Runcie: The latter, trying to find ways to exploit the brand.  [00:28:34] Mona Scott-Young: I mean, yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit of a tightrope, right, because they want to preserve the integrity of the brand. They want to protect the brand and not overexpose it or not hurt it by doing the wrong thing with the brand. But they certainly want to, you know, see the brand continue to evolve, which has been a big part of the staying power. And I think Viacom does a really good, you know, job at that when you think about Love & Hip Hop and the way that it's branched into, you know, all of the specials that we do and they have, you know, spinoffs that they do with the talent. And now they're beginning to do smaller capsule shows that are going to be coming out, you know, whether it's like watch party- type shows or, you know, getaway trip- type shows. So they're very careful about not diluting and over-exposing the brand, but they're very good about continuing to build on the brand so that it evolves and, you know, continues to have a long life.  [00:29:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I feel like the longevity you've already had speaks a lot to this. I'm curious though, 'cause I know in other interviews, people have often asked you about how your show is positioned relative to some of the other reality shows and whether or not you are portraying certain people in the best light. And I'm always curious, one of the things I was wondering is that more so chatter where people are talking about these things? Or have any of those conversations actually impacted anything you've either done with the show or the show's success in any way?  [00:30:06] Mona Scott-Young: I mean, a lot of it is chatter because you know, in all fairness, when I watched the other shows, there really isn't anything much different happening on those shows in terms of the way the cast members are expressing themselves in any given moment. I think the increased scrutiny on our show has one to do, and I say it very honestly, with the word hip hop and the title, right? I think that there's this preconceived, you know, stigma attached to this huge genre that is literally pop culture right now. So it's almost ridiculously laughable that people still want to treat hip hop as some kind of a subculture, you know, of any kind. But I think the fact that the word hip hop is in the title makes people put us under a microscope, under a magnifying glass in a much different way than they do with, you know, shows with the word Housewives or Beverly Hills in the title. But if you look at the reactions and you look at some of the situations, they're not different at all. So for me, it is chatter, right, because I think the strength is in the numbers and the viewership. I think that's where you know honestly that there is something very relatable about this show, no matter what people want to say or think, because of the sheer volume of, you know, folks who tune in week in, week out to see the show, the staying power that the show has had, the influence that the show has had, whether it's music or, you know, the number of shoutouts that the show gets, the number of mentions that it gets, what happens on social media whenever the show is on air. There's a stronghold there that I think is undeniable. And so there's that whole saying about, you know, we build things up just to bring them down, and we've seen that happen with so many different cultural and iconic, you know, things, and I just think that it's par for the course with this franchise.  [00:32:08] Dan Runcie: And I also think you've seen that in the range of folks that tune in as well because I think sometimes the type of content that you create, people will often say, oh, well that's meant for a certain type of person. And it's like, well, it's not really the case 'cause there's people of all ranges of income, however you want to measure success.  [00:32:26] Mona Scott-Young: Yeah, it's actually pretty mind-boggling even to this day when, you know, for a long time I did the VOs at the top of the show, so the voice has become a little bit of, you know, its own personality, and, a lot of people don't know what I look like, but the minute I opened my mouth, and it'll be like middle-aged, you know, white people and young, very young kids. And I'm like, why, you know, are you even watching this show? You should be watching Nickelodeon. And so it's interesting to me the broad range of audience that it's found. And again, I always go back to the relatability, and I always go back to the connectivity with the stories, and I think that that's what people gravitate towards.  [00:33:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think that's always going to be there as long as the show continues to evolve as well. And I'm thinking you were probably already thinking about several seasons ahead of now, several years ahead and now, but I'm very curious to see what is this next generation of talent that is going to be into your show, the generation that grew up on TikTok, the generation that grew up with a lot of the things? I think a lot of the talent on your show, whether they're Gen X or millennials, more so, okay, they had their run, but eventually, it's going to be the Gen Z folks and more of them that are going to be on the show more regularly, how that's going to shape not just the things they talk about and everything else, but also as streaming and other things evolve, how the show continues to move, and how the show continues to grow from that perspective. So I'd love to hear what you think the future is going to look like, let's say five years down the road of how this show may continue to evolve. [00:34:01] Mona Scott-Young: Oh, wow. I mean, you know, it's always been about the cast, and they've shaped kind of the feel and the content within the show. So if you're talking about, you know, five years from now, there's going to be a cast there that is reflective of where we are with music, technology, the culture, and those are going to be the stories that we're telling so hard to predict. But like I said, the key and the magic of the franchise has always been that the brand, you know, acted as kind of a bubble within which you cycled in the talent. And five years from now, there's going to be the talent doing what they do, how they do it, and we'll be right there with those cameras to capture it. [00:34:46] Dan Runcie: Yes, it'd be exciting to see. So in the next couple of months though, what should people stay in tune for before we wrap things up here? What should people look out for?  [00:34:54] Mona Scott-Young: Oh, so many things that we're doing. I mean, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about the Love & Hip Hop franchise, but as a company, we have so many other projects that we're engaged in and that we're doing. And one in particular coming October 27th and November 3rd actually is the actual premiere, but Hip Hop Homicides is a show that we're doing on WEtv, 50 Cent and G-Unit, Monami and Lionsgate came together with WEtv, and that is a show we're very excited about, very proud of. And it just, again, utilizing, you know, hip hop culture as kind of the foundation, but it's looking at those staggering number of murders that have occurred within our culture that still remain unsolved and even some of them were folks are, you know, serving time for these murders. They're still questions out there that have never been answered. And so Van Lathan is our host and he does a very active, you know, boots-on-the-ground kind of journey to a bunch of different cities where we take a close look at these murders and talk to family members and fans alike. And it's really, to me, a very, very fresh look at these murders that have plagued our community.  [00:36:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, nice. That'll be a good one. And I've always liked Van in everything that he's done. I know he's done a lot of stuff with The Ringer recently, but no, he'll be good. I'm excited for this.  [00:36:16] Mona Scott-Young: No, he's great at it. And Hip Hop Homicides on WEtv. Yep. November 3rd and we're excited for that one. So that's the next thing coming down the pike.  [00:36:27] Dan Runcie: Great stuff. Great stuff. Well, Mona, this is great. Excited for you. Excited for everything coming up from Monami Entertainment. And if people want to follow along with you or with everything that's happening, where should they check in to follow you?  [00:36:38] Mona Scott-Young: They can check on Instagram, Twitter, all social platforms. Mona Scott-Young or Monami Productions, @monamiproductions.  [00:36:47] Dan Runcie: All right, great. Thanks again. This is great.  [00:36:50] Mona Scott-Young: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. [00:36:54] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Hannibal Buress has carved a name for himself in comedy over the past two decades. But now he’s foregoing that part of his career for a fresh identity — Eshu Tune, his rap alter-ego. The name pays homage to a “trickster god” in Nigerian mythology. A rap career has been in the back of Hannibal’s mind but the career pivot wasn’t seriously put into motion until 2020. Earlier that year, he put out a comedy special, “Miami Nights.” While promoting it at home during lockdowns, Hannibal felt a spark missing. That, plus the added alone time from not performing at comedy clubs, finally pushed Hannibal into the studio.  Since then, Hannibal has largely dedicated himself to rap and rap only. His eight-track, self-titled EP dropped earlier this year. Live rap show performances followed that. An agency deal was inked with UTA this summer. And soon, Hannibal will hit the studio to prepare for his debut album, which he plans to drop on his 40th birthday next April. Hannibal took me through his comedy-to-rap journey over the past two years on the show. Here’s what we covered in our interview: [2:54] Introducing Eshu Tune the rapper [4:17] What led Hannibal to the career pivot [6:53] Goals of debut EP  [10:11] Benefits of being independent artist [14:34] Following Too $hort at a Bay Area show [19:52] Getting a performing residency in LA [21:29] Challenging himself with music [26:52] Difference between Hannibal’s comedy and rap fanbase [29:08] Will Hannibal still do comedy? [31:36] Has the changing climate of comedy impacted Hannibal? [34:01] Previous comedians that went into music [37:50] Response from rap community to Hannibal’s career pivot [38:52] Eshu Tune’s next album drop Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Hannibal Buress, @hannibalburess     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Hannibal Buress: I got some stuff, I got 'em locked and loaded, just, you know, got to go get 'em out. That's one thing too, is since I am independent, I don't feel, I just kind of do it when it feels right, when it genuinely feels right to do. It's no pressure. It's just like, okay, do I truly want to do this? Ain't no exec, hey, you got to do, there's nobody doing that, so I have to make that decision, which is a gift. I wouldn't say it's a curse, but it forces that accountability. [00:00:35] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Hannibal Buress. You likely know his name from his comedy and his acting, but this episode is all about his music. Hannibal Buress has released an eight-track EP under the name Eshu Tune, and that is his artist that is creating hip-hop music. And we talked all about why he chose to start this new chapter in his career, why music was important to him, and how he sees things moving forward. Hannibal had had a career of dabbling in music every now and then. He actually had beaten Open Mike Eagle in a rap battle a couple of years back. And it's something that he had tapped into, but it really wasn't until the pandemic, and a lot of us had the time to really think and tap into what was most important to us. And he was able to take this on not only as a new challenge for his career, but as a new opportunity to do something that he always wanted to do, but knowing that he could both continue to leverage the platform that he has as a comedian and as an actor, both from a financial perspective, but also from an exposure perspective. We also talked about his upcoming residency, how he's been positioning himself to get booked on shows and other things, and how important this is for him right now. So it was great to tap in. This was also the first episode recorded in Trapital's new home. I have a new office and studio here, and it's been great to get everything set up, and it's been great to record these in person, too, because, listen, it's great to do things remotely. A lot of them have been that way, but it's just a different chemistry that you get when you can do them in person. So it was great that Hannibal and I could connect while he was in town. Here's our conversation. Hope you enjoy it. All right. Today we got the one and only Hannibal Buress. [00:02:41] Hannibal Buress: What's up, man?  [00:02:41] Dan Runcie: Mr. Eshu Tune now, though.  [00:02:43] Hannibal Buress: Eshu Tune, yeah, yeah.  [00:02:44] Dan Runcie: Last we talked, it was all about comedy. We're getting ready for a special that you had Miami Nights, but now we're about to talk about your music career, man.  [00:02:52] Hannibal Buress: Yeah, for sure, man.  [00:02:53] Dan Runcie: So who is Eshu Tune?  [00:02:54] Hannibal Buress: Eshu Tune is my musical alter ego. Eshu is from Yoruban mythology, Nigerian mythology, the trickster God. I was looking for a stage name there, so I just looked up African mythology and I just connected with that description. It kind of felt like me and some of the things I've done and, yeah, it just felt right. It really was a big help to kind of separate the worlds a little bit just 'cause now I look at, you know, Eshu as, okay, we can build them together 'cause now, I can if I want to do a little bit of comedy on this shows, it's like, Hey, yeah, they'll both be there. [00:03:34] Dan Runcie: Right, right, right.  [00:03:35] Hannibal Buress: I changed shirts. You know, I can think of you like, you know, Hannibal's t-shirts. Eshu's in a red shirt or something, you know? So it's been fun. And so I'm excited for the growth, and performing has been really exciting, and a lot of dope stuff coming up. [00:03:53] Dan Runcie: So talk to me through the journey a bit because I know this is something that you spent a lot of time on in the pandemic. And last time we talked about it, you were getting ready to release Miami Nights, and this was around the same time that you had started working on music. So what was your mindset at that time? You got this big comedy special coming out, but you also are thinking about this new career opportunity. [00:04:17] Hannibal Buress: My mindset? 2020, putting out the special during that time was hella weird just because it wasn't the usual motions and movements that you have with putting out a special, doing events, doing press in person. You know, I did The Daily Show, but it was on Skype. And it just felt weird doing television from my place 'cause you still get wired kind of, but then you're just wired at the crib. It's like, man, oh, I'm not getting in the car to go somewhere else, you just there like, oh. [00:04:54] Dan Runcie: Right, right.  [00:04:55] Hannibal Buress: I remember doing, I did First Take with Stephen A. Smith. Something for Last Dance, just talking about Last Dance. And I remember just, I kept messing with them changing jackets.  [00:05:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, I remember that. [00:05:13] Hannibal Buress: Molly was giving me sass. Oh, thanks for being so professional. I'm trying to, like, you want me to make a great statement about Last Dance? Look, oh, yeah, Last Dance. What's up with that? I'm trying to have some fun, make some real memories here. Nobody will care about my take on...  [00:05:30] Dan Runcie: It's a documentary, right? It's not like it's an event that happened last night.  [00:05:35] Hannibal Buress: Yeah. If I make a great point about the '96 Bulls, '98 Bulls in 10 years, but people don't care if I'm was chaotic as hell. I need to put that clip back up actually. That was really fun. I was sweating and shit. Yeah, it was a good time. But, yeah, putting out the special then, it was weird, man. And I wanted the music, I started really diving in in November of '20 when I was out in Hawaii. I kind of, it was nice to be able to lock in, focus. I've always wanted to do it and would finally find the time. And the time was always there, honestly, but I wasn't as good as maneuvering time as I am now. 'Cause looking back, I could have been on the road after gigs, instead of going to the club, could have been booking studio time, that type of thing, or, you know, I'm glad it happened when it happened.  [00:06:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. I think, too, I've looked a lot about how you chose to roll this out, right? It's not like you just did one single, let me drop in and see what happens. You had an eight-track LP, oh, EP that you put out specifically for it. What was your goal in terms of the release? Was there a certain response that you wanted to have or a certain emphasis you wanted to have with how you chose to put it out as an EP? [00:06:53] Hannibal Buress: Yeah. And initially, I was going to do singles, the single strategy, but then I had a bunch of songs and I said, let me just get these out and see how I want to do it. Like, if I want to do videos for stuff, which I am still going to do the visuals on things and get 'em out. But it was just after a while. It was just, let me just do it. And I didn't follow the proper practices of, you know, get it to the DSPs with this much time, to the best time, like, all the stuff that I know you're supposed to do to give your release the best chance. But I just feel like it'll get its due when it's due, you know what I mean, whether it is when I put out videos later this month or next month or down the line. It's my first project. So whether it's crazy now or crazy in five years, it's always my first project. So it'll be there and it just felt good to get it out and have it out ' cause then the music got better afterwards, the stuff I started recording. And I still like the song, like 1-3 Pocket. I like 1-3 Pocket. And that was 1-3 Pocket, that's the motherfucker hit. Like when we made it, yeah, this bowling song's going to go crazy. Hell yeah, we made a bowling banger, but now I got other songs. I'm like, okay, I was wrong. Well, maybe I wasn't wrong, but it's just, the music is getting better. And so it's nice to feel that and feel that improvement and the progression. And so that'll keep on happening indefinitely. You know, if you keep on working on it, keep on releasing, keep performing, it's going to get better. So it's nice to have that feeling and, and hear that in the music and like even hearing how the music sounds. If I record the day after a show, that music sounds good 'cause you can kind of hear the clarity, you know, you already got the energy. So it's been exciting, man. [00:08:50] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I get the feeling that 1-3 Pocket was a song you thought was going to be the one and that's a one, but I feel like Veneers is the one that I feel is your anthem.  [00:08:57] Hannibal Buress: Veneers worked before I even put it out, and I performed it 'cause the hook is slower and the beat is chill. It feels, yeah, Veneers is the one I think people like more than the song that has really inside bowling terminology in it. Surprise the song about teeth is more accessible than the song about the bowling pins. Like, even people that love bowling have said to me, what is the 1-3 Pocket?  [00:09:33] Dan Runcie: 'Cause some people would think you're talking about like billiards or like, you know, like shooting pool or something like that. [00:09:37] Hannibal Buress: Nah, it's just a, yeah, it's the headpin and the pin to the right. I got to put out a video for 1-3 Pocket. I got the lyric video out. I got to get the official video out, a couple of them. I might, you know, we'll see if I get on stubborn mode and start putting out three, four videos for a song. That's when I really, I'll start really lighting up, just going crazy with the visuals. Yeah. I was waiting to see the music videos. I'm glad you mentioned that you got the lyric video up.  [00:10:02] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And of course, you know, like that's a great way to get the views and engagement up, but yeah, seeing the Eshu Tune visual character, I feel like that is, you know, the next piece of this. [00:10:11] Hannibal Buress: Yeah, I've been holding off a bit on the music videos 'cause I know when I got to know, when I do officials, that's when things are really shifting in a way. And so I don't want to rush it, but, you know, they come in over the next month or so, is when the visuals start. I got some recorded already. I got some for Back In The City. I recorded in Thailand actually. When I was in Thailand and I looked on Eventbrite and it was a restaurant packaging conference at the convention center. I was like, let's just go here. And I went and it was all this interesting, just different machinery and robotics. Me and my lady just walked through, something just to, you know, just a different environment. I said, man, well, I'm over here. What else am I going to do in Thailand and it's a convention? I have to shoot a music video. So I came back two days later, shot the video there. And so I got that. We got one for Closed Mouths. We got a Pocket video, got a version of the Veneers video, but I want to do a story version. So, yeah, I got some stuff, I got 'em locked and loaded, just, you know, got to go get 'em out. That's one thing too, is since I am independent, I don't feel, I just kind of do it when it feels right, when it genuinely feels right to do. It's no pressure. It's just like, okay, do I truly want to do this? Ain't no exec, hey, you got to do, there's nobody doing that, so I have to make that decision, which is a gift. I wouldn't say it's a curse, but it forces that accountability. [00:11:44] Dan Runcie: Yeah, with that, too, I feel like, with you, you're an independent artist who also has the luxury of this platform of your comedy that has given you not just the resources, but the platform to be able to get booked on shows or to be able to get at festivals or other things like that. How do you look overall in terms of how you view your career as an independent artist and wanting to see that through? Do you see a major label in the future? Do you see building what you have clearly with the resources that you have from your comedy and acting to be able to push off for that?  [00:12:19] Hannibal Buress: I think the major label thing isn't something I'm chasing. I would hear them out, you know what I mean? I would take a meeting or a call just to hear the right pitch and see. But before I even would do that, I would have to give myself at least a year or so of operating full speed.  [00:12:42] Dan Runcie: Right. [00:12:42] Hannibal Buress: 'Cause now I'm in the coast, I'm doing a good amount of shows and having fun, done a couple of festivals this year with, you know, no visuals out. So I would have to give myself all of 23 of like going, you know, with a full staff, you know what I mean? My whole infrastructure, putting out everything, like really, really going crazy merch, all the whole thing, and then see how I like that. And then see what we could do from there. But for now I kind of got an idea of how I want to do it. And a lot of the things that a label can provide, I've been to some of these spots before while I promoting standup or touring or different things, I've been around. I'm sure there's other things or different cracks and crevices they can operate in, but there's a lot of things that, you know, I'm able to pull off 'cause I'm independent, but it's not a true, like in the same kind of thing. 'cause I've got the visibility. So it's a good help. The music still has to be good, too, and I'm cognizant of that, where I want to be, you know, I don't want to just be in the spots to be in them.  [00:13:52] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:13:52] Hannibal Buress: I want to be in the spots and really doing my thing and having a dope show and, you know, justifying the spot. [00:13:59] Dan Runcie: Yeah.  [00:14:00] Hannibal Buress: Yeah.  [00:14:00] Dan Runcie: Because I think the thing that works out for you with it well is so many folks signed with the record label because they want to be able to get the distribution that can at least get them some global recognition in reach. But then that also gives them to being able to do shows, right? And you are able to get a lot of these shows on your own, just given the connections and the influence that you have. What has that process been like specifically with you getting out? 'Cause I know that you were up in San Francisco a couple of months ago. You did, you know, we had the 420 thing up here. What has that process been?  [00:14:34] Hannibal Buress: That's through friends, you know, old friends that I've worked with before or talk with and people that, yeah, my homie Normani helped put that together, the 420. So it's just people that believe in what I'm doing, that I have a history with, that, you know, see some opportunities. So Too $hort went on, I forget who the DJ from the Bay was, but Too $hort went on and I was like, oh man, I'm going on after Too $hort in the Bay? With friends?  [00:15:07] Dan Runcie: Blow the whistle finishes and now...  [00:15:10] Hannibal Buress: It was crazy and I got brand new music. Brand new. That was two days after the project dropped. But it was a fun time. I enjoy it so much, man. Even that show didn't go how I thought it was going to go, but it still was fun, you know?  [00:15:34] Dan Runcie: Wait, how did you think that show was going to go? [00:15:36] Hannibal Buress: How did I think it was? I thought it was going to, in my mind, and it's the blessing of being mostly optimistic on the performance side might just drop the project, it's circulated, two days after, it's the Bay. I'm going to hit the stage going Veneers. Yeah, get out there, and then, you know, they didn't, they was listening, but it just wasn't, you know, it's just new rap sometimes it's tough. And so also then I still, my music performance chops are a bit more developed now, too. It's been some time, so I'm better at engaging the crowd, even if they don't know the music 'cause I think, at first, bringing a lot of standup energy into it, meaning, you know, you get the, Hey, yeah, say, yeah, but, you know, you got to, and so getting used to just monologue and even just the body language, too, microphone holding, body language, like, you know, that whole thing. Still a bit rusty now. And there's a lot of room to grow. I like coming back to spots, too, after you did, so it will be some folks, they had a good time there, too. It was dope. Had another show that night too. I did LA later that night with the full band. So it was just a dope experience to have two shows in the Bay, LA, same night, 420. I'll never forget that at all.  [00:17:04] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's an interesting crowd too, because their crowd is high as hell, and it is a midweek thing, too. So it's not the same way of, let's say a music festival where it's like, oh, three o'clock at the East stage, Eshu Tune is going to be there, right, so that's definitely a little bit of a different vibe than I feel like what that event is.  [00:17:21] Hannibal Buress: Yeah, it was. But the one good thing, another good thing about is that I rehearsed right before. Like I landed, went to a rehearsal space, and then I ran through it. So when I got on stage, I felt good 'cause I was freshly rehearsed. So even though I wasn't rocking out, I kind of was in the zone, in a good space. But when I had a show in Philly for Adult Swim Fest, that one we were tapped in, had the band. I love having the band up there just because I feel like, you know, when you got the band, that's just a lot of energy on stage and you got to, I feel like, giving them a reason to be like, okay, why are we playing for this motherfucker? So then you got to bring the energy up even more to justify the band, you know, so that's always fun. [00:18:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So how often are you doing shows right now?  [00:18:15] Hannibal Buress: My last show was I popped out at this open mic in LA a couple of days ago, then before that was, what?  [00:18:24] Dan Runcie: An open mic for music, to clarify. [00:18:26] Hannibal Buress: Open mic for music. Yeah, open mic for music, did a few songs. And doing Wild 'N Out next week in Atlanta and probably do a popup or something in Atlanta, maybe. And then I'm starting up a residency in LA, six weeks at Grand Star Jazz Bar. That's going to start on September 26th, every Monday until October 31st 'cause I wanted to get that structure in. And then, you know, I used to host at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn and that kind of, like, having that consistency of doing a regular spot. I hadn't done that in a minute. And so when I did the last show at Knitting Factory, that location closed down, I did and so it reminded me of that energy and just of that, you know, having that regular spot where people know they can see me 'cause you can't always link up with friends or grab lunch and all of that. So you can kinda have the residency, people know where to find you. So I want to do that. I'm excited about doing that 'cause I think that'll help the writing 'cause it'll be like, okay, I got this show. I definitely have this show on Monday. Maybe I'll try this new song there. And then the rest of the week can kind of flow off of that. So I'm super excited about these six shows. I put 'em all on sale at once and it's nice to see they're flowing, you know? And so it is going to be, it's going to be a good time and then we'll see how we want to operate from there. But definitely doing those six in a row, man.  [00:19:47] Dan Runcie: What was it like to get that process going for the residency specifically? [00:19:52] Hannibal Buress: It was, you know, I went to the spot at Grand Star. I saw something there I've been there twice. It is really close to my spot. And then I just reached out to the owner online, walked over there, talked to him, told him what I was trying to do, told him I wanted Mondays. He was like, all right, you take the door, I'll take the bar. I ain't dealing with your ticketing, like this it. And then I was like, all right, let's get it. It was pretty straightforward and simple, you know. ' Cause I realized I wasn't, something about LA, it was making me stagnant on a live performance side and I was doing more gigs out of town. And I've done some stuff, but I wasn't really consistent locally. And so I just realized I had to create that. I couldn't be, you know, annoyed with the nightlife or performing if I wasn't really trying to do something about it.  [00:20:45] Dan Runcie: Right, right.  [00:20:46] Hannibal Buress: When I have that ability, it's not that tough to like, Hey, this is the place I do a show, you know? So I'm really hyped 'cause they'll be, you know, have a comedian or two and two or three music acts and get the book stuff that I'm a fan of and tape 'em. And the excitement of doing a show, like putting on a regular show after doing it for a while and doing it now with knowledge and knowing how to build the vibe and promote and all those things. It's going to be a blast.  [00:21:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah. With that type of show specifically, you are also staying in the same spot. And I know that probably helps from a lifestyle perspective too. You have a young daughter, you know, you're not trying to, you know, be on the road, maybe, to the same extent. [00:21:29] Hannibal Buress: Yeah, just the consistency of this is what, you know, for everybody, for the team, for the camera people, by the third show's, like, okay, this is my spots right here. Everybody being, you know, the timing of it, and it's just, I got to create that consistency for myself and that external pressure to do 'cause they're not all like everything else. 'Cause then once like, okay, Monday, this is what Mondays are no matter what. So then it's like, okay, well, it's Tuesday now since we only got six others. So like, okay, one of those has to be a studio day or this type of day or that. Or, you know, it forces the structure for the rest of it. So it's something I haven't had in a while like that consistency. So, you know, when I did have it in New York, it kind of led to the most productive times in my career and, yeah, the most profitable.  [00:22:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like I'm seeing, hearing more artists talk about that, especially, we're seeing what's happening in Vegas. So many more artists, especially while they're still in their prime, taking the residencies there, too. And you're starting to see them more in different cities. And I like how you did where you're like, yeah, you essentially created your own opportunity where you're at. So and I feel like we're going to start to see more of that as I'm just seeing trends of how artists are thinking about doing things and where it makes sense to monetize in and where it doesn't. [00:22:50] Hannibal Buress: Yeah. Just, you know, it's like, Hey, I booked myself for six, you know, I'm here. But even, you know, with that, it's a bunch of different things. And look, you could change up the core each week, you know what I mean? Change up the merch or change up the drinks or change, you know, all these different elements to keep it fresh since you learn in the space and learning the crowd. And you get to know the fans 'cause I'm sure, you know, folks go return, you know? So and having that data, too, of seeing that, you know, yeah, who you see exactly who I'm seeing, who’s buying the tickets and blah, blah, blah, and so can reach out direct. Thank you for your time, who are you listening to, you know? now it's like a kind of, It's going to be a new phase, man. And that's one thing, too, with the music is that younger hunger, 'cause it's a newer thing. It still has that feeling of I don't know what's going to happen. Right. You know, I could try to make things or put things, but the other parts of it, when you do that, make other things happen when you just, you know, action cause reaction. Even going to that open mic that I did the other night and ask this other person, Hey, come to this show, you know, shows beget shows. And so it's nice to have that momentum and that feel because the comedy side, I don't want to say it's predictable, but the goals kind of are, you could change up your special and, and different things, but the goals like, oh, blah, blah, blah, special, blah, blah, blah, move and you do this, too, but it feels super blank canvas a little bit. [00:24:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I get the impression from you that there's part of that that is enjoyable. It's that challenge. It's like what keeps it fresh in a way, because, at least for comedy, you mentioned the predictability of it. Like, you knew what would work, you're getting the calls. Like, you know, you're still getting them up to this point. So this is an opportunity to be like, no, this is something I've always wanted to do. Let me tap in here and explore the unknown because, at least from the comedy side, even though that could be unknown to someone else, but you've been in this for decades now, you know?  [00:24:50] Hannibal Buress: Yeah. At the open mic, it was a bunch of other artists, that was having the same conversations. Like, I didn't know you rapped, I didn't know you rapped, I didn't know you rapped. Like, yeah, I guess that's why I'm here. So now you know I rapped. And so to have, you know, it's still building that, you know, through word of mouth, through performing and, you know, a solid amount of time, but it's happening piece by piece where I'm, you know, seeing folks in public. Oh, I see you doing the music, yeah, keep doing, you know. Yeah, it feels good, man. It feels exciting. And it is just going to get better and keep learning and, you know, I got my drum set, you know, practice more, got keys, got to, you know, I want to in five years be full on musician be able to move around the whole kit, the whole, you know, all the instruments and, and really do a show show, you know? [00:25:44] Dan Runcie: Yeah. By show show. What do you mean?  [00:25:47] Hannibal Buress: Like, being able to, you know, like even have a band, like this one, I'm on keys, for this one... [00:25:52] Dan Runcie: Yeah, yeah.  [00:25:52] Hannibal Buress: But not fucking around on keys. Like, actually killing that shit. This one I'm hopping on the kit and like, not bullshit. I don't want to, you know, half-ass it like, oh yeah, he's up there. He's having fun. Then get the picture. No, I wanted to, you know, actually, be technically proficient at it. And I'm willing to work to get to that spot too. You know, but you got to lock in for that. So that's the real, real goal is to be able to even, in seven years, pop in on somebody's set only for drums and, like, nail it, you know what I mean? Like, okay, like he playing on somebody else's music, you know, and it like, yeah, that's the goal. Even if I'm 47, 50 when I'm able to do it, that's what I want to do.  [00:26:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I feel like with you, too, you talked a little bit about the fan base piece of it, and you be able to see who's coming to the shows and seeing who the fans are. Do you feel like the fan base is slightly different in any way from your comedy fan base?  [00:26:52] Hannibal Buress: It will be. It will be. Right now, there's a lot of overlap 'cause people that might be thinking, they're getting the comedy show and show up for the music and then they like, oh, okay, that was better than that. I didn't know that was happening. But there'll be some folks that weren't into my comedy at all that was like, okay, I like this I'm seeing some folks, I did Sway In The Morning, the freestyle, some people are like, I like this better than his comedy. And now I'm thinking me too. I do too, yeah. And then there'll be people that never knew I did comedy once, then when the music is discovered, if they find it through the algorithm or something, they'll be some folks like, what? This guy got four comedy specials, you know, especially when things start tapping on an international scale. If When I started touring in Asia, going over, you know, folks that they just find the music through the promoter or whoever, and then they like, what? You do music? So I'm excited for that part of it too, man. It's nice to, you know, and then I might rerelease Miami Nights, but just put music videos in between that shit. [00:28:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah.  [00:28:05] Hannibal Buress: Like, oh, y'all want Miami Nights? Well, here. And it’ll be like, and so, and then I said 2Chainz and like Veneers, Veeners, 1-3 Pocket, you know. There's a lot of moves to, you know, that just because I have that this older stuff and this older material to be able to maneuver and, you know, run ads against and all these different things, man. So it's just a lot of possibilities and ideas. It is fun, it's a fun time. Every day, I'm lit up, like excited, just because, you know, there's so much to do and so many different ideas. I'm and so it's just, I'm fully locked in, yeah.  [00:28:45] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Where do you feel like your comedy itself fits within your career? 'Cause I know I've listened to past interviews you've done and you've said that, nope, I'm locked in on music right now. But I also know that you had said in other interviews that okay, maybe in three years, if I do another comedy special or make it all even stronger. So where does your comedy fit in for you right now?  [00:29:08] Hannibal Buress: I could still do it. Because I did it last night at this private gig. And I did it when we did the last night at Knitting Factory, I planned on doing 10 minutes and I ended up going on a couple of tangents, did it in 20, 30. That was partially 'cause of the history of the room and that energy there and that's where I built that soul. And I still can write, you know, I do banter in between. I just don't think I foresee just me kind of grinding out in the clubs or, you know, trying to do for weekends for a while, unless it's just purely to pay for some last-minute music expense. It would be just purely that, if I'm at an improv or doing it if I'm billed as a standup publicly, that's where it's at right now. Even I did for the gig last night, I brought a keys player, Preach Balfour, he plays for my show sometimes, but it was just, I didn't feel like having the emptiness of just pure waiting for laughs. It's not going to be with a keys players the whole time and I'm telling these stories, these jokes, but it's not going to be dead in the room just because. It's like, I'm not giving y'all that as an audience. I'm not giving you the ability to have this shit be silent at the very least after I say something, it's going to be beautiful keys planted as motherfucker. So it's just that exercise of just the grind of what it takes to stay sharp as a standup, I don't feel like doing that anymore. I just find the music to be more enjoyable. And just, it has more, yeah, you just can go into a different direction, like everything don't have to be funny or everything don't have to be one level, you know what I mean? And so maybe down the line now, another one or, but as far as like working, working, I don't see it happening, yeah.  [00:31:15] Dan Runcie: Has any of the reaction to how comedians have either been perceived or how they're being called upon to respond to particular things, especially in the past few years with how things happening on Twitter, has any of that impacted how you feel are your relationship to comedy or making it at all? [00:31:36] Hannibal Buress: No, man. 'cause you just have to, you don't have to do anything out here unless you're on a show where you do that and you're contractually obligated. But even that is still a choice, you know what I'm saying? Everything is a choice. We could live in the woods, man, with no electricity if we choose to. We choose to be out here and perform, play video games, move about, you know, born into this, but you don't have to do none of the shit, all of it, all of it's made up.  [00:32:11] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:32:12] Hannibal Buress: Yeah.  [00:32:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, because I feel like as you mentioned, yeah, a lot of it being made up probably makes people almost forget that they do have a choice in a lot of this because I feel like what I've seen or what I've heard from other comics sometimes is that just because of how things are with the climate or how people feel like they need to respond to particular things that there are comics that feel different, especially how things have happened, post-pandemic. But I feel like your mentality is a bit more like, Hey, we really don't have to like, just like whether it's people being canceled or people having backlash for things they say like, comics don't need to fit into fall into that. [00:32:51] Hannibal Buress: You can just do what you want, you know? And that's one thing. And it's not to judge or say, oh, it's wrong. I see why people would feel pressure. And I get that, too, but it's, after a while you just really like, oh, it's now that I know exactly what I enjoy, and I know the spots where I am truly having fun and losing track of time and enjoying life. And so I just try to spend as much time in those spots and spaces as I can and leave the other shit alone. It takes practice. It's a great theory. It ain't fully perfect, but it's a solid system for me.  [00:33:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, yeah. Has there been a bit of a connection to other comedians that have went into music? Thinking about something like a Jamie Foxx or someone like that, that, you know, someone else like yourself, multi-talented and has, you know, had success in both areas. Is there kind of like a, okay, you know, you see that others have done this, or do you really feel like, no, this is even more unique thing?  [00:34:01] Hannibal Buress: I respect, definitely respect what they've done. The timing is different for how I'm doing it. So that's why it's kind of, it's tough to compare a little bit the approach because it is been a minute. But it makes it interesting for me just from having stuff to talk about, too, for doing it so long 'cause sometimes I'm like, maybe I should have started when I was 23, but I think it happened when it was supposed to happen, and it happened when I was ready for it to really happen. But yeah, I watched, you know, like Jamie is amazing, you know? What Gambino's done, it's really dope. I saw Lil Duval write his Living My Best Life, was popping. I saw him.  [00:34:42] Dan Runcie: That was a good song.  [00:34:43] Hannibal Buress: He did good with that one. He was at the Stress Factory in Jersey as the song was peaking, and he was definitely too big for that room, but it made the energy... [00:34:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:34:55] Hannibal Buress: He was, like, crazy. He hit the stage to it. Like it was dope to see, man, like I was genuinely excited, and you could feel that he was hyped about it too, man. So it is dope to see when people just go for it in that way, and then we just making this shit, you can really do anything. I have to remind myself of that, too. Just really do anything, man. Just, you know, just go for this shit. I got this song, No Whip. It is a freestyle. It's a 7-minute freestyle about how I was living in Hawaii last year. I bought a car there,, and then I took a trip and then we ended up moving, but I didn't go back to like send the car and I've been planning to, but it's just kind of one of them things where I just, out of sight out of mind. And it ain't really, you know, causing a strain on my life, right? But it is, it's kind of, I bought this whip left in Hawaii, blah blah. And it's like, it's a loose freestyle. And I'm like, you know what, man, I'm going to shoot this part here, part in Hawaii, and just keep it at seven minutes 'cause you can just do that. The instinct is like, oh no, maybe I need to, I'm being repetitive, so maybe I should cut. I'm like, no, shoot that shit rough. Like, make it look as dope as possible. Like, shoot it rough freestyle dope and have fun and then just let it fly and just don't put the constraints on yourself unnecessarily. It's easy to try to overedit sometimes or get it. And so it's just, getting better at trusting myself, which was the initial hurdle It was just, okay, let me do this. There was nobody like, you can't make music, man. What are you, like? It was kind of me battling initially. And then once I dropped it and then, you know, now, okay. And then just rewiring my brain to, okay, I am doing this and keep doing it. It's like, okay, well, we are doing this for real, you know, no matter, no matter what. That's why I find it, like, absurd when people reach out and like, stop. That's weird. Like, you realize I'm a very, I'm a very stubborn person. Like, I'm not doing it to show you up. Like, this is like, I'm already way more locked in than you could ever imagine. So, you know, why you would ever tell me to stop. It's weird. But then I know that that person's not locked in on whatever they want to do if the time to tell me to stop. Yeah, but it's that I don't even get mad is just more like what, what? That's a weird thing to like, why stop? You realize even if my music was completely trash, I would still be able to figure it out from a marketer standpoint. I'd still be able to work some angle in this shit. But it's, you know, it's exciting, man.  [00:37:44] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's an exciting time, man. What has the response been like from the hip-hop community? [00:37:50] Hannibal Buress: It's been dope, man. Went on Sway In The Morning, did my written freestyle. I bothered Questlove when The Roots were performing at Pitchfork. They let me rock up there. So I got to rap with Black Thought, you know. It's been good, man. The Sway, the Sway interview helped, you know, I got a bunch of friends that I've worked with that I send stuff to sometimes. So the people that really know me, like know me know me, know that I've been working on things for a while and been building. So they've been super supportive and especially the ones that know what the grind has been and know how I've been working. So it is been dope, man. I'm just, I'm excited to just keep pushing, putting together shows and it's a fun time with just lots of possibilities and shit.  [00:38:40] Dan Runcie: Exciting time, man. Exciting stuff. So before we close things out, what should the audience stay in tune for? What does the next year look like for Eshu Tune and what should they keep locked in for? [00:38:52] Hannibal Buress: The plan is to drop the full album on my 40th birthday, February 4th, '23. So I got a couple of songs done for it, going to start the sessions for it next month in November and December, hopefully, shoot videos, December. January, drop a single on New Year's Eve. And then 40th birthday album, I don't know what the title is going to be yet. 40-year-old freshman, 4 HB, 4 Eshu, 40, 244. I don't know, something like that, but I feel like 40th birthday is a good, drop date. Yeah, so that's the plan. And so I'll use the time leading up, you know, to start purging old stuff, you know what I mean? Use that to kind of, you know, drop loosies and different things and even drop some of the older comedy stuff I got, I've been hoarding. And so I want to also, in addition to having the Mondays residency, use the Mondays as a drop date, you know, for new content, old content to start just really, really getting stuff out and start just to free my brain up, 'cause there's a lot of, even though I'm making stuff and dropping stuff, there's a lot of other stuff that I think needs to just be let go, let the birds fly and then it'll help the creativity more. [00:40:12] Dan Runcie: I hear that. In terms of other stuff too. I think I remember seeing you, you had a song called Numbers. Is that a kid song? Is that one of those things you're going to be putting out there?  [00:40:21] Hannibal Buress: I don't know if I'm going to lean too heavily into the kid songs yet, or maybe under an alias. I might start dropping, but yeah. I've been seeing some of, who's it, Gracie's?  [00:40:29] Dan Runcie: Gracie's Corner?  [00:40:30] Hannibal Buress: Gracie's Corner and then another one where they got the trap kind of kid stuff. Maybe Numbers was fun to do. I did that, yeah. Shout out to Shaliek on the beat for Numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. One robot, two robots. The robots is an ongoing theme in my music also.  [00:40:51] Dan Runcie: Hey, man, we're excited for all of it, man.  [00:40:53] Hannibal Buress: Yeah.  [00:40:54] Dan Runcie: Tons of respect for you, man.  [00:40:55] Hannibal Buress: Hey, thank you, man. Thanks and good talking with you, Dan, for sure.  [00:40:57] Dan Runcie: Always been.  [00:40:58] Hannibal Buress: Yep. [00:41:00] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

It’s never been easier for artists to release music and find an audience in any corner of the world. Likewise, it’s never been more difficult for artists to break through the noise. The Internet and streaming services have created a double-edged sword for rising artists. To discuss this, Tatiano Cirisano joined me on the show. Tati is a music analyst at MIDiA Research and a former reporter at Billboard. Tati released a research piece a few weeks ago that argues the music industry is oversaturated and fragmented — more than ever before. This shift has created a new class system for artists. In Group 1 are artists that reached prominence pre-streaming in a less cluttered marketplace (e.g. Beyonce or AC/DC). Class 2 consists of artists who rose in parallel with the proliferation of streaming. Drake and Taylor Swift fall into this category. And then there’s the Class 3, that includes newer artists, who try to cultivate audiences in today’s hyper-competitive landscape against the other two groups.  Tati believes the trend line for the music industry’s fragmentation is clearly pointing up. To understand how we got here, why it matters, and how it redefines success, you’ll want to listen to our interview. Here’s our biggest talking points:  [3:11] Why consumption is now fragmented [8:41] Music superstars losing their reach [10:55] Modern artists valuing fame less than prior generations [13:24] Benefits to fragmentation [14:48] Updated benchmark for artist success [16:50] Active vs. passive listening [18:53] Music industry is still tied to album sales [25:34] Artists segmenting audiences by platform [30:18] Trap of taking users off native platforms [32:59] Content is becoming more important than the creator [37:35] YouTube and other potential outlier platforms for audience-building  You can read Tati’s full report here: https://midiaresearch.com/blog/music-is-not-a-level-playing-field-it-is-a-field-of-all-levels Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Tatiana Cirisano, @tatianacirisano     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Tatiana Cirisano: Fame is actually really low on the list of priorities of artists today. And whether that's because they don't really want it or because they just don't think it's achievable is kind of another layer to that, but the top two things are earning a sustainable income and achieving recognition within their scene. Artists' definitions of success are changing, but I don't know if the music industry is really catching onto that or really supporting that because the music business is a hits business and record labels are trying to create superstars and drive culture. [00:00:38] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:58] Dan Runcie: Today's conversation is all about why the stars of today cannot be compared to the stars of yesterday in the music industry. And when I'm talking about yesterday, I'm not talking about 20, 30 years ago. I'm talking about 3, 4 even 5 years ago. The era that Drake and even Post Malone and some of these other artists came up in cannot be compared to what's happening with the artist today and that's as it relates to streaming, as it relates to TikTok and all the ways that things are fragmented in the creator economy. And it was great to be joined by Tatiana Cirisano. She is a music industry analyst at MIDiA Research, where she has written some insightful pieces and breakdowns on this topic in a whole lot more. We talked about the impacts and the current landscape of the streaming era, and what it looks like for artists that are prioritizing their growth and perfecting what they can do on one platform as opposed to spreading it on others. We also talked about some of the trade-offs and some of the challenges for artists in the creator economy and a whole lot more. She does some great research on this topic. So definitely check out the work she does at MIDiA Research if you haven't yet, here's our conversation. Hope you enjoy it. All right, today, we are joined by music industry analyst, Tati Cirisano, who is going to help us solve all of the music industry problems today. Are you ready?  [00:02:22] Tatiana Cirisano: One can hope. I'll do my best.  [00:02:25] Dan Runcie: So what sparked this conversation was a really insightful piece that you had put out recently through MIDiA Research, and this was about the different levels of artists and where they are specifically in the streaming era. And you had this really good breakdown on how you had the artists that were already established in the streaming era such as your AC/DCs or your Beyoncés, they were established before streaming became a thing. You had the artists that were, folks like your Drakes or even your Taylor Swifts that rose while streaming was really huge. And then you have your artists today. Could you talk a little bit about how that differentiation between those groups impacts success and what achieving success looks like today? [00:03:11] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'll kind of back up a little bit to what is underlying all of that, which is just the fragmentation of consumption. And that's something that we study a lot at MIDiA, and it basically means that you know, with people able to, through streaming, access all the music they could ever want to and listen at any time that they want to, and also with these increasingly sophisticated algorithms kind of pushing people to niches. It follows that there are kind of less mainstream moments or mainstream stars and more of these stars just for individuals and their communities or their niches. And I think that's something that we've all kind of experienced at some point, like, maybe there's an artist that you're obsessed with and all of your friend's love, and you mention it to a friend that is in another circle and they're like, who's that? I mean, I get that reaction. I've gotten that reaction talking about Bad Bunny before, and he is the top streamed artist in the world. So I think we've all had like this anecdotal experience of you thinking that something is mainstream, but it's not as mainstream as you think it is and that is the fragmentation at work. So this is happening on a really, really accelerated scale now. Just because of how everything is online and on demand and because of these algorithms. So we're in this situation where the artists that are competing today are in a much more oversaturated and fragmented landscape where it's a lot harder to have a mainstream impact than the artists that were even chasing success three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. So the way that I had kind of broken it down, and I think you could actually break it down way further, which I think we're going to talk about is yeah, the artists that came up before all of this, pre-streaming, really, which are the AC/DCs, even a little bit of like the Beyoncés, and because they built their fan bases at a time before everything was so fragmented and cluttered, they're still, like, building on that today. They're still kind of riding that wave. And then you have the artists who came up kind of at the beginning of streaming and before all the second-order impacts happened. So basically streaming did democratize the playing field. It did make it so that way more artists could find their audiences. And there were all these benefits at the beginning, and artists like Drake, Taylor Swift, and Ed Sheeran really benefited from that. But now we're at a point where streaming has also contributed to this really oversaturated landscape, this really fragmented landscape. And it's only getting more and more so every year. And so the artists that are competing in that landscape now face really, really unique challenges, yet they're still competing in the same field as the Drakes, as the Beyoncés, as the AC/DCs. So because so much of this change has happened in just, like, 5 or 10 years, we're in a situation where the artists of today have very, very different challenges than, I think, even the artists of 2020, like the pace of fragmentation, is just insane. And I have data on that too, that I can share.  [00:06:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It would be great to dig more into that 'cause you've mentioned 2020. I look back on that year, especially, maybe the year leading into that, Billie Eilish was someone that was being talked about more and more, and she, of course, ended up sweeping the Grammys that year. But even when she came up, things are even more different now than back then, to your point.  [00:06:20] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. I really like the data that BPI pulls on this in there, I think it's called All About the Music. They have this annual report, and they look at, this is only in the UK, but they look at what percentage of total annual audio streams go towards the top 100 tracks? So, like, how much the hits are dominating basically? And that percentage has halved, more than halved, in the past 5 years. So you see that, like, we still have superstars, but their impact is just kind of lessening. And more, more consumption is going towards sort of like the mid-tier of artists, but it's spread across them. So it's just harder and harder to kind of have an impact. So, yeah, I think Billie Eilish is, it's funny, I feel like she's such a tough one because I try to use her as examples all the time, and I'm always like, but she is the exception to every rule because she is, like, such a talent. And, you know, I feel like it's hard to use her as an example in things, but I do think that she even came up in a much less cluttered space. I think that was like, more like 2017, 2018 pre-TikTok. And that's actually another division that I would make. Like yes, because of TikTok, the app itself, but also because of the fragmentation that it kind of has fostered and that other platforms are now following the footsteps of. [00:07:38] Dan Runcie: It's interesting because the BPI data is essentially telling us that a superstar has around half the reach that they maybe once did, or half of that footprint that they did. And it's one of those things where, of course, there's that cultural aspect of wanting to feel like something is big enough, so that, yeah, you're not asking your friends about Bad Bunny. And even though he's a global superstar, people still don't know who he is, but is this necessarily an issue as it relates to artists? Because a lot of it does reflect on the expectations that someone may have for their career, so I wonder has the industry itself adapted to the expectations, right? I think a lot of folks understand that no one is necessarily going to have that 1960s Beatlemania level of fame, or even 1980s, Michael Jackson level of fame. But do you feel like people have come around to the fact that no one is going to have 2015 Drake or 2014 Taylor Swift level of fame? Do you feel like that has sunk in yet?  [00:08:41] Tatiana Cirisano: That's a really good question. That's a really, really good question because so much of this is about, like, how we define success in the first place, right? So at MIDiA, we do these surveys of creators where one of the questions we ask every year is what is your definition of success? And we're finding that, while in the past, the music industry was very much associated with, like, fame and fortune, and like, that was kind of, like, what you're going after as an artist. Fame is actually really low on the list of priorities of artists today. It's the last thing. And whether that's because they don't really want it or because they just don't think it's achievable is kind of another layer to that that I'm not sure the answer to, but the top two things that they choose are earning a sustainable income and achieving recognition within their scene. And I think that's why so many artists are sort of enticed by the creator economy model because that's what you're doing, right? You're earning a sustainable living from, you know, your biggest fans or the people that are recognizing you within your scene. There are a lot of problematic things about the creator economy and maybe that's for another episode, but like, I think that what I'm trying to say is I think that artists' definitions of success are changing, but I don't know if the music industry is really catching onto that or really supporting that because the music business is a hits business and record labels are trying to create superstars and drive culture. And if the mainstream is almost nonexistent these days, like how do you do that? I do think that the sort of silver lining to it is that these sort of like more niche communities behind these, like, smaller stars are more engaged anyways. So it's like, do you want this, like, are you trying to go after this passive majority that, you know, maybe isn't ever going to be that engaged with your music, or would you rather go from a bottom-up approach and kind of find your audience, your niche, and builds from there. And I think that that can be really, really powerful, and we're kind of entering this age of like cult stars rather than superstars in that sense. I forget what you even. Ask me that launch beyond this rant.  [00:10:52] Dan Runcie: That was good though.  [00:10:54] Tatiana Cirisano: Those are my thoughts on success. [00:10:55] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like that was relevant though that, 'cause cult stars is a great way to capture this because I think shadowing back to the first thing that you said fab and fortune were so linked from the legacy of the music industry. And in many ways, they were linked that you couldn't really achieve one without the other. There was no one that was making 10 million a year from music as an artist that people really didn't know about to a certain level in terms of their take-home pay, not in terms of, you know, the money that they're generating, but today it's completely different. And of course, yeah, we mentioned how someone like Bad Bunny may be unknown to those outside of the circles. But I think we see this even more so because it's easier to achieve some of those fortunes without that same level of fame. I look at someone like Russ who, you know, he shares his TuneCore receipts and how, I forget whatever number he is pulling in, whether it's 6 figures a week or a month, or however much he's getting there, but he's clearly showing that he can pull in millions. And I mean, Russ, his music doesn't hit my circles, and if anything, the more news I hear about Russ is more related to his earnings and how he manages as an independent artist, not necessarily his music itself. And I think that speaks to me not necessarily being in that cult itself, right? But I still think that there is a space and opportunity for those artists that clearly want fame and fortune. You know, if you want to be able to perform in an arena and sell it out and gross, however many millions or, you know, doing the same thing in stadiums, you do have to likely follow a lot of the same traditional things from that path level, but still, even fame from that perspective doesn't hit the same way that it did. So it's a really fascinating time, and yeah, I think a lot of it does go back to both artists' expectations and the industry expectations, if the industry and the artists still have these dreams of thinking that artists can reach the levels of fame that artists did even 6, 7 years ago, then that's where people should probably be taking, 'cause I've had this conversation with so many people and they'll mention examples like, oh, well look at BTS. Oh, well look at Bad Bunny. Oh, well look at so and so, and I do think that there's something to be said for just the global aspect of the fame is just how music is reaching in different areas, and maybe that probably reflects that the people that are closest to that global superstar level, maybe just because of how saturated the US is, they're more likely to come from elsewhere, but who knows?  [00:13:24] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, no. And there's also, like, a lot of benefits to this fragmentation, right? Like I feel like I, the way I'm talking about this is very like doom and gloom. but it's also very beneficial to, like, the middle tier and long tail of artists that, you know, they're actually able to have audiences. The tricky thing though is that it's still so hard to break through. It's such a fascinating conversation to have because whenever we present this data on fragmentation and our thinking around it, the question from labels is always like, okay, but how do we drive culture? How do we create those moments? How do we make something mainstream? And I think there's an opportunity to kind of, like, labels are really top heavy, right? They're focusing on like the top three artists in their roster, making them superstars, and I feel like there's maybe an opportunity to spread resources more evenly across the middle and create those kind of cult stars that we were just talking about. So I think it is about changing your definition of success. I just don't know, you know, if the music industry wants to. But they might have to, I don't know.  [00:14:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah, because to your point, it could be potentially even more profitable to reflect the current playing field and invest in the people that have these niches, and knowing that even though it's not going to reach everyone if this person is reaching their tribe of people, then they can double down on that. And it could probably end up being even more successful, you investing all your resources to sell you know, three artists on your roster telling that they can be the next Drake. [00:14:48] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, no, and talking about this is reminding me too of I think we both wrote about the Gunna and The Weeknd album release week, like, whenever that was, time is flying. I think that was like earlier in the year. And how, even though the weekend is like objectively a household name, a bigger star, Gunna had this more engaged niche fan base that, you know, latched onto this P phenomenon and it ended up vaulting him maybe into the mainstream. 'cause the album debuted at number one. So it's like, which of those scenarios is success? You know, like the P phenomenon that happened, so many people didn't even know that that was going on. It totally bypassed, like, the majority of the population, right? But for the target audience, it felt mainstream. And I think that that's like, what's so different about this current moment is that something can feel mainstream to that circle, but totally bypass the rest of the population.  [00:15:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And there are so many factors at play in that that gets into this broader question that I've been thinking a lot about in terms of what does the closest thing we have to a benchmark for success look like, right? Because someone could easily look at that weekend that The Weeknd releases Dawn FM, and Gunna releases his album and Gunna outsells him, and then someone can think, oh, well, look at Gunna, you know, already selling more than the guy that performed at the Super Bowl. But if you look at it another way, The Weeknd is selling out stadiums right now and one of a handful of artists that can do that. And I love Gunna, I think he's had a great rise in everything, but he's nowhere near being able to sell out that much, at least in terms of where he is in his career right now. He could get there someday, but he's not there right now. So I feel like even that makes me wonder, okay, is streaming itself as a predictor for concert tickets or other things becoming harder to inform what it is really reflecting, or is that just its own individual metric that we are looking at?  [00:16:50] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, I think it is becoming harder to use stream counts as a metric for fandom and for culture because I think those things are building off of streaming platforms. Like, fandom is building on, you know, TikTok or Twitch or wherever, whereas streaming is a lot more of a passive activity. So that's another thing is like, I feel like we need new metrics and one of them is, like, active versus passive listening, which is something that's kind of hard to track. How do you do that as a streaming platform? So yeah, I think streams don't always equal fans and that's becoming more and more true. It's just, it's a lot harder to discern.  [00:17:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And that goes back into this broader question of the Billboard 200 and how it's trying to both combine streams, and pure album sales, and all these things to get to these numbers that we have. And it's becoming tougher and tougher to use that as a metric of what success is. If anything, these things are more reflecting, marketing budgets than they are popularity of the actual underlying music. And although the marketing was always tied with it, this is another thing that's separating further and further. And it reminds me of something that I know that MIDiA has talked about often in terms of measuring the success for these superstars when they do release albums. Remember Mark had that breakdown about Adele and how it should be, how her album for 30, we can't even compare what she had done when 25 came out in 2015, different era. She did pure CD sales and you could do that in 2015. You can't do that now. Although I think that vinyls have brought back an interesting conversation with some of this, but still it's difficult to do that, and it's making me think again because you had something similar when we looked at Beyoncé and I don't think you can necessarily compare Renaissance's numbers to Lemonade or the self-titled album before that. And we're going to have this conversation again when Taylor Swift's Midnight album comes out in a couple of months. [00:18:53] Tatiana Cirisano: No, it's so true. And I actually, I had that exact conversation with someone recently about, you know, the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 and how it's not necessarily measuring, there's a lot of places that get left out from that count in terms of how people are consuming music. Like, I think so much of listening is happening and the fandom around it is happening off platform these days or off DSPs. It's happening like on TikTok and all these other spaces, in games, you know, wherever. And I don't know if we're accurately measuring that. I also don't think that, like I said, we're measuring so much, you know, active versus passive listening and these sort of segments of fans on streaming. Like, streaming kind of equates everyone as the same consumer, right, whether you're a super fan or whether you just press play on a playlist and sit back, you're still paying the same. You're still kind of equated as the same thing. So the question is how should we measure success today? Or how should we measure cultural impact? It's so hard 'cause I think in a lot of ways it goes beyond music. Like, if you're an artist who has really had a cultural impact, that impact is transcending music anyway, and that's kind of what it means to be like an icon or to be a cultural icon in that way. So I don't know. It's really tough not to crack. Like, a lot of these things are qualitative, right? Like, how do you measure the cultural impact that something has? And I don't think that it necessarily parallels commercial success. Like, you can have something that had a huge cultural impact on a certain group but didn't really hit the charts or change the way that people think about making music but didn't really hit consumers the same way. So now I'm just ranting and rambling. [00:20:34] Dan Runcie: Let's explore this a bit though.  [00:20:36] Tatiana Cirisano: It's tough.  [00:20:37] Dan Runcie: Let's explore a bit though because you brought up this point about active versus passive listening. So if I'm understanding you correctly, even if we started there, active listening is Gunna's album's coming out, I'm a Gunna fan, it's midnight. I want to press play and hear this album on Friday morning.  [00:20:55] Tatiana Cirisano: That would be a great metric to know is, right, and I guess we have first-day streams as kind of an indicator.  [00:21:01] Dan Runcie: But I guess you're saying, that's different from passive listening, which may be it's Friday. I just want to put RapCaviar on and then boom, RapCaviar has eight tracks that are going to be in the first 20 tracks that I just play as I'm going to work or something. [00:21:17] Tatiana Cirisano: Right. Exactly. And I think that's where it's more and more difficult to know, and it would be really helpful information for artists to have as well because if you're going to go this route that we've been talking about of, you know, finding your niche and finding your biggest fans and sort of going from a bottom-up approach in this fragmented environment, trying to become a cult star, you need to know who your most active listeners are, and I think that's really hard for artists to know today.  [00:21:43] Dan Runcie: I think part of the other challenge, too, with any type of metric is that the music industry itself is still tied to album sales. So anything that can translate back to that will always be there. So even if streams are how majority of music consumption is happening, as it relates to chart performance, it's always going to be challenging from that perspective because I feel like the resurgence of vinyl brings back an opportunity to push these things. I look at how well Harry Styles' album had performed, but a majority of the sales from that album was because of the vinyl that he had that was sold with it. But given all the shortages, how much of Harry Styles' performance is based on the pure demand that he had, which I know, obviously, he sold them. But because of how high his number is relative to, let's say some other artists that are signed to Sony and Columbia, what if they had the same type of inventory? I think that I had similar questions thinking about whether it was a Beyoncé or even a Kendrick Lamar. If they had the amount of vinyl inventory that he had, would it be a completely different discussion? I feel like the two of them maybe had around 300,000 or so first-week album sales, Harry Styles was over half a million. But if we were to still give them all the same inventory on that perspective, what that would look like? So there's all these ways that when you look at the data, it's telling you completely different things, but people are still just responding to the top line revenue number, and it brings us back into this whole thing that we just talked about with Gunna versus The Weeknd where it's like, okay. Yep, these numbers may tell you something, but when you really dig in, it's something completely different. So it becomes a mess to try to quantify.  [00:23:37] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, exactly. You hit the nail on the head. [00:23:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah, because the comparison I've always had as a joke is like let's say that the music industry was still stuck on trying to measure everything by DVD and VHS sales, right? So they had some amalgamation of some calculation that had whatever percentage of streams that you had on Netflix that was weighted with this, plus how many VHS sales you had, plus how many DVD sales, and this gives you a DVD equivalent unit. If you presented that metric to someone, someone would be like, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.  [00:24:13] Tatiana Cirisano: Right, right.  [00:24:13] Dan Runcie: They would laugh at you out of the door, but that's what we've normalized in the music at this time. [00:24:19] Tatiana Cirisano: That's what we're doing. Isn't that just a metaphor for so much? Yeah, it's true. I also think it goes back to exactly what you're saying about, maybe these charts are more indicating the marketing budget and you know, how they decided about bundles or we're going to sell vinyl or whatever we're going to do to try to make it to the top of the charts. And I wonder what these charts would look like weighted differently, or we are talking about fragmentation. It's so fascinating to look at, you know, the charts across different platforms and see that they're totally different. So I do wonder a lot, like what are we actually measuring when we're looking at, you know, the Hot 100 or the Billboard 200. [00:24:57] Dan Runcie: Great question and great segue, too, 'cause I wanted to chat with you about this, how you look at a lot of these platform charts, especially the non-digital streaming providers and the artists who are on the top look completely different. You even see this a little bit with some of the DSPs as well, where some of the artists on top of your Amazon and Apple music may look a little different from what you see on Spotify. What's your take on that overall and do you think that artists themselves should be keeping this in mind when they are focusing or when they are thinking about how best to build an audience?  [00:25:34] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, no. I mean, I think that it's just another really apparent reflection of the fragmentation that's happening. And I think it does make sense knowing all this as an artist to rather than try and dominate every platform, which is next to impossible, trying to kind of find where you fit in and dominate there. And that is sort of like that bottom-up approach, but from a platform perspective, and also might, like, reduce the feeling from artists that they need to be, you know, popular everywhere and they need to be churning out content on every platform and all that. I think the risk though, is that, especially when we're talking about non-DSP, there's artists that maybe have the most followers on TikTok, but they're not being followed for their music. They're being followed 'cause they make funny videos or their song has the most uses because it's become a joke that people are sharing around and not as many people are streaming it offline. So I think it is a good idea as an artist to maybe figure out what platform fits you best, but you also need to understand, like, the particular sort of idiosyncrasies of each of those platforms. I also think, I think you've written about this a lot like segmenting your audience across platforms as a strategy. And I think that's another way that you can kind of use this information as an artist if you know that you have an audience on one platform that is looking for this specific thing and another, that's looking for another, why not, you know, release your full album on Spotify, but you know, the deluxe edition only on Patreon for your biggest supporters or something like that. Or even, there's this indie artist mxmtoon, who I think is a really interesting example of like a modern-day sort of artist slash creator where she has a presence on pretty much every platform. YouTube, she has a podcast, she's on TikTok, she has like a Discord, I think. But every single one of those is used for something totally different. And she has audiences that kind of funnel through all of them. But YouTube is where she does ukulele tutorials and, like, TikTok is where she does Q and As, and the Discord is where the true fans go to congregate. And that's also a path that may be unsustainable for a lot of artists, and I don't like, I'm not trying to suggest that everyone should be on every platform, you know, there are eight octopus arms, like doing all the things. I think that's one of the, like, things that's problematic about the creator economy, but, but yeah, I do think that it's really valuable for artists to understand this fragmentation and how it plays out on different platforms because I do think there are ways to navigate that and kind of use it to your advantage.  [00:28:07] Dan Runcie: There's definitely a benefit to focus here. And this, as you mentioned, spans beyond artists. It does look at everyone that is a creator. And maybe just for clarity for the folks listening, when we're talking about DSPs, we're specifically talking about the ones that a lot of people are paying monthly subscriptions to, so your Spotify, Amazon, Apple music. When we're talking about non- DSPs, we're talking about the place where you could still hear music and artists can still build platforms, but they're not in the same type of way as the other. So we're talking about TikTok, we're also talking about YouTube and maybe some of the other platforms there, although YouTube does have some hybrid tendencies there, but to level set that piece of it. I do think that focus helps a lot because I look at someone like an NBA YoungBoy and how he's been able to just blow up and dominate on YouTube. That takes time of really understanding the algorithm, understanding what works here, and just given how big the platform is that did help him grow and have traction on Apple music, on Spotify, and on other places. So I've heard a lot of people refer to this 80-20 rule. That's a lot of content creators, which I think could be helpful for artists as well, where if there was a platform that you're focusing 80% of your time to try to focus on and just understand, especially if there's an advantage there where others that are in your niche, maybe aren't necessarily doing as much. And then you're still having your feet in the others to just understand what those opportunities could look like. I feel like that type of approach could work well because that's how you get to the levels of, you mentioned the independent artists who essentially tailored so much of the content for each area. And while there's a lot that benefits there, obviously, it isn't completely scalable, but I feel like that's how you get to these things. And we've seen other examples of how people have just focused on a particular platform or just doubled down the risk of that. Of course, when we can talk about this in a minute, is that you do relinquish a lot of your power to any decision that that platform does make, especially if you're relying on so much of it for your business when you necessarily own anything underneath that. So there's definitely trade-offs, but there's benefits too.  [00:30:18] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, no, that's a huge issue there. Which we'll get, yeah, we'll get into more of that, that stuff in a minute, but this approach of like focusing on a platform also means that you're seeing these non- DSP platforms as a form of consumption in their own right, rather than just using them as a funnel to streaming, which I think is like a trap that the music industry has kind of fallen into is, oh, make something go viral on TikTok and then push everybody to Spotify. And it's like, if the fandom and the culture and a lot of consumption is happening on TikTok, you're leaving that on the table when you're pushing people to Spotify. And you know, I think that there's a lot to be gleaned there, and we should start thinking about these platforms as their own consumption platforms in their own right. [00:30:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah. As a content creator myself, I've heard a lot of people use that analogy of give, give, give, give, give, and then ask. So it's not like you're just going there and asking and trying to transport folks over. You're still making some enough effort to make sure that you're connecting authentically with the folks on the platform, but you still know that when there was time for an ask, you're thoughtful about how you're doing, and you're not doing it all the time because trying to take people off the platform, especially TikTok, which has grown in so many ways because of passive engagement, it's even harder.  [00:31:31] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, yeah, no, I think this is something that you wanted to get into anyway, but just, like, the objectives of the platform and the creator are totally different because the platform has the best-case scenario when there is all this passive viewing and people are just scrolling endlessly and they're spending a lot of time on the platform, but that's not the best case scenario for the creator. So the audience and the platform get all the benefit. And the creator kind of falls to the wayside. And I think that's a big issue that we're seeing in the creator economy.  [00:31:57] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And this is a big issue that I know that people have had about Web 2.0 more broadly and just how this can be improved. The challenge I've seen though is that any type of platform I've seen that does try to be more creator-focused and doesn't try to do the same things that marginalize the content that the creators make, a lot of those platforms struggle to gain traction, or they're only used in these niche type of ways. So it creates a bit of this double-edged sword where the creators themselves feel like, well, if I focus on the platforms that are solely built to cater to me and prioritize me over the content, then it's going to be hard to get the users there because it isn't designed in a way to keep the users engaged, just thinking about the extent that the more popular platforms do and more popular platforms are the ones that prioritize the content over the creators. So it's one of these unfortunate situations that has continued on and on, and that's why we're at the point we are now. [00:32:59] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, I think that we do see that happen more often than not. And before we even got to this point where content is becoming more important that the creator, which I could talk about in a minute the objectives are just totally, like I said, misaligned, like the platforms need scale. They need to monetize. All of the combined audiences of these individual creators. But the creators are looking more so for fan bases and engaged followers than they are looking for, you know, these passive audiences. So it actually, I think a lot of the struggles that creators are having with these platforms sort of echo issues that artists have had with streaming platforms in really interesting ways. Because it's similar to how like rights holders, like labels are monetizing scale of being able to own all of the songs and therefore all of the audiences of dozens, if not hundreds of artists, but those artists individually will never have enough scale to earn a meaningful income from streaming. And I think the same sort of thing is playing out with creators now where the platform is getting all the benefit because they get the combination of all these audiences and it's best for them. If people are just mindlessly scrolling, whereas creators have just totally different objectives and a different way of earning money. And then the current algorithm, or like the one that everyone's trying to kind of copy, which is TikTok, is making matters worse because there's no need to even actually follow anyone or, you know, really engage that much with the platform because you're going to be served content that is tailor-made for you regardless. So we're kind of teaching people with that kind of discovery-focused feed, not to actually follow individuals and more to just expect this constant flow of content. And again, going back to the parallels with streaming, it's interesting how we went from a few years ago, talking about TikTok as this amazing democratizing force to now talking about how well, yeah, it's democratized 'cause everybody can post anything, but it's impossible for anyone to get heard. We've gone through the same trajectory with streaming where, 5 years ago, we were all saying, oh, my God, streaming is great. It's democratized the industry. And in many ways it has, but now we're seeing all these second-order impacts where it's really, really hard for anyone to break through the noise, and it's really, really hard for anyone to earn meaningful income, so, yeah.  [00:35:14] Dan Runcie: The pattern is clear. You laid it out perfectly.  [00:35:17] Tatiana Cirisano: It's crazy.  [00:35:17] Dan Runcie: And one thing about TikTok, everyone talks about how quick it is to grow a following, how favorable the algorithm is when you start off, and all those things are intentional. It is the easiest platform to be able to gain tens of thousands of followers and even more, but it's the hardest to be able to translate those followers into actual fans because it's more likely that they are going to be passive folks that are engaging versus active ones. And we're going to see more and more of that, especially given to goals to try to expand into so many other places, and then additionally, every other app trying to copy what TikTok is doing, because they see that being the norm. And now that that's what they see as the standard operating procedure for how to keep people's attention and engagement, everyone is trying to have their own version of that. [00:36:09] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah, you know, and I think that people do have an appetite for, like, wanting to follow individuals. I mean, that's what everything has been based on up until now. And people were annoyed when Meta changed its algorithm and said, it's all going to be discovery-focused now because you go to Instagram to see updates from your friends and people that you follow, not to just get this feed of things that you've people you've never heard of. So I think that there is still, like, an appetite for that. And there's sort of a chance to recalibrate and allow more ways to actually follow creators and not just make it all about each individual piece of content. But I think that we're kind of in a critical window right now to preserve that. And I don't know if we're talking about this enough. Yeah, it's just the situation, like to kind of bring it back to artists is really difficult because you need every individual thing that you post to do well. It's not enough to just have one thing, draw someone in because they might not even follow you from there. And they're just consistently scrolling and getting more and more content. So there's just this endless churn of content happening. And it's just, yeah, it's benefiting audiences and it's benefiting platforms, but it's not benefiting creators.  [00:37:18] Dan Runcie: The need to preserve is there, as you mentioned, and we talked a lot about some of the platforms that have made it challenging. Are there ready that stand out to you that you're like, okay, they are at least making an effort or do you feel like there's more opportunity there relative to some of the other platforms that exist? [00:37:35] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. I do think that YouTube could be an exception to the rule with this. I think that it's a really interesting company because when you think about it, they kind of were the original creator economy company and kind of are seemingly doubling down on that now. I think that it's great how there's sort of this network between YouTube shorts, YouTube music, YouTube, and that's sort of what I think is missing, but won't be for long from TikTok is that you have to switch to a different platform to listen to the music, which is why if ByteDance, you know, release Resso worldwide or make this TikTok music app, it might become crazy powerful, but, yeah, I think YouTube does have this focus on channels and following people. And I think a lot of creators have been able to build sustainable incomes there. But I do worry that the impact of all these other platforms kind of teaching people not to follow and not to follow individuals and channels is going to have an impact, but I think YouTube has a lot of potential.  [00:38:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think so, too. It definitely is the platform, bad thing has the most ability to offer this just given the full complexity of whether or not you're an artist, you're someone that's creating any type of thing that has video, you're probably going to be on there. I also do think about platforms like SoundCloud, Audiomack, and Tidal as well because... [00:38:55] Tatiana Cirisano: A hundred percent. [00:38:56] Dan Runcie: ... even though they may not necessarily fit into the same buckets as some of the others we mentioned, I do think that the things they've tried to do, whether it's with SoundCloud's fan-powered royalties or with Tidal's user-centric base model, which is similar, or even what Audiomack has done with its supporters program, allowing people to say, Hey, this is the person that I want to give my money to. If there's extra money at the end of the year, this is the person I want to have a badge on and want to be able to share that with the profile, they keep the connection there. They're willing to share who are particular artists' followers and fans are, which is something that most of the other DSPs don't allow to happen. So I do think that they are more unique opportunities. And also, I would say tracing back to the last thing we talked about, a place where a lot of artists, if they are trying to build up a fan base on a particular platform could be an interesting angle to prove, because I do think there is a certain type of fan and artist that thrives on each of those platforms individually, just given the brand there, everything else. So those are the ones that I keep an eye out for, the same way that we saw NBA YoungBoy and others rise up. SoundCloud, of course, had its SoundCloud rap era and there's still artists coming out there. And of course, Tidal, I think, just given its origins will always have deep roots within hip-hop culture. So I'm always keeping an eye out for those. [00:40:18] Tatiana Cirisano: A hundred percent. No, I'm glad you brought up Audiomack and SoundCloud. Those are two companies that, I mean, we worked with SoundCloud on a user-centric royalties white paper that was really just eye-opening with all of this. And I do think that there are opportunities to, going back to what we were saying about being able to actually segment your fans on streaming and see who are your biggest supporters and not have everyone just equated into the same bucket. I think what Audiomack is doing is really smart because those support badges are also a way for people to express themselves. If you have that in your profile, you know, it says something about who you are. And I think there's a lot more opportunities to bring music and self-expression closer together 'cause I think that streaming has kind of pulled them apart a little bit by sort of equating everyone. So yeah, I think those are really good examples and really promising. [00:41:04] Dan Runcie: So there you have it. We solved it. I think in this conversation, we solved it all.  [00:41:10] Tatiana Cirisano: There we go. We can all go home. Class is dismissed.  [00:41:13] Dan Runcie: This is great. Tati, thanks for sharing your insights and some of the highlights of the research you've done on this space. Excited to see what you have coming up next, especially now that things are ramping back up for the industry. So for the folks listening, where can they stay tuned to keep up with the latest research that you have coming out?  [00:41:32] Tatiana Cirisano: Yeah. You can go to MIDiAResearch.com, where we have a blog that I write on often. Those posts are free. So even if you're not a client, you can read them. And I also wanted to mention that I'll be talking more about this exact topic at Stan Con in New York on October 5th, which is Denisha, who I think she had an episode with you recently, right, Dan. If you heard that episode, it's her conference, so I'll be there talking more about fandom and fragmentation. So looking forward to that and thank you so much for having me.  [00:41:59] Dan Runcie: Of course, great minds coming together. I'm glad you're going to that. That's awesome. Thank you. [00:42:03] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Returning to Trapital for a second time is comedian Roy Wood Jr. We last spoke in mid-2020 when lockdowns curbed his usual comedy performance routine. On the outside, it might not seem Roy has changed much since our first convo — he’s still a regular on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah — but internally, Roy is amidst another career evolution. Roy made a successful comedic career — three specials on Comedy Central over a five-year span — out of finding unique angles to discuss external events such as news and politics. But now, Roy wants to talk about himself. Spurred by an appearance on PBS’ “Find Your Roots”, Roy is more introspective about the relationship with his father, a civil rights activist, and how it influences raising his own son. How and where Roy delivers this refined message hasn’t been decided yet. For now, Roy is taking time for himself to think through how he’s changed, and so has comedy and the entertainment industry at-large. In our discussion, Roy hinted at some of those major changes. Here’s what we covered: [3:15] The state of live comedy in 2022 [5:32] Roy’s insane performing streak from 1998-2020 [6:27] Why the comedy club isn’t the right venue for Roy right now  [11:45] Comedian expectations have changed  [13:35] Morality vs. profit  [17:05] Roy’s partnerships [18:42] Roy’s criticism of Netflix and streaming [26:27] The new superstar is an assemble cast  [31:08] How Roy chooses comedic topics [34:43] Roy’s most personal joke [35:24] How much does Roy’s son know about his comedy career?  [37:39] How Dick Gregory changed Roy’s life [40:48] Roy starring in Confess, Fletch movie Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Roy Wood Jr., @roywoodjr   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Roy Wood Jr.: You can be funny, you can get away with being funny for a little while, but true career longevity as a comedian, I believe, you have to make people feel, you have to give them an emotion. Sooner or later they have to leave feeling a certain way. It's not just a matter of the tactile Xs and Os of did they laugh at the setup? Did they laugh at the punchline? Okay, next joke. It's what are you infusing into that person's heart on the backside of this experience that you all had together on stage for an hour.   [00:00:36] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:56] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Roy Wood Jr. This is his second time back on the podcast. The first time we recorded a podcast was back in the middle of 2020, middle of the pandemic. And we talked a lot about how the closure of comedy clubs and the closure of everything was affecting his life as a comedian and what he saw the world would be like on the other side of the pandemic. And now we're starting to be here, so it was a great opportunity to check in, hear how things are going for him. And we talked a lot about how the past couple of years have reshaped his perspective on the type of message that he wants to be able to. What are the best venues to do that and how he might change his approach up a little bit in the next few years. We also talked about streaming and what it's been like from his perspective as someone that is acting in movies, acting in TV shows, writing and producing shows as well, and how it's been like navigating these streaming networks, what their goals and incentives are. What his goals and incentives are and what he has seen from others in this space. We also talked about his upcoming movie Confess, Fletch. It's out in theaters on September 16th. It stars Jon Hamm. This is a reboot of the classic Chevy Chase Fletch movies from the eighties. So we talked about what to expect there, what he's excited about and more. Roy's good people, man, plain and simple. If you listen to the last conversation that him and I had, you know that if you've watched anything he's ever done on The Daily Show, ever seen him perform standup, you know that as well. Here's our conversation. Hope you enjoy it. [00:02:30] Dan Runcie: All right. We are joined today by a return guest to the Trapital podcast, the one, the only, Roy Wood Jr. How are you doing man?  [00:02:38] Roy Wood Jr.: You're back. I'm back. You're welcome. You're all welcome. I apologize in advance for my voice. There's things that happened this week that I did not plan on happening. And this is the result. It was either this or cancel, and I didn't want to cancel it.  [00:02:54] Dan Runcie: No, I appreciate you. Hey, it's either this, or, you know, this is part of getting back on the road, right, 'cause I feel like the last time we talked, we were talking about what the other side of this whole pandemic was going to look like and what it was going to be like for comics returning to the stage. And now you're in it. What has it been like to return to the stage and with everything?  [00:03:15] Roy Wood Jr.: What's wild is that I can't tell you too much. You know in 2022 I've only done four or five road gigs. Most of my gigs this year were COVID makeup dates from '21. So I've been blessed enough to be able to, you know, have a podcast that I'm able to do for myself, and sell a couple of scripts, and just create other revenue streams for myself, when the pressure to go back out on the road wasn't there. Also, creatively, I'm just in a different spot, bro. And I know that the stuff that I want to talk about, I don't know if the comedy club is the right place. It's part of the process creatively, but I just haven't been in a rush to get back out to figure it out yet, you know? It's been a really weird year for me in that the thing that I've done for 23 years is the thing that I did the least this year. And you know, that part of it's been really odd. It seems like the clubs are doing well though. You know, I still talk to a lot of comedians that are in the clubs because I'm still kind of that on the outside looking in. So I see all the comics who are touring, there's guys who I didn't know were headliners yet, but apparently, they are now. They're out there, they're doing their thing as well. So, you know, I'd say, all in all, it seems like the comedy club model got through it okay. But I don't know how sustainable it is as an entertainer to continue to be a part of this standup comedy model. You know, a lot of these new cats, you know, they're finding their own venues and they're figuring out their own way through the internet to get shit popping for themselves. But, you know, I will say this about standup. Since the shutdown, this idea of having one magical five-minute set on late night, and that being the thing that definitively becomes the new pivot point in your career, the likelihood of that happening is definitely less and less as the years go by. [00:05:09] Dan Runcie: Interesting. I could only imagine how big of a life change it is for you. I remember you saying in the past, from when you started this once out of every 10 days, you were doing something on the road, right? Whether it was a standup show or something, and for you to be doing this completely different now, and just thinking about what the adapting is a complete life change, let alone anything on the business side of things. [00:05:32] Roy Wood Jr.: Until the shutdown, until a federally mandated government shutdown, from 1998, I'd never gone more than 10 days without performing, period.  [00:05:41] Dan Runcie: It's huge.  [00:05:43] Roy Wood Jr.: And I've gone months. I look forward to it for months at a time. I don't have another gig right now. And I have a corporate gig in three months and I'm like, perfect, perfect because it gives me the time, it gives your brain the time to settle. I can only imagine, you know, when you look at guys like Chris Rock, who have said, you know, you need time to go away and live and see the world and experience things and have something to come back and report on. I understand that now. [00:06:13] Dan Runcie: You also mentioned too, that there's material that you want to talk about, topics that you want to discuss that the stage may not be the best place for that. What are the things you want to discuss and why isn't the stage the best format?  [00:06:27] Roy Wood Jr.: It's not the stage it's comedy club specifically. Like, alright, so I did Finding Your Roots over the shutdown and found out a lot of new truths about my father and, you know, some stuff on my mother's side, but as a father, myself, I often feel this attachment to my dad and then looking at how my father lost his dad when he was four. My granddaddy was gone when my dad was four. So when I think about that type of stuff, how that will inform the type of man that I will be to my son, and just family, and bonds, and the men who raise me in my father's absence. And there's jokes and there's stories, but as I figure out what the heart of the story is first before I make it funny, I don't know if the comedy club is always the right place for that because the comedy club, motherfucker, we want the jokes. I've been drinking. Me and my wife got dressed. I came here to be happy. You up there talking about your dead daddy and trying to figure out what that means for your son, motherfucker, I don't want to hear all that shit without jokes. So I think there's a place to go and develop that, you know, New York has a lot of different places, but also I think it's important for me to do my standup in venues other than comedy clubs because I think that sometimes, depending on the venue, you know, jazz club or black box, little theater or some improv house, I believe it changes how the material is received. You know, it changes how people listen to you sometimes. This is a terrible analogy and it's not going to be a perfect analogy, but it's like how food tastes better in church. You know, like when your grandma will pull a peppermint out of her purse, and she gave you that peppermint in the middle of a long ass church service, and that peppermint tasted like a pizza hu meat lovers. Like, it was just an amazing, so where we are sometimes can change the experience and the connection to the material. And so as I start mining this material, I'm going to have to figure out the best places to put it all together 'cause I feel like I'm teetering into some one-person show territory. And, you know, every comedian that I know that did a one-man show, you know, they didn't build it in a comedy club. You can sure present it at a comedy club, but you cannot build it there. That's why I've been meaning to talk to Jerrod to figure out where he built up Rothaniel 'cause, you know, that one was definitely a blend of the two skill sets.  [00:08:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That's a good example of it. Just how he was able to be so raw, be so personal and different than anything he had done before leading up to this. I got to imagine, too, that part of this may also be linked with just the evolution of comedy and some of the other topics you've talked about recently and how people, especially nowadays, are looking for comedians to be truthsayers or they're also looking for them to be the ones that can tell them certain messages and how there's some people that believe that should be the case, but there's others that, I know you said this before, that it shouldn't necessarily be that way. So I feel like there's some of that that could also be potentially in line with some of the broader feeling about what is the best message to communicate where.  [00:09:39] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. And I think once you figure that out as a performer, the people will come find you. You know, I don't really think it matters where you go once people love you, they will follow you to wherever, you know, so I think that's it. They went to a farm to see Chappelle. So you can come up with different venues, you know, once you have the ideas that are worth hearing. So it's my job first to get the ideas together. [00:10:02] Dan Runcie: Right, yeah. There's something about that comedy club setting, like you said. You're going with your significant other, you got the two-drink minimum. No, like I'm trying to get these laughs out that just doesn't, that works there. That doesn't necessarily translate elsewhere that could obviously work to your benefit going elsewhere.  [00:10:18] Roy Wood Jr.: You can get deep in a comedy club, but you really have to stack the show properly. The people have to know who they're coming to see. And I'm still a comedian where, you know, with The Daily Show, unfortunately, this is a lot of people's first discovery point for me. So you don't know the previous 15, 16 years before I got with Trevor. So, you know, even those people come to a show and they want me to be a little more political than what I am on this show. And I'm like, sorry, that's not who I am. That's not what I do. So even within the construct of just regular standup, they still want something more specific. So, you know, it's about just figuring out, you know, the right places for that. But if you put that person in a setting they've never been to before, well, now you don't know what to expect. And I just think it just changes how you see and analyze things a little bit. You know, I'm going to try to experiment with, you know, different venues in '23. [00:11:15] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. You mentioned the politics piece of it, too, and just , given what you and Trevor are doing on The Daily Show, people coming to you for that. But I assume part of it also is channeling back to that truthsayer thing and seeing some of the things that Chappelle and others have talked about. Do you think that the way the current climate is that when people are expecting you to speak on these things, do you think that this changes and continues to evolve, or do you feel like this is kind of the place that things are right now?  [00:11:45] Roy Wood Jr.: I don't think that the role of comedian has changed. I think that the expectations of a comedian have changed. Some for the better some for the worse, but I can't think of any one standup comedian that I know that is, like, set and looked themselves in the mirror, okay, today these jokes are going to change everyone's and change the world. You know, comics are more outspoken. Comics are more, you know, quicker to say what they feel on stage, especially the young ones, which is good. But I don't feel like when people say this climate, the climate is about the people reacting to what the comedian said, but most of these comedians that people get mad at, they've been saying shit like this for a long as time. But they're groups of people that have decided, you know what? I want to hear that shit no more. So they got something to say and they got a right to that. But I think at the end of the day, I don't think comedians have changed. I mean, Louis C.K. Back, he's cooking. Chappelle got another three special re-up from Netflix after all of the outrage or whatever. So that should show you where the corporations stand. And for as long as you are an entertainer that has an audience of some sort, you know, they're going to find a place for you regardless of whether or not that pisses off another group of people. You know, that's just kind of where we've always existed as a society. It's capitalism, baby.  [00:13:10] Dan Runcie: Does part of you see someone like, let's take Chappelle, 'cause you had mentioned him, him still getting these deals even after the backlash or even after the response. Does some of that almost feel like, okay, we're not necessarily just responding to what people may get mad at, there's still clearly an opportunity or there's still people that want to hear what we have to say, even if the expectations from our viewers have changed?  [00:13:35] Roy Wood Jr.: I think that as a society, you know, it is very difficult to place the expectation of morality and profit on a corporation. Most corporations have to choose between one or the other. And when I say profitability, you know, we're talking gross levels of profitability. I don't think many companies care to a certain degree about people in general. You know, this is bigger than just entertainment and whether or not you can say something that pisses off a group of people. Delta Airlines just started paying their flight attendants for when the plane doors open and they're boarding passengers. It's nothing moral. There's nothing moral about that, but it's definitely profitable. And only when it became embarrassing, which is not profitable, that they become a company with morals. If you can't attach profitability to morality, more often than not, you're not going to find a corporation that's going to make moves like that. I'm not surprised that Netflix gave Chappelle more specials for the amount of people that were mad at it, clearly, somebody was watching it and this is Netflix. Netflix cancels shit while you are in the middle of watching the episode. The second episode of a 10-episode show will come out and Netflix about, yes, cancel. What? Damn, can I finish? Season one? Nah, we've already looked at the metrics of the first episode that tells us everything we need to know. So, you know, that's a company that, you know, like people say that, oh, it's a FU to the LGBTQI community. It's definitely a slight to them for them to rebook Chappelle after they had said what they said and everybody had protested, whatever, whatever. But also Netflix is a company and that's about profit, which means somebody was watching Chappelle. And that's all they care about. That's all most companies care about is eyeballs. So, you know, unless you're getting into just straight-up criminalistic behavior of someone, morality versus profit is always going to be a tug of war that most corporations, they just do not have the heart that people do. [00:15:34] Dan Runcie: That's real. That's real. I mean, and even thinking about Chappelle specifically, because of how Netflix tracks the performance, a lot of the backlash likely helps those episodes because you have some that are tuning in because they want to hear what he has to say. But you have others tuning in because now they want to see or hear what he said that is causing all of these headlines. [00:15:55] Roy Wood Jr.: And that's all Netflix cares about. So the surprise on the backside is that can you believe this company didn't care? Yes, I can absolutely believe this company didn't care because more often than not most companies don't care. And that goes into women's rights, that goes into race, and George Floyd, and every company putting up black lives matter, whatever the fuck on the top of their website, and black squares and Instagram. So, you know, when it comes to a bevy of social, it is just, you know, it's interesting because corporations are now rocking a heart because now being moral. if it's profitable and cool, they'll jump on board. But if it's not, they're kind of like, eh, we'll see. [00:16:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. You've experienced this, you've worked with a number of these networks and seen the decisions that you've made. How has this impacted you at all with any of the partnerships you've made? I know you have the deal with Comedy Central that you've had. I know you had a special that came out with them, but we'll talk about that in a second. But how has that been with regards to you, and your specials, and your content, and how that works for you, both with the things that you want to do with the networks, and how you're able to still produce and create?  [00:17:05] Roy Wood Jr.: You know, from the standup side, you know, it's fine. We're Comedy Central. You know, we had a, I call it The Trilogy. I had my first three-hour specials with Comedy Central and they were good. And now, as I think about what that next block of content will be, you know, we'll figure out where that's supposed to go once I figure out creatively, what the fuck it's going to be? But, you know, on the scripted side and selling scripts, I've been very blessed to have opportunities to sell stuff, not just the Comedy Central, but you know, Fox and NBC in the last couple of years and HBO Max as well. but the thing is that it's very difficult to predict how COVID is going to affect a network's creative strategy when it comes to scripted, you know. Like scripted is, that's where the glory is. That's where the fun is, right? But, you know, I had one script, Jefferson County: Probation. Aaron Magruder was my, you know, executive producer and co-creator on it. And as soon as we got the script together and shot the pilot, there was a merger between Viacom and CBS and they changed their strategy. And then right after that COVID hit and they changed their strategy again. And at both of those mile markers, scripted shows were the first things to get cut from the budget because they're the most expensive. So the pressure to be profitable fast or to have a cultural impact fast is greater now on the content that, you know, that we have because the thing that I don't like about Netflix is that what streaming has removed from our zeitgeist is the concept of a cult hit. You know, like a cult hit TV show. Cult is just a nice way of saying underground and not a lot of people watch it, but the ones who watch it really, really love it. But there are shows that sometimes do not pop until season three. Sometimes season four and it takes people a while to get on board, but then you have a network that has creative execs who want to stay in that pocket. And now we believe in this show. We're going to give it another season, give it another season, give it another season. This don't happen with black shows. I'm talking about Arrested Development and you know, shit like that. And maybe The Wire, if you want to count that as a cult hit. But I feel like The Wire was more by the time they got to season four, everybody was on board, but at that point, HBO was like, wrap it up. Streaming, the analytics that are attached to streaming companies deciding whether or not a scripted show lives or dies has eliminated the ability for certain shows to germinate over a year or two, and really have an opportunity to find their audience, get the word of mouth. Everything is now, now, now. And so because of that, you know, where scripted is concerned, you have to have an idea that pops now, that sails, now that gets on TV now. And if you're really lucky, it also touches the vein of what is happening in the now. That's why Abbott Elementary is what it is. You have a great creator. You have a great writer. It's well cast, it's shot beautifully, it's funny, but also educators are at the forefront of a lot of the bullshit that's been going on the last two years. It's perfectly on the pulse. It's perfectly on the pulse. So, you know, word of mouth isn't enough. You also have to have the numbers. And so, you know, I'd say that for me, when it comes to coming up with scripted content, you almost have to find something that lives. You have to have the idea that lives at multiple intersections, because if it's just a fun, cool, nice idea. That might not be enough anymore. That's 2015 ideology.  [00:20:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah. The closest thing that seems like it's comparable to that cult classic of discovering it seasons later is when something gets picked up from a smaller network and then gets put on one of these big streamers. For instance, I'm thinking about South Side. Season Two. It's on HBO Max. And I think that made a lot of people that weren't watching South Side Season One discover it.  [00:20:57] Roy Wood Jr.: Correct. Like, there's a show that was on in Canada that came over to Netflix called Kim's Convenience and that was a fucking hilarious sitcom that somebody like me, I would've never discovered had it not come over to, but it had to live over in Canada for two years. But you need execs who care about the IP and care about the idea. And a lot of these execs are under the same pressure as the creatives. You better be bringing this studio, some hit shows and you better be signing and buying scripts from the best creators 'cause if you aren't and we don't have a hit, if we're not getting nominations, and we're not getting talked about it's your ass, too. So if you have an exec that is betting on a show, that's just has midling numbers versus just canceling it, and bringing in something new, there's also job security in that for them as well. And I think that's why, you know, to a degree, you know, you don't see shows that get an opportunity to build and grow their audience, either you a hit out the gate or you got a target on your back.  [00:21:57] Dan Runcie: The other challenging thing about this is knowing what those numbers are and whether or not the streaming services are sharing them with you. From your perspective as someone that is doing the scripts, selling shows, do you feel like you're getting any true quantitative aspect to be able to compare and say, okay, I see what I would've been able to hit or what the target is or how that compares, 'cause that's the piece that feels so non-transparent at all right now. [00:22:26] Roy Wood Jr.: That part of the game is still above my pay grade because I haven't gotten anything that's gone to series. I've sold a bunch of scripts that have all gone to pilot and most have gone to pilot at least. But even with the stuff over at Comedy Central, you know, we're on basic cable. So it's Nielsen. So, you know, that's more above board than companies giving their streaming numbers. But I wouldn't even be able to speak to that, unfortunately. I hope to be able to one day, but not today.  [00:22:51] Dan Runcie: Yeah. There was some interview I had seen it was Steven Soderbergh or someone like that. And he was like, I have no idea how well these movies do. They literally just tell me, yes, this was good. You can make another one or no, we're all set. Thanks. And he's just like, okay, then that's when he decides to make another movie.  [00:23:08] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, that part of it, yeah, you are totally flying blind as a creator. You know, at some point there's going to have to be some equity in this, but, hey, sooner or later, all of these streaming sites are just going to keep merging and folding into one another. It's like airlines in the eighties. Go Google up how many different airline carriers we had in the eighties. And then here we are now with United, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, and, what, American. Spirit and JetBlue emerging. So, okay, so you'll have, what, four or five major carriers? In the eighties, there was like, well, over 30. I could Google it real quick, but I know for sure I can name 15 airline companies from the eighties and I bet you the numbers are higher than that.  [00:23:50] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's that whole industry. Even the big ones have done so many consolidations, even in the past 20, 25 years, they've done a bunch. It's been wild.  [00:23:59] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. My point is that all those streamers are going to eventually all keep folding into each other and it's going to be basic cable all over again.  [00:24:05] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. And I think, too, even how they're making decisions is starting to stand out. I'm sure you saw the Batgirl news when the movie's done, they just decide not to run that thing and just put it as a write-off. That's not going to be the last time that happens.  [00:24:20] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. It's literally cheaper to not release this because the landscape keeps changing, bro. My heart goes out to that whole team. They are crushed about that. You know, as they should, but you work hard on a film, spend 90 million, at least you could do is put it out. But, you know, I just think that, you know, corporations like it's, again, it's profit. The right thing to do would've been to release the Batgirl film, but if projections and analytics have already told you that this film more than likely will underperform in the top tier markets where we need it to perform above money, profitability, it ain't profitable. Morality ain't profitable, man. So fuck them folks. We ain't going to release the film. Oh, but we should, they worked really hard. It's a black woman get to be black. We don't give a fuck. Cancel it. That's how a lot of places think, man. And you know, as they say, the game is the game, but that don't make it right. That don't make it hurt less. I just think that that's where a lot of companies are coming from, you know. They want bankable stars or an idea that's high concept and easy and quick and catches on. I still think that, you know, when you look at a show like Squid Game, which was such a breakout, you know, hit for Netflix, I think that the new superstar is the ensemble. You know, if you can't get a single star to carry your thing, then you need a great idea with a bunch of people nobody knows anything about. And then that's how you get people to invest, get people to invest in the concept and not the face. [00:25:47] Dan Runcie: Interesting. I can see that because I feel like there's so many big-name movies that you see on Netflix and they have all of these actors that you would consider to be A-list, but they come and go. But yeah, the magic of Squid Game is that it didn't have that, but it had this fascinating topic that people just wanted to have more and more of. It created a bunch of memes. And I'm sure not only they're trying to create a sequel, they're trying feel like, okay, what is the next thing like that that's going to take off. And sometimes it's random. I mean, I don't know if people thought that Queen's Gambit was going to take off the way that it did or any of those things. I feel like Netflix, especially, it feels like it could be very, you know, we'll see what happens. [00:26:27] Roy Wood Jr.: I mean, when you look at shows that have sustainability and have expanded their universes, like Power, there isn't a single actor in Power that is such a behemoth. Like, and I don't say that as a slight, it's an extremely talented cast of wonderful A-list actors. But when you look at how they try to anchor a show around one person, where Power is, it's always been a universe of people all working together. Of course, you have Mary J and Method Man in it, but it's not Mary J and Method Man alone to, it's not Joseph Sikora alone. Abbott is an ensemble cast. It's not a singular person. And so I think that concept will, I don't know, man. Why do you think people get so excited when Idris Elba comes back to do another round of Luther? It's 'cause, oh, my God, it's him. You get Idris every scene being badass, but he's busy, he's got movies to do and stuff. So I just think creatively, we're probably in a world where, you know, by and large, I feel like we'll just see more and more, you know, larger groups of people unless you have a network willing to pour millions of dollars into one person. You know, I don't know. [00:27:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think, too, we talked a little bit about how this is part of the evolution. Part of it, too, they want to have something that's quick to capture people's attention. And I think some of this has impacted how comics, and you as well, have talked about how it may approach your shows and how you're delivering certain information. And I know you've talked a lot about both the balance of having the timely topics, of talking about something that's current versus having those evergreen things that you need to, or you want to be able to tap into. And I feel like, you know, why actually Imperfect Messenger, you did a good job of that with just being able to balance things, you know, whether you're talking about current topics or just evergreen things. How conscious is that when you're thinking about the topics that you want to cover in a special? [00:28:22] Roy Wood Jr.: Well, for Imperfect Messenger, my comedic philosophy up until now, it has changed now 'cause I want to talk about myself and not the world. But the creative excavation process of a joke for me boils down to what is everybody saying about this topic. And is there anything new I can say? And if the answer is yes, then I continue down that road of exploration and then I put that joke on stage and then the best jokes win. As I like to call it, those are the jokes that make the 25-man roster, like baseball. Like, these are the start. 12- man, if you want to go basketball. So, you know, if the argument is A and B, is there a C side to it that I can introduce? Like if you look at my second special, No One Loves You, where I talk about the national anthem and the debate at the time with Kaepernick was should people stand for the anthem or should you take a knee? And my angle was why is that song the anthem? That song sucks. And then an exploration into what songs could replace it. What, if you won't stand for that song, is there a song that people would stand for? And so that's kind of my approach, you know, to a lot of this. You know, and if we're going to talk about Imperfect Messenger and we talk about policing and, you know, the issues that lie in policing in America now. Okay, fine. It's going to take bureaucracy and a lot of bullshit to try and get that changed. But in the meantime, in the interim, what are the small things cops could do to help? And then the joke is just essentially, a run of those things. You know, every now and then just let a black person, someone who should have gone to jail, let them go. If there's Stop Talking in Code on the radio, I forget my material. Like, literally the night I do a special, that material just turns into Thanos dust in my brain. But for me. That's how I've always tried to approach standup and my material rather than just arguing from the conventional positions that have already been presented to everybody because if nothing more, I want you to leave with a different perspective. I'm not trying to be right or wrong. I am just trying to make sure that you get something that you hadn't considered.  [00:30:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I always got that impression. I feel like that's a good example. I also think about, from Imperfect Messenger, your piece about Leonardo DiCaprio and Django Unchained and even though that movie, you know, I think like eight years ago at that point, still everyone knows exactly who you're talking about. It's timely. It's not dated in this way of a comedian still referencing, you know, pop culture from the nineties, but you have it. And you're able to weave that in with everything that's happening. And I feel like even though that was a movie that was a few years older, you're still relating it to all the topics we're talking about now, like allyship and all those things. So I feel like people may not see the subtleties, but when you really break it down, you can see how much goes into constructing a good joke. [00:31:08] Roy Wood Jr.: I appreciate that, man, 'cause you get paranoid about that type of stuff, 'cause you don't want to be dated, but are there evergreen examples of a point that I'm trying to make that could help me parallel and boil this down, you know, a little bit more? You know, that special was also very interesting because the story that I told near the end about a childhood friend that's in prison for the murder of a person I know, but, you know, he was the getaway driver. You know, like that was a joke. He was a getaway driver in a robbery that turned into a murder is what actually happened in real life. And so he never went in the store, but in Alabama, the law is set up where everybody gets the murder charge. If a murder happens while your crime is being committed. And that joke was set up in a way where it was really about him and the sentencing and how it's all messed up and blah, blah, blah. But you know, there's part of me that's, you know, I love Birmingham. I love Birmingham, Alabama. I love the people there. And I've tried, you know, for the entirety of my career since 2001, when I came home and started at the radio station and started doing stuff in the community with the radio station. I've always tried to be a person that's of the community. And so that joke carries a different level of responsibility when I'm home because everyone remembers that murder. Everyone remembers Mr. Muhammad being murdered at the Music-N-More store and that man was a pillar of the community. So if I'm going to speak on his legacy, there's got to be balance to that. And you know what. I probably should reach out to his family before I put this on national television. And so when I did that and I had a conversation with his son, it completely shifted what that joke was and it made it the right version of what that joke needed to be. And that's the thing that I really enjoy. And it's part of really what's triggered so much more of where I am now creatively because that just wasn't an A, B, and C observation. This was a legitimate issue that I was having within myself of feeling like my friend should not be in prison for the rest of his life for being an accomplice, but also feeling empathy for the family, because I knew them. Like, they carry my CD and I'll spare the story here, but in the special, you know, I tell the story of my relationship with this store as an independent music artist, like this store supported local rappers and, like, they help people kickstart their career. So it's not as cut and dry. So when you look at a law, like, the one that Alabama has set up and then you start talking to the victims, then you start understanding why these laws are in place. And so that will always be my favorite joke isn't the word, but it's definitely the most honest joke that I've told on television to this point.  [00:34:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Well, definitely link it to this one to make sure that people can see it, that or listening to this episode right now and just bringing it all full circle. I can see how this is informing the type of content or the type of message that you want to be able to push forward, whether you're telling it in a different setting, whether you're finding new ways to tell it, it has been really cool to see how so many of our favorite comedians have been able to find new ways to be able to share different messages or even things that they may have to give a little piece of and seen that that's where they want to move more into for the next stage of their career. So I'm excited for that.  [00:34:43] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, it's going to be fun. You know, it's going to be fun, talking more about my father, my relationship with him talking about, you know, raising my own child. My son is six. So you know, that is definitely a new and scary place to be as a parent. But yeah, yeah, I'm excited about what's down the road, but I'm just not in a position anymore where I feel like I need to rush. You know, I was very blessed, but also probably very crazy. I put out three one-hour specials over the span of five years. That's a pretty healthy clip, you know? So I feel like I should go sit my ass down somewhere for a second and really think about, you know, what it is I want to say and what I'm trying to do.  [00:35:24] Dan Runcie: What's your son's relationship with your comedy? Is it something that he goes and checks back in looking back at old clips, just to see the history of where you came to things, or is he not allowed to look at all that just yet? [00:35:37] Roy Wood Jr.: He might catch me on the couch every blue moon watching old episodes of The Daily Show. Like, I binge our show every week, 'cause I don't get to always watch it every night 'cause of whatever's going on. So he may pop in and see me on television. Like, if you ask my son what his father does for a living, he'll say my dad works on TV and he's a comedian. Like, he knows that much. He's been with me to sound checks early in the afternoon for, you know, theater shows and stuff. But the idea of bringing him around this and exposing him to it for the sake of this is what you're going to do, this's a family business. Nah, not really. I'd like for him to see some of the cameramen and the editors and the computer stuff. I don't think my son will be a comedian because he has two loving parents, which is already the worst thing that could happen to a comedian. To be a good comedian, you can't have both of your parents love you. What trauma you got? We want to know what's wrong with you.  [00:36:32] Dan Runcie: Right. What is the source of the comedy then? [00:36:35] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, so we're trying to raise him as pain-free as possible. So I think that's going to make him ineligible for most comedy clubs.  [00:36:41] Dan Runcie: maybe he'll go back and look at the old stuff. He'll go back to that. You know, the Last Comic Standing run, then he'll come back to see, okay, all right. I can see this trajectory here. I can see what dad's been up to.  [00:36:52] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. I mean, he's funny. He has a sense of humor. He's cognizant of that, but it's not something I encourage or discourage. It's just, you know, whatever you feel like doing today, bro. Then that's what you're going to do. Like right now he's into the BattleBots. So let's watch and do things that are related to mechanics and STEM and see where that goes. [00:37:10] Dan Runcie: I'm hearing a lot from you in this conversation that talks a lot about both mentorship and the relationship that you have with others in your life, especially family members and important figures. And I know that from a comedian perspective, Dick Gregory was an important person in your life. And you had referenced in a past interview life-changing conversation you had had with him and it would be great to hear a little bit more about what that conversation was like and how that changed, how you ended up approaching comedy.  [00:37:39] Roy Wood Jr.: I only saw Dick Gregory, I only opened for him twice. And the first time was in Selma at the Bridge Crossing Jubilee. It was a banquet that he and Jesse Jackson were speaking at. And then the other time was in, I opened for him proper in a comedy club in Zanies in Nashville. And he said something that just always resonated with me. You know, I'm butchering the quote, but he said people always ask me, Dick, why you always on the road? Why are you always out of town? And I said, because the battle for justice ain't at my house. And so that always stuck with me in terms of his tenacity right up till the end. You know, he died the way that, that every comedian wants to die and that's with dates on the books. I think it's the biggest compliment that, you know, any comedian can have is to die with still having more work and gigs scheduled because you got to get the message out there. You got to make people laugh. You got to try to heal people. In Dick Gregory's case, you know, he was doing things that were far above and beyond just telling a couple of shuck and jive jokes about police reform. This man was out there really doing the work, you know, concurrent. This man would have had a full itinerary all day and then go do two shows on a Friday night. It's not like he was just posted up in the hotel, watching Maury Povich till 7:30. So, you know, when I look at his career and everything that he did, that was a beautiful thing to see. It was a beautiful thing to see a dude knocking on 80 that was just at a comedy club on a Friday night, and it's 350 people ready to pay him and ready to hear what he has to say. And to be able to still say things that are resonant and that are on the pulse of what people are feeling, you can be funny, you can get away with being funny for a little while, but true career longevity as a comedian, I believe you have to make people feel, you have to give them an emotion. Sooner or later they have to leave feeling a certain way. It's not just a matter of the tactile Xs and Os of did they laugh at the setup Did they laugh at the punchline? Okay, next joke. It's what are you infusing into that person's heart on the backside of this experience that you all had together on stage for an hour. And, you know, I saw Dick Gregory do that twice and Selma was even more amazing 'cause he did it from a podium and I cannot explain to anybody how hard it is to do standup comedy from a podium. Jokes do not go over a podium, lectern, whatever the hell you want to call it don't matter. The jokes don't go over it. The moment you standing at one of them damn things, you look like a preacher and none of your jokes are funny, but Dick Gregory demolished, demolished, it was a good time.  [00:40:19] Dan Runcie: That's special, yeah. He's someone that always stuck out in a unique way with everything that he did. So and I think a lot about that, even with artists or anyone that's performing on stage, if you can still do this when you're 70, 80 years old, that's where the real magic comes. And I know many of the younger artists now want to get there and it's great to see. I think, you know, you're in a generation of comedians that I think are going to be doing the same thing as well.,  [00:40:44] Roy Wood Jr.: Trying to, that's what I'm trying to get to.  [00:40:48] Dan Runcie: All right. Well, before we let you go, we do got to talk about the film that you have coming out, Confess, Fletch out in theaters September 16th. And I have to ask, you're a detective in this film, you're opposite Jon Hamm, is Jon Hamm, a white ally that we could trust in this movie?  [00:41:07] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, yeah, in the movie. Yeah, I'd say in real life as well. I'll go ahead and hang that on him. No, it's dope. I also had to give a shout-out to our director, Greg Mottola, and Greg, you know, really worked to create something that totally feels different from the bright lights and the big demonstrative jokes that were the eighties Chevy Chase version of this character. And so, you know, it plays right into Jon Hamm's warehouse. I'm just happy. I got to play a cop in Boston and they didn't force me to do a Boston accent 'cause that would've been insulting. That would've been very terrible.  [00:41:39] Dan Runcie: Was that a conversation at all? Did anyone even broach, Hey, should you try to do this? Or should we, 'cause I know that Jon Hamm with The Town and all that stuff, I know he's done it before.  [00:41:48] Roy Wood Jr.: It was breached briefly during my audition and at the audition, they said don't even try it. We've watched a tape on you. I'm like, well, just let me know if you wanted the cop to be from Alabama. I can nail that one, man. [00:42:02] Dan Runcie: Sometimes I feel bad. The ones that they try to do, like, when Anthony Anderson was in The Departed, love Anthony Anderson, but I feel like they try to make everybody in that movie. What was it, Mystic River, I feel like that was another one where they try to have everyone do a Boston accent. I'm like, all right. I don't know, you know. Let's have a few signature characters maybe, and I think everyone else is fine.  [00:42:20] Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. It was fine. It was definitely a good time. It was a good shoot, you know I think just murder- mystery- comedy, you know, I think it feels light enough and fun enough in these times. And so, you know, we don't get too woke in it and I know everybody is scared of the woke and the woke mob is coming. A, it's a cop trying to catch a criminal or a guy that he thinks is a criminal. It's a cop trying to solve a murder and a private detective trying to solve the murder as well. So, you know, I think it's a good film.  [00:42:48] Dan Runcie: And we talked a lot in this conversation about streaming and everything releasing there. This is not debuting on streaming, out in theaters, available on demand as well. Did that change to the creation process at all? Or does that change your relationship at all with this movie?  [00:43:05] Roy Wood Jr.: No. I think that it'll be interesting to see how quickly people see it and when and where. You know, I do think that coming out on demand, in addition to theaters, I think it only helps word of mouth and I think it still brings profits for the film itself. So, you know, in that regard, you know, I think it'll be fine. But when you make the movie you're, as an actor, my job is to just make the movie y'all can figure out the rest of that shit after, you know, two months from now in post-production, you can decide how many theaters and blah, blah, blah, and all of that.  [00:43:34] Dan Runcie: Exciting stuff. Well, we'll definitely look out for that, but Roy, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on, keeping it real as always. And if people want to follow you and stay in touch with everything you're doing, where can they find you? [00:43:46] Roy Wood Jr.: Oh, it's Roy Wood Jr. I put an @ sign in front, .com on the backside. Also visit me online, my podcast, roysjobfair.com.  [00:43:54] Dan Runcie: Good stuff. Appreciate you, man. Thanks again.  [00:43:56] Roy Wood Jr.: All right, will do. [00:43:58] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

TikTok has reshaped the Internet in under a three-year span, but if its parent company, ByteDance, has its way, the platform’s dominance is just getting started. This week I brought Stan founder Denisha Kuhlor back onto the show to discuss TikTok’s ambitious plans for total media domination. In the past few months, TikTok has announced plans for several new features — each aimed at competing with current media giants such as Google, Spotify, and Ticketmaster. Features include extending video-length capacity to 10 minutes, the TikTok Music streaming service, better internal search capabilities, and a ticketing platform, among many others. Recent history in Western culture is not kind to companies trying to be an all-in-one platform. Google and Facebook stumbles come to mind. To predict how TikTok might fare, Denisha and I hit the new features point-by-point, weighing TikTok’s advantages and disadvantages at breaking into each. Here’s our main talking points:  [0:50] TikTok’s masterplan [7:02] Prediction: 10-minute-long TikTok videos [11:50] Prediction: TikTok music streaming service [15:43] Prediction: Enhanced TikTok search [22:00] Prediction: SoundOn music distribution [25:42] Prediction: In-app ticketing  [29:46] Are consumers creator or platform loyal? [33:18] TikTok’s impact on creator economy  [37:22] TikTok’s geopolitical issues Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Denisha Kuhlor, @denishakuhlor     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Denisha Kuhlor: It has become this trend where we have more affinity to the platform and the platform's ability to curate the content than some of these content creators themselves. And in a world where I think these content creators are so driven to following the algorithm and getting promoted by the algorithm, what they don't realize is kind of the uniformity in content that is created.   [00:00:30] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:50] Dan Runcie: All right. We're joined again today by Denisha Kuhlor, who is the founder and CEO of Stan. And today we're going to talk all about TikTok. And TikTok has been a topic I know you and I have talked about offline, we've both covered it and have our opinions on it, but I want to talk today about talk's grand plan to try to take over everything. Just to name a few headlines from the past couple of months, TikTok is planning to extend into 10-minute long videos. It is launching its own music distribution service called SoundOn. It filed a trademark for its own streaming service called TikTok Music. They are enhancing their search function to identify key terms. They're also adding in a text-to-image option as well so that people can start to do that. And it sounds like a lot, the company has grown quite a bit, so it's understandable. But do we think that TikTok is going to be able to do all of these things? What's your thought?  [00:01:47] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. So TikTok's been really interesting to watch these last few months and honestly, really from inception, my initial hunch is that it's hard to do a lot of things well. And as TikTok grows and somewhat through replication and also a bit through innovation, I do think they're going to struggle to really get to scale for all the new features that they want to launch.  [00:02:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think the tough thing with this, and it's something that has been ingrained with big tech companies for a while is when the big social network grows and they have this huge following. TikTok now is the fastest to reach 1 billion monthly active users. We can see the trajectory of it potentially getting to be as big as Facebook is now. And Facebook, of course, is another company that has tried and is still trying to do every possible thing under the sun. But I think the part that's important is there are a few examples when these companies have succeeded. Instagram copying Snapchat is of course the primary example that people often look back to, but more often than not, most of these attempts don't actually work that well. And one of the reasons they don't work as well is because they don't necessarily solve a true need that the core users are looking for to be solved from that app. And I think that's one of the important things about Instagram Story specifically because Instagram Stories copy Snapchat worked because Instagram already had a hub of influencers as its core users. And these core users wanted to be able to both post pictures, but they also didn't want to feel the pressure of needing to have this polished picture that was on their feed all of the time. So their thought was, okay, if they could copy this feed that they see Snapchat's doing, they already had the core users there and having something that's more ephemeral. It can go away in 24 hours was perfect. It worked as good as you could probably expect it to. And honestly, it worked better than Snapchat because Instagram already had the home base of those core users whereas Snapchat, at the time, they had a bit of penetration from Gen Z, a bit of DJ Khaled here and there, but it just wasn't to that same level. And I think when you look at a lot of the other attempts that Facebook has tried to copy from others and even Instagram as well with seeing with Reels, that's the piece that I go back to. If these successes and these copycat attempts haven't worked, it's usually because there's some type of disconnect between what the core users on that app are looking for and whether or not that new feature helps them do that. [00:04:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Totally. And I think it creates a culture even internally for these organizations of duplication versus innovation, right? So now you see these organizations going and seeking the desire to duplicate and get to market as quickly as possible, whereas before they had no choice but to be innovative. And to do that, I think they really had to listen to their users and the folks on the app. So it also just even changes, in a way, the culture of what the app is about because now folks are so used to see or expecting to see things that have already been done before, rather than excitement towards really where the platform could take things.  [00:05:01] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it's interesting because, on one hand, I do understand the aspect of copying what's already successful. You see it's there and you know that you have those users on your platform already. So why not make an attempt, why not use your resources, especially because of how much money these companies print on ads, then, yeah, you could take the chance with Google having its Google X or Facebook opening up its own VC firm or in many ways, treating all these new initiatives as its own VC firm. But to your point, you do lose the innovation and that's exactly why these apps became relevant in the first place. They offered something newer. They did it in a truly unique way. And when you think about why TikTok has blown up, the genius of it is that For You page. They made it so frictionless to be able to stay entertained, to scroll. You don't have to think about who to follow. You don't need to do any of those things. And that is its biggest strength, but I think it also makes it very challenging to have any type of new feature that is harder or requires more user- input or more activity than the mindless scrolling that has worked in its favor up to this point. [00:06:11] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like the For You page really was the magic and to, in some ways, see them stray away from that, or even improving that in other ways does feel a little unfortunate. Some of the features that you listed, while exciting, I think are just not necessary in the sense that so many other folks are out there doing it. But it will be interesting to see how it fits within maybe the grand scheme or the grand vision for TikTok users and creators. I mean, when it comes down to maybe offering a more seamless experience, then it gets a little bit more interesting. But how big of a problem is that right now for creators, especially when you think about, like, some of the plays towards distribution and features around that? The problems don't seem prevalent enough to justify the investment. But maybe there's a grand vision within all of that, in which it makes more sense.  [00:07:02] Dan Runcie: So let's break those down. Let's go through each of 'em. Let's start first with TikTok extending into 10-minute videos. I do feel like this is probably the least friction out of each of them, but what's your thought on this expansion and clearly a move to compete more directly with YouTube?  [00:07:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think this one is interesting because it really, in some ways, is probably the least painful in the sense that if content is compelling enough, you could argue that an individual is just going to keep watching, if the initial, you know, piece of content is compelling enough. What actually is, like, somewhat fascinating to me is that in some ways you could argue that TikTok took away or has hindered people's ability to focus for that long of time. So going to like the corollary of now having 10-minute videos, I do think will be interesting 'cause it's like a different habit, right? Even just focusing on something for 10 minutes versus like 6 seconds is a very different habit. So to see how or to see what type of users actually adapt to that, I think it will be interesting. I do think though there'll probably be some niche communities that emerge as a result of that feature who do want to take deep dives much to content, right? There's folks that like read casually about the music industry and then folks that like really, I think, deep dive, much as a testament to Trapital's content. And so I do think, like, some interesting, like, subsections of the feature will rise. However, I think the bulk of the users aren't even, like, able to watch a video for that long. [00:08:33] Dan Runcie: I think that if it is extending the videos into that length, I agree with you. This is the least friction one. I think it does have the highest likelihood of success. But if I'm thinking about music videos specifically or something that ends up being at least that length, it changes the format to look like what the videos for the most successful YouTubers often look like and the science that goes behind that. I'm picturing what NBA YoungBoy does in the beginning of his videos or even someone like MrBeast. There's some hook there that gives you some tease and that keeps you engaged, just to make sure that you end up watching the whole thing to see what it is. So I feel like if artists start creating music videos or start creating videos in general to be more like 10 minutes. And I think the format of how those videos look will be a lot different and everything will be how do we keep people engaged so that, okay, if we keep them for the first 15 seconds, how do you get them for the next 15 seconds and after that. Like, you can't have these long buildups that I think you can have for certain types of videos on YouTube, just give the audience. But I think it will change things in that format. No different than when MTV blew up, there was a type of video vibe that people tried to go after. I think that if this is the route that TikTok is really trying to go. I think we may see videos lead more into that where, yeah, everyone does start creating videos where you may look like you're trying to be a YouTuber. You're trying to be a TikTok dancer, whatever it is. But I feel like that's where it could head if it's as successful as it could be.  [00:10:04] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, that's actually really interesting in the sense that a lot of folks, like, point to their desire to use TikTok because it does feel like less polished, in a way more authentic. I was listening to a podcast where a TikToker says she makes more content on TikTok because she has to like, yeah, just be less prepared in a way or prepare herself to get on TikTok in the way you would for on Instagram. So I think if that does happen, it'll probably have an effect they don't want, which is a longer timeline to people creating and posting content. And like, just a harder barrier to entry because now folks will feel like, well, I don't have all the things needed to start a TikTok or to really start posting on TikTok, which is really against, I think what the platform did in its early days.  [00:10:50] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah, you're right. That whole instant, making it easy as possible is part of it. It almost brings me back to Vine to an extent. Maybe that's a better comparison for what this looks like 'cause of course someone like a MrBeast or NBA YoungBoy, they have big teams at this point. But some would be able to take a Vine and having this whole narrative story in that 6-second, 7-second clip, maybe it's getting a bit back to that. But even that takes time and there's clearly a difference between that. And, you know, while Vine was popular, it didn't blow up the way that TikTok has blown up. So I feel like you're right. It may change the app in a way that users aren't ready for. But we'll see. I obviously know that this is kind of what happens when you're trying to do everything. You're going to risk having some type of frustration that comes from the core users.  [00:11:37] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Much to your point, I do think there will be a really active, like, community or communities around that in which like 10 minutes of content works really well and TikTok is just like an easy medium to do that  [00:11:50] Dan Runcie: For sure. All right. The second one here, this one I will be interested to dive into. TikTok Music and TikTok filing this trademark. It clearly wants to launch its own music streaming service. We had heard rumors about ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, wanting to do this, but how do you see this one playing out? [00:12:09] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, this one, I just kind of felt like, okay, like another music streaming service You know, one, I don't think people realize or really think through just like how complex streaming services are as a business. I mean, thankfully, you know, a lot of platforms have kind of, pioneered some of the heavy lifting that came with making deals with labels and really like getting the content onto the platform. But that's all still to be said that it's a very unique and complex business model that's driven on another party, right? And how another party feels about giving you access to your content? What does seem somewhat interesting about it is, in the same way that TikTok democratizes content creation and the barrier to entry to post, you could probably argue that it in a way, democratizes that for music, and so more artists are able to get more volume or traction as a result. And so I do think if they focus on maybe content from newer creators or newer musicians who don't necessarily have some of that on the platform, that could be interesting, like in terms of a new streaming platform being able to get access to these independent artists at rates that could be favorable. I think that's interesting, but I don't know if that works at scale. And frankly, like, songs from independent artists, I don't think, is enough to keep a consumer satiated. And there's an even harder barrier to entry to have two streaming platforms at once.  [00:13:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah, this is the one I'm probably the most skeptical of its success and for very similar reasons. Say what you want about Spotify. I know people have a number of issues about how that platform is operated and how it distributes its money. But the fact that it's helped the music industry, A, get to this point, says something and just the type of deals it's been able to negotiate to make it all work the way that it has that's enabled all the other types of revenue-generating opportunities that have came from it. And then additionally, it's hard to get to that point. Again, you may not agree with all the decisions that they make, but it is very hard to get to that point. And while I understand, from a strategic perspective, why TikTok may initially want to do this. Of course, if you have and you own the top of funnel that exists in the industry today, why wouldn't you want to at least think about what it could be like to keep that attention on your platform? If your platform is where discovery is happening for both the new fans, for artists to get initial exposure, and for that, you know, the record labels are already seeing, I understand why you would want to think about keeping more of that in-house. But it is a lot tougher than they think for the reasons you mentioned. And also going back to the usability of the app streaming services are a type of consumer experience that requires much more active engagement. People don't just scroll through Spotify and Apple Music. You're going there actively to find something that you're looking for. I mean, I don't even know that many people that are actively relying on that discover weekly playlists to find anything. You're still searching for the things that you want. Even if you're looking for a playlist, it's probably that's much more catered toward the mood or genre that you have. So I think anything that requires that level of agency or action from the consumer side will always be a bit of a challenge for TikTok there. So yeah, I'm skeptical on the success of that one. Unless it tries to go more of the YouTube route of things, which ties back into the 10-minute video things that we talked about before. There's some potential there, but even there, I think there's still some question marks. [00:15:41] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. I'm aligned with you there.  [00:15:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. The next one is TikTok Search. A lot of us had seen the viral tweet that someone had. I don't Google I TikTok. And a lot of that spoke to how a lot of folks in Gen Z are looking for information and I get it, I've even done it myself, my wife and I were recently searching to buy a new mattress. And you know what? I didn't want to go through a Google Search and just read some sponsored content about a mattress. I wanted to see a video of someone unboxing this thing to see what it looks like.  [00:16:10] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly.  [00:16:10] Dan Runcie: And TikTok was the quickest place to do that, even quicker than YouTube. YouTube's going to show me a mix of explainer videos and then also concept from the company. I just wanted to see some random person be like, oh, hey, here's what I think about this bed. And here's what I think about that bed. It was quick, it was easy. So I do think that that works, but I think there's a few caution flags with it. A, I still think that even though TikTok was able to offer that, there's still deeper search functionality that went into how Google got to be as good as it is, even going back thinking about 20 years ago about like why Google succeeded where Lycos and AltaVista and all those other go.com, .com era search engines didn't work. So I don't know if TikTok has all of that baked in to really go beyond just, you know, people like me looking for random purchases that they want to look through here or there or just want to look up a certain topic. And I also think the other bigger, more important pieces, the misinformation, and just being able to correct for that because that's already been an issue on TikTok. And I think that could potentially continue if there isn't some way to relegate what's happening in search. So, high likelihood success, but still some trepidation.  [00:17:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, this one is one I'm actually a little bit more excited about. I do think it's really interesting, like in the sense of search, because it is something that we naturally do more. I first started to search on social media using Instagram. And I think they've even done a greater job of like adding more functionality to do that search, whether it's by location and showing you things surrounding that location or even venues or event spaces. So I think that it's a growing feature and a great feature. Like you said, the reviews, whether people sought them to be that way or just inherently more, right, they're showing you video. Most times they're talking through it and you can just consume and walk away with a more educated viewpoint for a time that's favorable, right? A 30-second or 1-minute video can really give you a lot of feedback about whatever you're searching. I think, honestly, this is where a TikTok should spend some time doubling down. I think we want to see more of that functionality from them playing around with maybe the highest use cases, whether that's locations or certain venues, or even like festivals. As I think about it, like, I see so often on TikTok, like you can see a certain event from multiple vantage points and understanding what it's like at a festival from someone in VIP versus general admission versus backstage, even, right? Like, Rolling Loud, you see, like, every single vantage point, even sometimes down to the artist manager with them. So I think, like, them doubling down on a few use cases that really highlight the immersiveness of search is something that excites me. And I think just naturally follows up on what the users are already doing on the platform.  [00:19:02] Dan Runcie: That ties into the another announcement I saw from them about enhancing its ability to search for things locally, or being able to find things from that level because to your point if you are seeing multiple vantage points at Rolling Loud or at Coachella, you may want to meet up with someone that is there, or you might be able to see their vantage point. You might have times I've been to a music festival and it's like, where are you? I'm at the main stage. But what part of the main stage, you know, they got this quarter over here, they got that quarter, but if someone could just do a quick, like, boom. And maybe that could be even easier than them trying to send me a FaceTime video or something like that, where there's no service, but if they could at least post it up on TikTok or wherever, then it could be like, okay, I see your angle. I'll be there. I'll come see you in a minute. [00:19:44] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think that's great. And to that point, too, it kind of like puts on other users in terms of like, okay, wow, I didn't enjoy my experience at like Rolling Loud 'cause I was GA. So maybe VIP is worth it to me or I should consider doing that. And so I actually think more artists should be embracing and recognizing that search feature. The only thing is too is because so many people are using it, you in real-time, right, seem to get updates. So like, Kizz Daniel who's come under fire in Tanzania for not showing up to his performance. I already, like in my mind was like, well, Kizz Daniel was four hours late to his DC show. And how did I know that? Or DC or New York? I'm sorry, but how did I know that? Like, because I saw it on TikTok and so that's like twice in a row. So how likely am I as a fan to justify the cost of a ticket in the event that he is going to be near me? So I think it's like a good maybe transparency or accountability measure. But with that search, we maybe do sometimes need to recognize like, what do they say that like, people are most likely to post or leave reviews when they either have a really great experience or a really bad experience. And so sometimes you might not just get what the true experience is in the case of like a service-based search.  [00:21:02] Dan Runcie: That's true. That's a really good point. And that goes back to the quality of the results and how they can find a way to measure that piece 'cause I think that's the piece that ties back into why Google has been good at what it does over its competitors. So that TikToks can actually survive and not, you know, become someone else that may do video search even better.  [00:21:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. And maybe, you know, to the extent they would consider this, like, there's an opportunity for collaboration, right? Like Google's done a great job of, you know, when you ask certain questions, they have a definitive answer, but they also pull like multiple sources. And so what if, like, on a Google search, you search a restaurant and you're also seeing like TikToks in the area? I think the aggregation of that repository of information could be really great. And also a way for them to continue to like maintain their dominance in search.  [00:21:55] Dan Runcie: Let’s take a quick break to hear a word from this week’s sponsor.  [00:22:00] Dan Runcie: Definitely. So the next one, this one's interesting, music distribution. TikTok recently launched SoundOn, which is a service that in many ways is set to compete with a lot of the music distributors. And I think similarly, it could be seen as its opportunity to capture its top of funnel attention as well. You already have the artists, why not make it easier for artists to use your platform, to distribute the music that they have? What are your thoughts on this one?  [00:22:31] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, and this isn't personal, but I'm just not really excited by music distribution. Nowadays, like in a lot of ways we're listening to a song on a streaming platform is a commodity, right? Like listening to Drake on Apple Music sounds the same as, like, Spotify. I feel that way with music distribution, like, as a consumer, the consumers have no idea, right? They just know they go to their streaming platform and the song is there. The reverse engineering of how it got there and the back end is really not of much interest to them. On the artist side or for them to do this, I think it requires a really deeper investment in artist education. And so I'm curious to see, you know, especially as they double down on creator programs and things of that nature how willing they are to invest both on a content and community side, but also a capital side, in artist education to incentivize users to distribute through that platform. When you think about switching costs in terms of getting set up on a new platform and just probably some of the like new things you have to adjust to by doing it. I feel very underwhelmed hearing about this, and I'm really curious to see how it goes.  [00:23:39] Dan Runcie: I think you called it right in the beginning. Music distribution is a tough business. It is purely a commodity at this point. And I think you can win a few ways. You win by trying to achieve massive scale with it, which Distrokid clearly has just given everything else. But if you don't have that scale, you try to find something unique to position yourself with. I think we've seen that a bit with United Masters, but even that's a bit of a unique business model because, A, they've done a bunch of partnerships with different platforms and companies in sports and entertainment to try to use that as a way both to attract artists and give them an opportunity. But it's also attached to an ad agency with translation, which essentially can, you know, offset any costs or anything like that if there are already losses that come through with the business. So that part of it is unique there. But then even with some of the other services, I think a lot of them have adapted their business models over time because that customer service piece is so timely. It's so expensive. And yeah, when you have an artist that maybe generated less than $20,000 a year, and they're calling your service every other week because they're trying to feed their supporters and making sure that every one of their fans can get their music. How do you justify that cost when you want to be able to support the fans? But the economics of it don't make sense if you're also trying to compete with Distrokid where it costs very little money to be able to use their service on a regular basis. And the same could be said about TuneCore and the others. So it's a tough business to enter.  [00:25:16] Denisha Kuhlor: And I think, you know, artists and management teams don't really have any particular affiliation to, you know, to like any platform. Maybe there are things that they like about certain platforms or that keep them there. But when you talk to artists and management teams, it's kind of just this is what we use, it works, it gets the job done. And it's not an area of the business as long as things are working, they're going to particularly spend a lot of time overly evaluating.  [00:25:42] Dan Runcie: Right. The next piece of this and the next thing that TikTok's been trying to do is ticketing. And while this is less of a big initiative the way they have it right now, it's an integration with a Ticketmaster who, of course, owns most of the medium size to large venues from a ticketing operation, given their relationship with Live Nation. I have to imagine that TikTok's ultimate stream would actually be trying to do what we just saw from Spotify to try to launch its own ticketing service. But even that has plenty of issues and challenges there, but what's your take on at least this first step of the Ticketmaster integration for TikTok and where it could go from here? [00:26:23] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. On the ticketing side, it's interesting. And just like having a background in venture and tech and startups, like, I've seen a lot of folks try to solve ticketing in many areas, right? The curation that comes with ticketing, ticketing from all over the world and in different currencies, and just a better user experience overall. I will say while I don't think I'm, like, particularly mad at TikTok's, like, foray into ticketing, I do think it's a missed opportunity to probably focus on like events that have organically grown through the platform. And something that's like so interesting is I think you've seen more and more promoters or even event producers, like really like leverage TikTok to create those events and grow their followings in their community. And that's not what TikTok's ticketing platform is really targeted with as evidenced by, you know, a partnership with Ticketmaster. And so while I feel like it's somewhere in the direction, I do think it could be a bit more directionally accurate by focusing on, kind of the, yeah, the smaller organic events that just naturally have grown through TikTok and like TikTok partnering with those events to help users produce more content and like, it can truly be mutually beneficial in a way that I think some of those event organizers would welcome. And so while I could understand why they went for the validity and reputation that comes with a bigger brand, such as Ticketmaster, I think they could have got more bang for their buck with a smaller, more targeted partnership with folks that already found interesting use cases to grow ticketing for the respective events. [00:27:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like there's a bit of a balance there because I hear you and I do think that it ideally would be, yeah, great for them to double down on the creative uses of the, especially some of the more emerging artists that are using this platform to bring folks together, right? Almost similar to what you may see people trying to do, whether it's seeing things virtually in Twitch or bringing those types of audiences in real life to particular things. I think that's really cool and unique. I do feel that for TikTok though, specifically with what we're seeing them do on the music side, in the back of my mind I always wonder, okay, if it weren't for Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion and some of these other major artists that are using the platform, what percentage of their impact is making up the overall pie of TikTok Music? Just thinking about that, they had that pie chart from a few years back about the genres and how hip-hop was over-indexed and how Megan Thee Stallion was the most popular artist. So if you're trying to cater to the biggest artist on your platform, you know, Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat are definitely at the Ticketmaster level of what they're doing. So if they are going to have an event, could you have something that keeps them in, right, because I think that the more organic things that we've seen likely are more of a direct competition to what we see from Eventbrite, let's say, which I think is much more in that sweet spot of everything from like a birthday party up until you get to like, you know, a small club concert or event, right? But then obviously Ticketmaster is everything else. So yeah, it's like, my heart wants to be like, oh yeah, stay with the types of cool events you've had. But also just thinking about how YouTube leaned into its biggest customers and like, if you're TikTok then yeah, it's the Megs, it's the Dojas, and ones like that.  [00:29:38] Denisha Kuhlor: That is interesting and I think a good corollary. Maybe it does, like, trickle down on more of like a hybrid approach. Yeah, that's interesting.  [00:29:46] Dan Runcie: I do think this taps back into something that you had mentioned before just about the platform itself and as this platform continues to grow, where does the loyalty sit for the consumer, right, whether it's with the artist or with the platform.  [00:30:03] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. I think this is such a big thing, right, and that comes with building a fan base or even just like your notoriety on TikTok. You see the changes that were made to Instagram and kind of everybody from the Kardashians, right, calling them out. And I think it has become this trend where we have more affinity to the platform and the platform's ability to curate the content than some of these content creators themselves. And in a world where I think these content creators are so driven to following the algorithm and getting promoted by the algorithm, what they don't realize is kind of the uniformity in content that is created. Even when it comes down to, like, some of the events or experiences or those types of videos, sometimes, like if you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I think that's why there's other creators, whether it’s, like, more comedian-focused or other topics that really excel because it forces them to kind of have to do something different, even if they do have to be relatable. And so unfortunately I think that, you know, artists who are employing TikTok and kind of using this, especially as they build their name and their brand, need to think a lot about like, okay, I have X amount of followers on TikTok, but the barrier to entry to get someone to follow you on TikTok looks very different compared to other platforms. And then taking that a step further, it's like, what does that mean? Because while people might like you, how willing are they to migrate to another platform? They ultimately have that ultimate affinity and loyalty, in my opinion, to TikTok.  [00:31:38] Dan Runcie: I couldn't agree more, and it makes me think about how I use these apps today. For instance, we're recording this now August 26th, and this is a few hours after DJ Khaled released his album and Jay-Z had his four-minute-long verse on GOD DID. And I've seen everyone from ESPN's account to all of the hip-hop blogs and everyone else posting about this. And of course, you get it. And it's all these memes you see about people posting, okay, what Hov did on this track and they're getting photos of LeBron's best games or LeBron's game six against the Boston Celtics and things like that. But I bring that up because speaks to the uniformity of how all of these platforms or all these accounts on these platforms end up doing the same types of things because they know it works and they know what is effective. And it comes to the point now, when I'm scrolling through Instagram, I don't really know who the account is that is there that's posting something that I see unless it's something that's super specific to that person, right? Like if a friend is posting something from, you know, one of their kids starting in kindergarten, then it's like, okay, I know that that only comes from you. But if someone's posting something that's happening in media or something, that's happening in the news, you have to, like, look at that account at the top to really know who it is. And I think that's something they probably got from TikTok more so that, unless you're really looking to see where that account's coming from, it's a bit hidden now, right? Like that's part of, I know some of the frustration people had had, whether it's with Google searches or how social media was sharing links and they made all the links look the same, whether it's something from The Wall Street Journal or your friend's blog, right? And it kind of goes back to that point.  [00:33:18] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah. And it probably has like real implications for the creator economy now that we're talking about it, like, I think, you know, living in New York, I see, I like casually probably see a few TikTok creators a month and maybe even sometimes I follow them. But you know, what's interesting? Like, rather than noting, other than noting to myself, like, oh, I follow them on TikTok, kind of the like je nais se quois or like the magic of like, oh my God, like I'm seeing this person in real life feels like it's disappeared a bit to me in a way that used to exist with YouTube or some of these other platforms where it felt like a weird, like breaking of the screen. But now that everybody's behind the screen and as a result, even some of the content they're showing is so accessible. I do think it probably, like, leads to this dynamic of where we're just like, okay, let's just see interesting things. The people creating said interesting things are no more interesting in some ways than like you or they just did a great job at doing this. And I see that with, there's a lot of debate and, like, discourse around some of the lifestyle blogs or, you know, like people showing their lifestyle, like waking up in the morning, like obviously, you had to set the camera up before to do that. But a lot of folks in the comments argue like this is just a type of content. Like, it's a type of cinematography that people like to view and people like to see. And so as a result, these people are continuing to make these videos, but if that's just a type of content that people like to see, TikTok is simply going to provide that content all the time, regardless of really any affiliation to one creator, which makes it a lot tougher on these creators, I think, to build these networks and conversely artists. [00:34:55] Dan Runcie: Right, and this brings me back to the whole issues that people have with Web 2.0 to begin with and why they wanted to be able to solve some of this with Web 3.0. It's because the platforms commoditize your content, and then in return, they're the ones that hold the power.  [00:35:10] Denisha Kuhlor: You know, I think though folks have to be honest. In some ways, it's what the user likes or what the, yeah, the users do like this because if not, you know, we're long past exclusives being standard in the industry, but if not the exclusives would've worked. Like having, you know, Chance the Rapper's album on Apple Music for two weeks, that would work. But the industry shied away from that because ultimately consumers cared more about choice and the ability to choose and experience and be exposed to all types of artists. And so I do think it's a dangerous game because it doesn't recognize like that's why malls exist, right? Like, you go and you want to go to multiple stores. And so I do think sometimes while I understand and recognize and very much like honor the need to, you know, differentiate and be able to have your core audience and provide to those things, I think we'd be remiss if we also didn't realize, like, natural human behavior comes from choice and like the brevity of choice. And so that's sometimes the interesting thing between Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 and with crypto, for me, because ultimately, like, the barrier to entry is so high, right, to get someone, a true fan to download an artist NFT because that insinuates their true fans. And I think a lot of artists have actually had to face the music in some ways with realizing their perceived fan base isn't as big as they thought and the mechanism to realize that has been some of these drops. [00:36:40] Dan Runcie: Well said, well said. The engagement piece and what you need to have a true fan is harder than people think, so, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Well, we're getting to the tail end, but before we close things out, we have to talk about the elephant in the room for TikTok, and that is its geopolitical standing and all of the things that it wants to do while, whether or not they will be successful, a lot of it depends on the company's viability in the US and whether or not it's current status, especially given the fact that the Chinese government does have this data and there are unknown questions about what that means, what it can do with this data, how do you see this piece it? [00:37:22] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, I think it's tricky in some ways, because, you know, as consumers, we're now kind of privy to the implications of tech and big data. And even just being on our phones, being on our phones in general, what I will say is and a lot of the like research indicates that true, like avid TikTok users are just, like, hooked in a way where they don't or they might say to you they don't care. Now how much is that true, I guess we'll find out. But I do think it's concerning because maybe to some extent, we don't even fully realize everything and all the factors that are at play here, right? Like, you're just giving that summary, I'm like, whoa. But as a user coming on every day, you're not thinking about that. And so often with big data and some of these platforms, in a way, you don't realize just the implications it had until it was too late, right? Until we're now talking about the ramifications of a platform existing in that way. And so I think it's going to be really interesting to see how, seriously consumers want to take it and beyond consumers, like the US, the US in general. I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't say that some of the data is concerning, right, learning about some of the data TikTok has access to is concerning. But ultimately like as more and more people post and the ecosystem grows larger and there's now 10-minute videos and your favorite artists are on there and they have a streaming platform and all these things in this ecosystem, it starts to get hard to really stray away. And so I think that's going to be a challenge because it feels like it almost has to be a collective push for folks to disintermediate from the platform. But I'm really curious your thoughts on this, too. [00:39:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. So the first attempt of this was in fall 2020. So it was around two years ago at this point, when Trump had tried to shut down TikTok. That didn't work for a number of reasons. There were a number of things going on in the world that the attention just wasn't there. And I don't think that the argument was made in a concise and effective way that could have necessarily gotten the job done. And TikTok had other challenges at the time, Kevin Mayer had his short term and then he had left shortly after. So there were a number of issues there. This though, I think that even though you're starting to hear some senators say certain things about it, I think things will be pretty mum, I would guess, until the 2022 midterm elections coming up just 'cause think from a strategic perspective, they want to keep momentum on things that they can confirm can get votes. So while I think I've probably heard more of the concern, if I'm being honest, coming from democratic senators, their biggest concern right now is okay, how can we continue to try to celebrate Joe Biden's victory so that they can not lose seat coming up with this election, I feel like. And because of that, like, we kind of see how this whole thing plays out. I do think though that we could be facing a potential situation where it's almost like the Facebook thing where people know that this is an issue, but it's not going to happen proactively. It happens reactively. It's going to be like, when shit hits the fan and then people are going to be like, oh shit, now we need to do something.  [00:40:27] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly. Exactly. Out of curiosity, how do you think TikTok, and I'm sure it'll vary, right, but how do you think TikTok is going to be used with the upcoming election cycle?  [00:40:37] Dan Runcie: Oh, good question. I don't see it impacting 2022 as much, but I could see it playing a factor more so in 2024 because I just think that even though there's plenty at stake coming up with this election, the presidential elections always get more in place. I do think that, especially as this group of voters does tend to grow and as more and more older people do get on TikTok, a lot of the same types of activities and nefarious behavior that we saw on Facebook here is going to make its way onto. TikTok. The bigger challenge is though, I think, it's even tougher to navigate all those things. I mean, we even saw that there was misinformation back in 2020 when you had a lot of the Black Lives Matter uprisings and people, they were censoring certain things related to those hashtags. So I do think that those things are going to cause big problems. I think the difference though, and this is part of it is that when these issues happen for Facebook, it's one thing if you have mark Zuckerberg coming to Congress and it can kind of be this thing where he could be media training, he can kind of have these like, you know, haha moments where it's like, Senator, we sell ads, that's how we make money. That doesn't exactly work with the Chinese government in the same way 'cause I don't think that that type of congressional hearing would necessarily work in the same way. So it would have to be some type of, you know, harder crackdown that happens with it. So, yeah, it's tough. I feel like we're not going to see anything actually happen until shit does hit the fan. And unfortunately, that could be the 2024 presidential election in the US, but maybe it could be something sooner.  [00:42:19] Denisha Kuhlor: Yeah, no, we'll definitely have to see how it plays out. I also think we could potentially see, like, new candidates that come to the result from easily being able to build followings on a platform like TikTok. So I'm curious to see what, like, TikTok- native candidates emerge as well.  [00:42:36] Dan Runcie: Right, like kind of like how Obama was the Facebook champion in 2000.  [00:42:41] Denisha Kuhlor: Exactly.  [00:42:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's funny, right? Because I feel like, you know, back then it was like, oh, look at all the great things that Facebook could do with 2008. And just, I think given some of the political leanings at the time, but then 2016 in many ways was a very opposite case with it. So I do feel like we're a bit more jaded and cynical of the powers of social media than we were then. But there is always a candidate that rises up with these things, that does these things, right? Like, I don't know, thinking back to the days of candidates that are just entering a different thing or new platform, whether it's Bill Clinton going on the Arsenio Hall Show playing his saxophone or something like that. Like, who's going to be that on TikTok? I don't know. I don't follow any politicians on TikTok. I'm sure they have accounts, but I'm sure they'll probably be doing that. And who knows? They'll probably have a debate on Hot Ones for all I know.  [00:43:35] Denisha Kuhlor: It's definitely going to be interesting.  [00:43:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, this was great. We covered a bunch in this, so we'll definitely have to revisit this topic at some point. And we'll see how TikTok succeeds over this for the next few months. I think we both have our internal scorecards ready, but we'll definitely have to touch base on this again at some point.  [00:43:54] Denisha Kuhlor: Agree. Thanks so much for having me. [00:43:56] Dan Runcie: For sure. Thank you. [00:43:58] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

One of the most successful entrepreneurs in the music industry is, without question, Matt Pincus. He sold his independent music publishing company, SONGS, for $160 million five years ago. And now, the music holdings company he co-founded, MUSIC, just raised $200 million to invest in music and music-adjacent companies.  Though, Matt doesn’t see MUSIC as an investment fund, but rather a holding company. That’s because he takes an operator-centric role in the companies he funds. And unlike the splashy catalog acquisitions that’ve dominated the space over the past few years, Matt is looking forward with his investments and targeting brand-new growth opportunities instead. In particular, Matt sees big opportunities in the technology sector, web3, and even record labels and publishing. At SONGS, Matt was able to spot and develop up-and-coming songwriters, inking early deals with the likes of Diplo, Lorde, and The Weeknd. He’ll be tasked with finding similar success at MUSIC.   Matt and I dove deep into a wide-range of topics during our conversation. Here’s a few highlights of what we covered: [2:58] Why Matt created MUSIC [8:07] MUSIC’s investment thesis? [14:40] What Matt doesn’t like about the music business  [19:49] Recent inflow of capital into the music business [21:15] Two lanes to entering music business [25:15] Finding left-of-center opportunities among musical talent  [27:30] The structural problem of the music business [31:35] Continuity was key to SONGS success [33:34] The Weeknd as a business blueprint for other artists [37:53] Sync business opportunities  [44:55] Have streaming subscriptions peaked? [47:50] Tiktok brought back music frequency [51:40] Matt’s five-year predictions Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Matt Pincus, @mpinc     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Newsly is your all-in-one audio super app to hear the trending topics on the entire web. Download newsly.me for free and use the promo code ‘TRAP’ to receive a 1-month free subscription.   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Matt Pincus: Defensibility in the music business is not a patent or a technology or some special recipe you have someplace. It's your understanding of music, the people that make it, and then your ability to develop relationships with people around the business and to keep your reputation such that people want to be with you. But the real key in, at least in the music technology side of it is you need to be able to spin the technology yourself and understand really how it works.  [00:00:37] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:56] Dan Runcie: Today's episode is with one of the most successful music entrepreneurs of the past few decades. His name is Matt Pincus and he is the founder and CEO of MUSIC, which is a holding company that invests in music tech and music-adjacent companies. MUSIC just launched a 200 million fund to invest in this space, so Matt and I talked all about it. He's looking for companies that still have a clear understanding for how music gets made and understand the art behind it. He's also looking for startups that have a true defensible moat that is something unique that they can do. And he's also looking for the companies that have a huge total addressable market that can clearly grow and expand as we're seeing things continue to grow in this space. Our conversation covered a bunch of topics in this space. We talked about sync and the impact of that. We also talked about how much further streaming can go. And we talked about a bunch of insightful music trends. Really fascinating conversation. I feel like every few months we have one of those conversations where people reach out to me and say, Hey, I took a bunch of notes in that conversation. Thank you for this. And I have a good feeling, I have a good feeling that this is going to be one of those conversations. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Matt Pincus.  [00:02:16] Dan Runcie: All right. Today, we're joined by Matt Pincus, who is the founder of MUSIC, which is a holding company that invested music and music-adjacent companies. Matt, I'm really excited to have this conversation because you have had a very impressive career with what you did with Songs and everything that you had done in publishing specifically. And what always stuck out to me about you in this space is how you've identified opportunities where others didn't see them. So I know when I saw the announcement for MUSIC and the $200 million fund you launched, I said, okay, he's seeing something and he's seeing an opportunity to dive in. So what did you see? What made you want to get involved with this? [00:02:58] Matt Pincus: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big admirer of Trapital and your work in general. And I'm really happy to be with you here today. So, you know, I started music, it was sort of an organic process. I sold Songs after running it for about 13 years. And it was a fairly abrupt end. So we decided to sell the company and neither me nor my two partners really wanted to run it for somebody else. So we decided that once we sold it, it was time to step away and it was fairly quick. So, you know, I ran the company for 12-plus years. And then 90 days after the sale, I was out in the street, like, what am I going to do with my life? So it was a bit of an organic process. It started with meeting a lot of really interesting founders of music businesses and companies that were around the music business. It's obviously an interesting time in our business in a number of different ways. The streaming market has matured. There are a lot of music tech businesses with interesting founders cropping up over the past four or five years. The web three crypto business has, you know, started the early days of really coming online. And the way that labels, publishing companies, management companies reach audiences is really different than it was like, you know, six, seven years ago. So I met a lot of really interesting people. The first one was Steve Martocci, who was the founder of Splice. He and I hit it off particularly well. And I sort of said, listen, I've been, you know, doing talent deals with young people, you know, in the early twenties for the past 12 years, I think maybe the next chapter is working with founders of companies that are more like 10 years younger than me, as opposed to, you know, 20, early 20s. And taking the experience that I had in the last, like, four or five years of songs when we were trying to figure out how to really realize returns on the business and build on that to try to help people do the same thing. So I was out looking for, you know, are there interesting companies that I might be able to work with in some way or another? And the answer to that quickly became kind of yes, on the music tech side originally, in growth companies, when online music and music technology was shifting to a subscription-based backbone as opposed to a packet software business. And then also on the music side of it, you know, interesting independent labels, music companies operating in a different way. And so the first thing was, are there interesting companies out there? The second is, do they need capital and where would they get it from? And the third was, how am I going to get the money to invest in these businesses? So it was kind of a bit of a bootstrapping exercise where I would go find an opportunity to invest in a company, put some of my own money in LionTree, which sold songs for me and has been a partner and champion of mine since I sold the company, would invest some money too, and then we'd find some other people to round out the investment. We did that first with Splice, put about 20 million into the company over a period of time. We also did in the same way, made an investment in a company called HIFI, which is a FinTech platform benefiting artists in a bunch of different ways, and also with DICE, the ticketing business. And you know, they started, a couple of them did well and actually, they all did well. And so I decided that I wanted to raise some capital and have my own sort of, it's not really a fund. It's more of a holding company 'cause I'm less of an investor and more of an operator. And so the question became, how are we going to raise the money? Now Aryeh Bourkoff who runs LionTree is somewhat of a magic maker, and he took me on and introduced me to two families, the Schusterman Family and JS Capital, which is Jonathan Soros's capital vehicle. And they agreed to invest in a four-way partnership. So it's between me, LionTree, Schusterman Family, and JS Capital. And we formed MUSIC, which is a $200 million holding company. We do deals in a couple of different areas, music tech, which is sort of where I spent most of my time after Songs. We also invest in independent music companies like Songs. So labels publishing companies, management companies. Increasingly, a few of those functions are in one company, as opposed to when I was running Songs, it was like you were either a publisher or a label or a management company. And then we partner sometimes with a larger private equity firm if we are interested in acquiring something that's, you know, of a larger size. And so we're in the middle of one of those right now. And so we were able to find a bunch of interesting opportunity, a bunch of interesting ways, and it seems to me to be, you know, a really good time to be putting money to work in the music business.  [00:07:32] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's an exciting time to be investing in these companies and to be acquiring them too. And you mentioned something there about the types of companies you're looking at and whether they are modern music companies or whether they are doing something that's unique in the space. Can you talk a little bit more about your investment thesis and what you're looking for, and specifically, because, as you mentioned, you're not a fund, you're a holding company, so you're not necessarily just doing, you know, angel investments or early stage. You're trying to make investments for the long haul. So how does that shape your strategy? [00:08:07] Matt Pincus: Very good question. And I think the answer to that depends somewhat on the different areas of investment. So the first is in the technology side of the business, which is kind of where I started as an investor. So, you look for a couple of things there. So first of all, you need to invest in companies, not products. So some of the music startups can be sort of, it's an interesting widget, but can it be a scalable business? So you need to make sure that you have a couple of things in order to know that you're investing in a company that has the ability to grow. So the first thing is you need your own tech stack and it needs to be built to suit whatever market you want to be in. So for example, with Splice, one of the reasons, and there were several, but one of the reasons I invested in the company was because Steve had built this subscription stack from day one of the company. So it was a native SaaS company in a world where the rest of the market needed to move from the old way of doing business to the new way of doing business. Splice was always in the new way of doing business, so it was going to be ahead of the curve. And so you need to make sure that your technical capabilities and your technical assets are going to, you know, be where you want to go. The second is that you need to make sure you're in a part of the market that has a big enough user base to make a real company out of it. You know, it's great to make a widget that, you know, 1500 people love, love, love, but 1500 people is not a lot of people. So you need to make sure that the addressable market around the business has a lot of users. And again, in Splice's case, you know, they are the content business in music tech. So they can be used in an infinite amount of applications across the business, which gives them, you know, a really solid user base. And so, you know, that's kind of the second thing. And the third thing is that you need to kind of own where you live or have the ability to own where you live. So, you know, it's great if you get into a category in the technology side of the business, that, you know, breaks some ground and shows everybody what can be done. But if then, you know, Apple or Google just says, thank you very much and does it instead of you, it's not so great. So you need to have a defensible business that you can build and scale. And again, back to Splice, you know, they are the content leader and I'm a music publisher by trade, so content is the water supply in the music business. You know, in publishing, it's the song that starts the whole conversation. Splice owns music. And so no matter where the market is going to grow, no matter where it ends up going, they have the supply that feeds the music tech business. And so it's inherently defensible when it gets up to a certain level. You know, at this point they have 3 million works in their database. To catch up to them is, you know, difficult, if not impossible. And so you need to be defensible now on the music side of what I do, which is investing in music companies, there's a couple of things I look for. So first of all, I don't do catalog acquisitions. I invest in people. So the first thing is that you need to have really talented executives that understand music and know how to find repertoire and make it bigger. I tend to like businesses that give advances to artists. There's a certain way, like at Songs, we built a catalog over a long period of time, but we built it through signing young writers and giving them advances. So I call it a mattress out of sheets. If you do that one after another, over many, many years and you do it well, all of a sudden you wake up, you know, 7 to 10, 12 years later, and you're like, holy shit, it's a big catalog. And so I tend to like businesses that advance money to artists and build catalog that way or manage catalog that way. There's a certain magic to understanding how to compensate artists and doing it fairly. So I tend to look at that. You know, the music business has changed a lot. It used to be that if you wanted to be an independent, you needed to own your own vertical. And you know, at Songs, we had our global administration business that we owned and built. We had our own technology. So we were self-contained, standalone competitor. Now I think, you know, solutions have become available everywhere. There's a lot of good publishing administration, a lot of good record distribution solutions. There's a lot of off-the-shelf stuff you can get. It's really about music. It's really about understanding artists and the music that they make and connecting them with an audience. So I look for people who uniquely understand that. Now that can be, you know, somebody who has a geographical lock on a particular kind of music. It can be somebody that has a particularly unique understanding of how the studio works because I think if there's one big change in the music publishing business lately, it's that it's gone really back to the studio. And the interesting companies are actually making songs in real-time in a studio environment. So it can be that. It can be that you have another business that you do and music is associated with it. So why not, you know, get into the music business while you're doing whatever else you do, but you need to have some reason why you have access to a particular group of artists in a particular kind of repertoire, and you're helpful to that in some way or another. And so it's quite a different set of things that I look for on that side than on the technology side.  [00:13:34] Dan Runcie: And with the way that your firm is structured, too, I see parallels with the types of companies you're looking at, right? You're not just focused on one particular type of investment area. You have the music tech companies that you're looking at. Splice is an example. You also have the companies that are working more directly in music itself, whether that is giving advances or companies that have a unique edge on who they're reaching. And I think that translates as well when you're talking about the types of companies you're looking at because a lot of times, especially 10, 15 years ago, as you mentioned, there were more silos and now you're starting to see companies have different types of roles that they do or different divisions to try to be this nebulous term that I've heard several times as broader entertainment company. And while I think that that's effective, I could also see how that could challenge some of the challenges of being able to have a business that is defensible or having a moat and the focus that comes with that. So how do you balance that and what are the things that you look for when evaluating companies that are both trying to do it all, but also are trying to have something that they can be defensible with?  [00:14:40] Matt Pincus: Well, so on the music side of it, you know, it's about relationships. You know, the good companies, their equity is their relationships with different people around the business. And it's really a human-centric business. So, you know, defensibility often is correlated with reputation in the independent music business, at least. That was certainly true of Songs. One of the big success factors of the company and in fact, like, kind of our asset was that me and Ron and Carianne had really good relationships around the business that we built over many years, and that allowed us to punch above our weight class. You know, when we were a very small business, you know, we acted as a bigger business because we were able to get champions that helped us along the way, both in terms of the artists that were willing to sign with us, but also in terms of, you know, other people around the business that took us on and helped us out. Oddly enough defensibility in the music business is not a patent or a technology or some special recipe you have someplace. It's your understanding of music, the people that make it, and then your ability to develop relationships with people around the business and to keep your reputation such that people want to be with you. You know, on the tech side of it, it's a little bit different. You have to make sure that your innovation curve is constantly there. You have to make sure, like, I would not invest in a business that did not have a technical co-founder. You know, ideas are great. Everybody's got ideas. You know, there's an app for anything. But the real key in, at least in the music technology side of it is you need to be able to spin the technology yourself and understand really how it works, which when you get into the crypto side of it's really interesting 'cause a lot of people understand the implications of it, but they have no idea how the shit works. They don't actually use it. And they get kind of confused thinking that it's much more complicated than in fact it really is. Or, you know, they get so fascinated with the technology that they don't make a product that stands on its own bottom and has value to the end user. So it's a little bit different in the different areas of the market that you look at. And one of the reasons why I like the field that I play on and I feel very lucky to be able to do the different things that I can do with music is because some of it is about sort of analytical, scalable technology-oriented investments. And some of it is just about people in tunes. And so you're kind of mixing a lot of different things together. You know, the one thing that I don't like so much about the recent music business is somehow we all slipped into talking about music as assets and fractional finance and cash flows and securitization. And I'm like, listen, if I wanted to do all that shit, I do it not here. You know, the music business is not assets and finance and cash flows and, you know, securitization. The music business is moving people, motivating people, creating an audience, assembling humans to want what you make, and distributing that and delivering it and all the rest of that stuff. You know, the fact like, listen, what I'm doing is either really smart or really dumb because either you can make a real investment business just out of the music business. And I think you can because there's lots of different types of investments in music and there's lots of growth and lots of possibility. But also, you know, it's a pretty small business. And I live in, play, you know, a neighborhood, the size of a postage stamp. We'll see if they can be done, but I think originally, you know, it starts with the creative and it starts with the means of delivering the creative to the people that want it. And then all of the rest of this stuff, you know, yield, debt payments, multiples on equity, bonds, all the rest of this stuff just is a happy accident that comes from doing your job well. [00:18:35] Dan Runcie: I'm glad you mentioned this because there's a version of what you do that could easily look more like a traditional private equity firm, where they are just going in and doing all of the things that you just mentioned and they're coming more from that perspective, but in many ways, your defense is having this laser focus on music, but you're going deep within all of the areas that it encompasses. And with that, I have to assume that this also maybe has a bit of a flavor on what your take is about the money that has come into the music industry and some of those other non-music companies or those that are purely looking at it for the financial opportunity or for the noncorrelated opportunities and how that in a lot of ways, even though on paper, someone that's fundraising may see the money they can get from you versus the money they get from others. But I'm hearing it from the record labels. And especially the independent ones they're getting reached out to all the time now about acquisitions. And a lot of those calls are coming from non-music related companies that are trying to make those moves. So it's been fascinating to see how that shapes, but I do feel like you are going about this in a much more unique way than a lot of them are. [00:19:49] Matt Pincus: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. I will say that the recent, like, huge inflow of capital into the music business has one very good byproduct, which is it's giving a lot of money to songwriters and artists. Some of these catalogs getting valued at 20 times, 30 times, you know, NPS where they would've been valued at 10, you know, four or five years ago, maybe 10 years ago. It just results in people that make great music, making a bunch of bucks. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. On the catalog side of it, it makes a little bit more sense that some of these like larger capital vehicles are coming into the market and, you know, bidding things up and structuring the leverage in a certain way that makes sense. There's a big difference between what's going on now and what was going on when this first happened, like in 2006, 2007 timeframe because the people that are doing it now can afford it. They've got lots and lots of money. They don't need big returns on that money. They have the ability to structure this stuff financially in ways that don't make no sense. And so it makes, you know, more sense that people are doing that with the IP catalog acquisition business. When it gets to new music, you know, I think it's still a human business. I think you got to know the people, you know, and you have to understand how it's really about managing what I refer to as the working capital of the business. So, you know, you need to advance money, you need to collect that money, you need to reinvest the money. And so a lot of that, you know, it's not a big enough business that you can structure it like a bunch of bonds. You need to kind of understand the market that you're in, how many deals you could possibly get, and what about you ought to pay for them, and what kind of infrastructure you need to address all of that to do a good job. And that's hard to know from outside of the business. It's even hard to know, like there's sort of two lanes in the music business. There's people who came up through the building where they started at majors and they kind of built their career, you know, up from coordinator to director to senior director to VPs, SVP, EVP. And then they end up running the company, a lot of great people who came up that way. And then there's people who kind of feed in the wild. Like, come outside of the building and need to figure out, like, what's available. And there's some real differences, you know. Sometimes they cross over like Ron Perry who was an instrumental person at Songs from, you know, the very beginning to through time we sold and now runs Columbia. So sometimes that happens. Or Carianne who, you know, also was my partner at Songs who now runs Warner Chappell with Guy Moot. It's like there, you know, it happens, but there are really two lanes. And I think in the independent side, it's a lot about systematic A&R so about looking at, listen, none of us are overfunded with tons of money. So, you know, everybody's stretching the dough. And it becomes about how can I build this system in the world that I live that can do deals inexpensively, and then find the ones that are working and invest and push them forward. And all the great independent music companies, you know, Chrysalis, Jive Zomba, A&M Rondor, all the great ones throughout history sort of did that really effectively or were usually like the other ones. So everybody goes to the majors to get their offer. And then there's these other cooler guys that are there, like, you know, kind of fucking with the majors by picking off all the left to center stuff that was us at Songs. You know, and all those other companies I just mentioned were kind of some version of that. But there's kind of, all of these mechanics that come both from history, so understanding the history of the business, but also understanding the people and how they sort of work 'cause as much as the world is changing and it's changing a lot, it's still kind of about A&R. It's still about creative in some way or another. I mean, Carianne's superpower, which she's got many, but the original superpower was understanding not only what works well to picture, but the people that choose music in film and television, advertisements, video games, she's particularly uniquely talented at that. And that's still a core skill that people need to understand. So, you know, I'm the guy that kind of pulls the pieces together. I don't do any of those things. I, you know, originally hired some great people and now I try to invest in great people that do all that stuff, but it's still about understanding it and if you're coming purely from the outside, I think it's challenging. [00:24:22] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think your career experience speaks a lot to this, right? You mentioned being able to find the left-of-center opportunities when you're at Songs, whether it was Lorde or The Weeknd. And you saw how those turned out. It worked out brilliantly. I'm curious to hear what you think about the way things are right now because, especially with the way that TikTok is and so many of the companies, whether it's the major labels or the independents, they all have access to the same information. So the cost of acquiring and being able to find and develop those same artists is much more expensive. So what do you think those left-of-center opportunities look like today in the current environment where it feels as if there are more and more outlets to find different types of people, but the way that people are going about it, it does seem like a lot of people are now playing a pretty similar game. [00:25:13] Matt Pincus: You mean like a moneyball... [00:25:15] Dan Runcie: Yeah.  [00:25:15] Matt Pincus: ...type of, yeah. So, you know, again, I go back to like, there's sort of in the building and there's outside of the building way of thinking. So in the major system, it makes logical sense that they want to sort of hang back, see what reacts, and go and get it when it reacts, the more predictable something is the more you're willing to pay for it. That makes logical sense. There's nothing wrong with it. They're not idiots for doing that. It's just the way that they traditionally operate. And now it's about, like, seeing the shiny pennies and then grabbing them right away, whatever the cost, because music is much more efficient than it used to be. It used to be that you'd have to, like, release a whole album and sink a bunch of capital into seeing if something works. Now you can kind of tell pretty quickly if something's going to work. So it makes sense to pay a lot for something predictable, as opposed to, you know, paying a little bit for stuff that is wildly uncertain. So, you know, that makes total sense. I think on the independent side, and I really count in that like A&R mentality, like people who are finding artists and developing artists. So it's not just like, you know, independent labels, but it's also like, you know, Electric Feel is a really interesting company that does this, Hallwood. You know, APG is obviously the really great example of this, of finding artists really early and developing them into something or representing people who do that. A lot of, you know, that is about iteration and about understanding, you know, what makes a good story in a particular market. Now, part of that is the music itself. Part of that, most of it is the music itself, but part of that is also all the other stuff around it. You know, how you unfold the narrative, how you stage market entry for an artist. You know, all of those things, again, I come back to the stick to your knitting thing where it's like, as much as the world changes, it kind of remains the same to some degree. So, you know, the interesting and frustrating thing about the music business for people that run companies like I did at Songs is that there's just not that many good, really good, talented people, you know. If there's one structural problem in the music business is there's not enough, really good A&R people, promotion people, you know, creative people.  [00:27:29] Dan Runcie: And why do you think that is? [00:27:30] Matt Pincus: I think it's hard, for one, I think it's hard. And as much as people try to play moneyball, now I'm a big believer in systematic A&R, which some people would consider, you know, moneyball. So in other words, like having a funnel that gives you a group of things that might work, that I'm a big believer in that as a starting point, but that only gets you like 51% confidence. That's not much more than a coin toss. The rest of it is really doing the work of developing the product itself, the music itself, and then the story around it. And it's just a hard business, plus you got to know everybody, you know. So it takes a while to develop those relationships and those skills. One of the things that's interesting when I look on the music tech side of it that I think is one of the great things is that the technological development in music production is allowing people to learn how to use the gear quicker. So you're going to have hit singles coming from 13-year-olds within no time at all. And that used to not be possible because it would take you four or five, six years just to learn how to twist the knobs on a board. Like, it was hard. Now with like, you know, presets, with things like Splice, with AI-assisted creation, you know, anything that makes it easier for an artist to get what's inside of them out, the learning curve is becoming less steep. And that's a good thing because talent shines in that environment. You know, it's one thing to be able to, you know, have a knowledge-base to tweak things. It's another thing to just be a talented and expressive artist with urgency. And so maybe some of that will happen. And on the executive side, like on the A&R side, as things like radio, you know, radio's been so monolithic and so hard to penetrate. And now maybe it's loosening up a little bit, but it still takes a while to figure out what's going to work. It's very hard. And it is one thing to be a fan and be like, this is good, this is not good. It's another thing to take a look at something that doesn't yet exist and be like, this is what it will look like if we can pull it off. I don't have that talent, you know. I'm not an A&R person, but I watch people do it and it's pretty miraculous. And it's not just A&R, it's also promotion, which is an undervalued piece of the equation and increasingly, marketing, digital marketing, like the first cut of it was just, you know, sort of advertising on Facebook. Now it's much more sophisticated than that. And so I feel like it's just hard and I wish there were, you know, there's also the part of the problem in the music business is nobody trains anybody. There's no HR infrastructure. You know, I went to Columbia Business School and I had been in the music business. I didn't have one single meeting about a job that came through the school.  [00:30:14] Dan Runcie: I'm not surprised. That wasn't the case for me either.  [00:30:17] Matt Pincus: That’s what I'm saying like, nobody trained you. I mean, I remember going on a job interview when I was like 21 coming right out of college or 23 coming right out of college with a guy at ICM. And he said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to be an A&R .He said, great, find a band. That was it. That was the interview. And so it's like, it's that kind of business, which is kind of wonderful in its own way, but it doesn't train people really. And so that's also part of the reason. We don't develop our talent, executive talent pipeline in a really great way. And that's why people like, you know, Mike Caren at APG is so special. You know, the LVRN guys are so special because they bring along executives in a really concerted kind of way. And I wish there was more of that in the business in general.  [00:30:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's a huge opportunity for it. And I think you see a lot of it play out when there are executive shake ups and who gets picked for certain things and why people get picked for certain things. And to some extent, you see this in other places too, whether there's a mix of internal hires versus external. But one thing that I have noticed is the units that do tend to stick together, or there is some continuity there. You do see a lot of success happen if they understand what works, everyone's into it. And I think some of these other places where it could be a bit of revolving doors with who's in leadership, who's trying to get where it's very tough to have that infrastructure.  [00:31:35] Matt Pincus: And that was one of the great blessings for me at Songs, which is not, doesn't speak well for the industry, particularly, but, you know, Ron and Carianne were two of the most talented people of their generation for sure. And the business didn't know what to do with them. The fact that I could get the two of them and we could all stay together for 12 years and build a company is like a miracle. And that was a big part of the reason why it all worked is because we knew each other really well and people knew us as a unit. We had different things we did. It's a little bit like, you know, kind of what's going on with the professional sports a little bit too, is, you know, it's great that all these individual players are celebrities. And again, great that athletes are making more money, but great teams don't stay together in the same way that they did before. And I think that's changing a little bit now because you don't have to do a deal with a major and get your money the traditional way in order to build a company. And that's one of the reasons I exist as MUSIC, is because there's opportunities to bring outside capital into the business under terms that look a little bit more like sort of venture capital or private equity, which is in a way more fair than the traditional music business has been on a per transaction basis. There's natural reasons why the major music companies finance the music business for as many decades as they did, and it's not to rip people off, it's because nobody else would do it. But now it's a different world and so hopefully some of these things will change. You know, when you have really great entrepreneurs that own their own business, as opposed to, you know, in some JV with a major that's really a compensation agreement, then it's in their interest, like it was in mine when I was running Songs, to bring along really talented people and find new ones. And so that's one of the things that I've sort of hoped for in some way.  [00:33:24] Dan Runcie: Are there any artists that stick out to you as examples of yes, they're building their business and they're doing this the way that could be a blueprint for what we'll see more frequently moving forward? [00:33:34] Matt Pincus: Ones that I talk about all the time is The Weeknd, which we were involved with, you know, from fairly early on. And Sal who's, you know, has been his manager for a very long time, and Cash. You know, I think you're going to see what they did with XO happening in a lot of different ways going forward, where you get a group of people that form a partner and distribute responsibilities between artist, manager. You know, there's people like La Mar Taylor involved with those guys that does all the visual. There's a lot of cooks that need to be in the kitchen to make something really successfully work. The label model of sign to a label, they'll do everything that existed in, like, the nineties is way long gone. Even management where you sort of have somebody who's a commission person that's just doing the business of an artist, that's not true of the good ones anymore. The good ones get in it with the artist and really help them build an entrepreneurial life. I mean, to be an artist now, you need to, like, be like a 140-character joke writer. You need to be an accountant. You need to have a corporate entity. You need to deal with all these different vendors. And you need to be like, you know, P. T. Barnum, like, step right up, step right up, check this out, you're going to love it. It's a complex skill set. And so I think one of the things that you're going to see in the talent representation business, like the management business is I think you're going to see more entity partnership formation, where people are going to go into partnership together. Managers and artists will be like Sal, Sal and Abel have been together for, how long now? Like, I mean... [00:35:08] Dan Runcie: It's at least a decade, right? [00:35:09] Matt Pincus: Yeah. And they've been able to scale and grow and make a lot of money and still be together. And that's because everyone provides value. I'm sure they adjust their relationship, however, over time, I don't know. But I think you're going to see that approach because it takes a village in a way to make really durable stuff. I mean, if you're talking about a viral hit that's here today, gone today. That's one thing. But if you're talking about really building a franchise over a period of time, it requires a lot of work from a lot of people. So I think you'll see sort of, you know, entity formation with partners that include business people and artists in with interest aligned. You know, Diplo's another one. I mean, you know, TMWRK and Diplo have been together for again, going back to since I started working with them. So that was 2011, you know? You look at firms like CRUSH, Jonathan, Daniel has built franchise after franchise of artists that stay with him forever. And he works with him as a partner and that's why it works. So I think you're going to see more of that going forward and and I think that's a good thing. [00:36:13] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. The Weeknd's a very good example because even from the origins of his career, you could see the mentality of where he saw things. Drake famously offered him the opportunity to come on OVO Sound. They had the whole Toronto connection, Drake put him onto that blog post and everything, but then he was like, no, I don't want to be under another artist when I think I can be just as big as that artist, even bigger and do my own thing and look what he's been able to do now. So I think a lot of it... [00:36:41] Matt Pincus: And by the way, the record deal is a distribution deal.  [00:36:43] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:36:44] Matt Pincus: You know, I mean, there you go. And so in terms of distribution of value, you know, if you can do it, if you're smart enough to have a cool head and plan like those guys did, you know, you can have a much larger enterprise than you normally would. So I hold them up as an example of, you know, what I think is going to happen and is happening really in lots of different areas of the business now. [00:37:07] Dan Runcie: One of the other areas that has gotten a bunch of attention right now has been syncs, and this has been growing, I think, especially given what we've seen with people, especially from outside the music industry, trying to get more involved, but especially this past summer with Kate Bush being featured in Stranger Things. This conversation has been happening more and more. This is another example where it's a mix of that art and science of what does finding a good sync looks like and what happens with it. And I think so much of it, there's maybe a little bit of luck with just how the internet works and how things take off, but there's also a good amount of work that's put into finding the right type of placement for the right type of artists that could make all those things work to make it happen. So how do you view the opportunities for sync right now?  [00:37:53] Matt Pincus: You know, it's interesting. I was sort of a student of Carianne. She taught me the sync business. I literally remember she had a binder where she kept every single interaction she ever had around a song and a placement. And she not only showed me how it all worked, but then we made a software platform out of her own process of how she did it. So I was trained by the best. One of the interesting things about sync is how it always comes back in cycles. You know, when we started Songs, it was like 2004, sync was the whole game. Like, between 2006 and sort of 2009 timeframe, it was the most important thing in a pitch. You know, it was responsible for a lot of our really early successes. And then when it became a largely pop business there in the early days of streaming, it was like sort of radio and super reactive and viral repertoire. It sort of stepped to the background for a minute. And now with the way that kids are bouncing around on a playlist from like, you know, Taylor to like a hip-hop track to, you know, Kate Bush back to Metallica and they don't care. It's become all of a sudden, perhaps one of the top, most important ways repertoire gets discovered now. It's amazing the enduring power of synchronization over time. The thing about sync that I think is interesting is part of it is selection. Like, is this song going to work to picture? But there's a lot that goes into making the deal happen. I mean, that Kate Bush deal as my understanding, I was not involved, but my understanding from, like, just hearing about it was that it took 'em forever to get the clearance done. So a lot of it is not only just is this going to work the picture? Is it the right BPM, the right mood, you know, the right tonality, the right cultural notes, which is a very special thing that music supervisors are particularly good at, but it's also the real politic of like getting the fucking thing cleared. And one of the things that I look at, I tend to have thesis sort of areas when I look at investing in the music business, and one of them is just how fuck the sync business is. That, you know, there should be a buy it now button in the music business if you want to use something for your film, buy it now. And if it was easy, people would pay more. But the problem is they have to roll around a glass to clear a copyright, getting the same deal with 13 songwriters and the master side and it's horribly inefficient. So I think part of the interesting thing with sync in the next generation is how do we do right by the music by making it more usable. Because there's also a couple of different ways this sync business cuts. So, you know, you have stuff that's used in a more traditional sense, and that has a real, like the standard pairing of like, it matter, it makes a huge creative difference and it's very hand selected. Front title and title, you know, big placement in a film television advertisement, but then you have this huge blanket sync business where a lot of the new promotion platform are AV platforms. It's technically synchronization, TikTok, YouTube, you know, Instagram it's technically sync. And I would argue that if there's one element of the business that gives radio a run for its money, it's AV platforms because what happens is people use it in so many videos that you end up hearing the song a thousand times, however many times it takes for you to be like, oh, my God, I have to hear it again. That's really the only place it happens and that's sync. There's a couple of different ways it cuts. You know, the great, like, placements of all time, and we had quite a few of them at Songs that sort of are like, you know, really make a song and make a film. Those are works of art. But also a lot of handling everything else is like maybe 50, 50 at best creative to handling. And so a lot of it is understanding, having those relationships, understanding how to price things, understanding how to clear repertoire, getting permission from the artist to do it. There's a lot of process that goes into it. [00:41:49] Dan Runcie: Is there a sync from your days that song that you look back on that you were like, yeah, that's the one. It took some work, but looking back that's the one.  [00:41:56] Matt Pincus: Wow. That's really, that be would a really better question for Carianne than for me. In terms of like the stuff that really made a difference to us as a business, one of the things that I think was meaningful was when Lorde did the Hunger Games soundtrack in the follow-up movie. That gave us a really good look at how music can be a content element in overall entertainment. The Weeknd did a similar thing with Black Panther where, so it was those sort of tie-in, you know, big-ticket where our music was woven into the substance of the film or the ad in some cases. That I think are really the special moments. Those are two that pop out. There's always like the random one where you have a relatively smaller artist and you get them a sync and, you know, it changes their life. It gives 'em more money than they ever thought was possible. There's also the ones, we had an artist who had a very high level of ethic and I won't name the artist, but independent artist, good earnings, but not a pop artist. And we got a $90,000 ad and for very good ethical reasons, he said, fuck, no, it's not going to happen, not going to approve it. And as much as I was like, it was to do early days of the company, it would've made a huge difference to write 90 grand into my books in a quarter. There's some beauty in the level of control that artists have over their own work in the music business that they don't in a lot of other media that I was like, you know what good for him, I guess we're saying no. There's this artisanal component to it that's really special. [00:43:32] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Being able to have that power and knowing when it isn't right. I've heard similar things as well from other podcasters I'll talk to when they get pitched with certain deals and stuff, and they'll be like, you know what, that's just not a product I'm willing to do, or that's just not an endorsement I'm willing to have. And it could have been a game changer for them and their business and everything. But I think we're going to see more of this with creators as they just are leveraging their own independence and being able to make their own decisions.  [00:43:59] Matt Pincus: Yeah, exactly.  [00:44:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. [00:44:00] Matt Pincus: Exactly.  [00:44:01] Dan Runcie: I want to close this conversation out talking about streaming 'cause I know this is a topic that you've shared a number of insights on over the years. And one of the things that you've said before that has always stuck out to me and resonated is this path that streaming has been on where it has been growing year over year, but a lot of people, especially in recent months, have started to question how many more subscribers out there are willing to pay the full price for streaming services and even if there is growth in some of these other regions where the revenue coming in is only a fraction of what it currently is now, what does that growth necessarily look like? So I hear that there's two camps there. Some people are skeptical about the future, but others are looking at smartphone adoption and just the way that things are trending as an indicator of where things are going. But how do you view the opportunity and especially streaming's growth from here on out.  [00:44:55] Matt Pincus: Okay. So I think there's a couple of different things there. You know, one is just on-demand streaming and what the growth curve looks like for on-demand stream. I think the broader question is what does overall growth look like for music consumption going forward? And I'm not sure those are totally the same thing. So, you know, listen, Spotify's done an epic job growing that business. It's a difficult business from just the word go, you know, you're relying on content licenses, you're inherently undifferentiated. Like on paper, it looks like this is impossible. And yet they build an unbelievable business out of it. And I really, you know, sort of think it's worth, you know, whatever opinions people have about streaming, to take a step back and realize that the people who did this originally, you know, Larry Jackson and Apple Music, the people who did it originally did a really fucking tremendous job of making it work. It will mature. There's some debate over whether it may have already started to mature in some distinct ways in Western, you know, sort of developed economies and even maybe in some of the larger sort of secondary territories. The really interesting places that we used to see at Songs in our own data are high population, low discretionary income countries, Indonesia, Philippines, a lot of the African continent. I'm not sure it's necessarily in all of those places going to be an on-demand streaming function that, you know, ultimately wins the day. There are people fucking with a model in a bunch of different ways over mobile. Boomplay in Africa is doing a buyout model. You know, it can be woven with other kinds of entertainment in a bundle in a bunch of different ways. So the question of where on-demand streaming goes, it is a little bit like anyone's guess, but there are different opinions between reasonable people about how the growth curve looks. You know, one of the things that I really love about the web three thing, and I think it's in the early days of really grinding the gears to figure out what actually works, 'cause like this sort of, you know, sucking on the laughing gas tank and you know, watching your crypto go up or over now. So it's entering into like a moment where people actually like have to figure out how it works. But the thing that I think is true is that it's unlocked a premium, that people are willing to pay over the cost of consuming music permanently. How big that premium is, we'll see. I think it was overinflated and inorganic in some of the early times of crypto, not a lot, humans are doing it and they're doing it for high ticket prices, you know, but if you look at some of the stuff, for example, that's going on in Asia, where people are throwing money at artists they like just because they want to you know, people paying sort of eye of the beholder price to be associated with an artist that they feel strongly about, that they love early in their career. Like, that's not going away. So whether, you know, the subscription fatigue is a reality, whether effective penny rates, times units of consumption are going up, flattening, going down. You know, we'll see. I mean, the Goldman Sachs people think they're going to go up forever. I'm not sure I totally agree with that. But what is true is that the willingness of people to invest in artists they love is increasing. And I don't think that's going back to zero, so it may not be, you know, that subgrowth continues on forever and on-demand streaming, but it may be that there are other ways that people can figure out how to engage with artists that keep the value, you know, exchange going up. Now, the one thing about streaming that's interesting is that, you know, the TikTok thing, in ways that people, like, talk shit about it all the time, whatever, but the thing that's interesting is that it did introduce frequency back into the equation. And one of the things about music that's unique is that you need to hear a song a number of times before you like it. Like at first you're like, I hate that. And then you hear it like five times and you're like, maybe I want to hear it again. And then by like, whatever end time you hear it, you're like, I can't get it out of my head. I got to hear it. It's like, Barry Weiss used to call it a record finding its bottom, where it would kind of come out and people would spin it, and then it would drop and then at some level would start to rise again. That's a function of promotion. That's a function of frequency. And in the early YouTube time and on-demand streaming time, you didn't really have that. Like, the people couldn't make something frequently play. And the AV platforms, not only TikTok, but also Snap and Instagram changed that equation and that music needs that. The thing that I'm wondering where it will happen, where it will come back into the equation though, is the music press, which has largely disappeared. And so I'm looking for who, on a consumer level there, people like yourself covering the business, part of it, that are doing an extraordinary job, but who sort of tells people what's good, gets it in front of them, filters it and what does that look like? It's probably not printed on a page. It's probably, it's sort of associated, I think in some way with what's going on with the NFT world, you know, with getting people to buy in, getting a community of people bought to projects, but it's still that same mechanism of filtering. And so I'm wondering where that's one of my thesis areas that I have my on. Where's the next one of those?  [00:50:08] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think this is a role that, of course, MTV and so many other places own and were able to do so well decades ago. And now the commonality I've always referred back to is that TikTok in many ways is the new MTV, but it's more so in the broader sense of just the cultural appeal, but not in that solo aspect of yes, if you want to know what this group of people are pushing, or what is the thing that's in, this is the place to go to find that. And I think it's very tough, the way that things are right now, just with how fragmented things are. But people are always going to want to feel like they're part of what's in or feel like they know what's in that desire also isn't going away. So I think there were always be a space for this, no matter how fragmented. [00:50:53] Matt Pincus: And people don't always know what they like. I mean, who knew that all these people love Kate Bush?  [00:50:58] Dan Runcie: Right.  [00:50:58] Matt Pincus: We all understand why. She's amazing. Song's amazing, but people don't always know what they like until somebody shows it to them and repeats it. And then all of a sudden they can't get it out of their head. And that's the magic of music. So how that happens, you know, the cool kids like it up from the bottom, you know, like to be selective, know about the stuff first. The general audience likes to hear things multiple times and then, you know, be addicted to it. And I think that those things will reinvent themselves in a bunch of different ways going forward.  [00:51:27] Dan Runcie: For sure, Matt, before we let you go, do you have one big prediction for us on where you may see things in the next five years or one thing that you think will change from where music is right now to where things will be come 2027? [00:51:40] Matt Pincus: Well, I think as I touched on before, I think younger and younger people are going to be making music that the world reacts. And that is going to be miraculous when it happens. And not necessarily in like a sort of criss-cross Whip / Nae Nae type of way, but in a real, like expressing the core thoughts and feelings they have and getting them out there in a way that sounds good to the world. I think that's going to happen in a bunch of different ways. I think the way that repertoire moves across the planet is going to be revolutionary in the next five years. If there's one thing that's really going to change, you know, it used to be that sort of music went west to east and technology went east to west. Now, I think that's all scrambled eggs right now. If you look at stuff, like, you know, some of the music that's coming out of West Africa right now and how it gets into the global culture. It's not like in a, you know, used to be like you had like a world music business. Like, that's ripped up and thrown away. And so I think, you know, the way that the in-country community relates to the diaspora community in around the globe is going to be really different. You know, I think if there's one thing I have my eye on, it's sort of how all that stuff travels. And obviously, there's some obvious examples like BTS. But I think this is going to happen anywhere and everywhere. And one of the things that I heard somebody say the other day that I felt was really interesting is that the music business thinks about countries in its marketing. You know, they've Europe and Asia and Australia, Canada, US. It should be cities because music is about scenes and it's going to travel that way. And so your Amsterdam strategy is going to be different from your Seoul strategy is going to be different from your São Paulo strategy. And so if there's one like broad thing, I think we're going to look at the way that music travels around the planet in a completely different way.  [00:53:37] Dan Runcie: That's spot on. Look at the way we think about music here in the US. That should be an indication of how it should be looked at elsewhere, right? We know what Atlanta hip-hop sounds like compared to what you may hear in LA or even the New Orleans bounce sound. Like, it's so different place to place. So you look at a country like Nigeria, which is soon going to eclipse the US in population. What you may hear in Lagos would be completely different from other parts of the country. So that's a really great point.  [00:54:05] Matt Pincus: Yeah. So that would be like, if I, you know, sort of, if I had to obsess about something, it would be that.  [00:54:10] Dan Runcie: And I think a lot of people listening probably will too. This is a good one. I think that you got a bunch of notes for people to jot down. So Matt, thank you for making the time for this. This is fun. Thanks for coming on.  [00:54:21] Matt Pincus: Thank you so much. I just really appreciate your thinking to me. And it's a pleasure to talk to you about all this stuff. [00:54:27] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

In less than a week, AI-powered rapper FN Meka became the first virtual rapper signed to a major label and then released by one. Capitol Records dropped the virtual act for being a complete caricature of black culture — glorifying police brutality in lyrics, dropping the n-word, and other cringey behaviors. However, FN Meka’s utter failure shouldn’t be a write off for ALL virtual characters. In fact, a prime example of how to do it right is Aku. Aku was created by Micah Johnson — a former MLB player and now a full-fledged artist, both in the virtual and real world. The kid character is a black astronaut, which was inspired by Micah’s four-year-old nephew asking his mother, “can astronauts be black?” Unlike FN Meka, Aku is a vehicle to promote what one artist wants to see in the world. A symbol or hero for a better tomorrow.  This week, I’m running back an interview I did with Micah in 2021. It was done shortly after Micah first released the character as an NFT collection, selling $2 million right off the bat. And no, this was not just a FOMO-fueled drop amid the NFT crazy. Aku has lived on since then, and only a few weeks ago, the lifestyle fashion label Paper Plans announced a snapback collab with the Aku character. This comes on top of prior partnerships with major brands like Puma and Billionaire Boys Club, plus Aku appearing on the cover of Time Magazine. Unlike FN Meka, the creation and intention behind Aku is an uplifting story. Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Micah Johnson, @Micah_Johnson3   Links: Aku | Micah Johnson’s character to inspire kids to dream without limits     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.

Before Abe Batshon started BeatStars in 2008, a handful of superproducers had a quasi-monopoly on selling beats, charging hundreds of thousands of dollars per song. Top producers still get paid today, but the concept has become more antiquated with platforms like BeatStars democratizing beat-making. Creators can sell instrumentals — either under an exclusive license or not — to artists around the globe for a fraction of the previous cost. With $200 million paid out to creators to date, BeatStars has reset the entire economics of beats.  Abe started BeatStars without any VC funding during the Great Recession. This was also pre-steaming, when the music industry was in its dark days. Bootstrapping the company, BeatStars would redefine the music landscape along with other DIY distribution platforms such as SoundCloud and YouTube. Abe’s goal from the get-go was to break the relationship-driven nature of creating music and open opportunities for creators around the globe. Fourteen years later, it’s safe to say Abe has created more opportunities and then some. Famously, Lil Nas X bought the beat for viral sensation “Old Town Road” on BeatStars for $30. BeatStars’ producers have also been featured on songs released by Drake and Ariana Grande and ads for adidas, the NBA, and many more. BeatStars’ fingerprints are all over media, not just the independents but the majors too.  Here’s all the noteworthy moments during our conversation: [3:27] Recognizing BeatStars instrumentals online  [6:18] Starting BeatStars amid 2008 music landscape [7:28] Receiving pushback when BeatStars began [10:02] What finally changed for producers [12:20] Resetting economics of beats [16:25] Typical earnings for BeatStars creators [20:36] Music syncs in mainstream media [23:44] BeatStars growth trajectory [28:20] More competitors in the marketplace  [31:22] VC money’s impact in the music industry  [36:03] BeatStars cap table [39:30] Roadmap for the future Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Abe Batshon, @AbeBatshon     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Abe Batshon: for us, it's never been about the money. It's always been about these young people all over the world and old people, creators from everywhere. Like, can we liberate the idea of songs? Can we help push people to be more experimental with their words and their messages and their art and something that's so personal for them. I don't see any of these like venture-backed companies or big invested-type of companies actually having a genuine approach to how they treat or deal with their community. So I'm really not worried about it. I definitely keep them in mind in terms of continuing our fight to liberate music.  [00:00:57] Dan Runcie: Today's episode is a topic I've been wanting to dive into for a minute and this is about the business of buying and selling beats. It's a fascinating marketplace that has shifted considerably over the past few decades. So I wanted to bring on an expert himself to chat about it. Abe Batshon, who is the founder and CEO of BeatStars, which is a marketplace for buying and selling beats. He joined me on this topic, and we took a trip down memory lane. We went back to the 2000s, we talked about what it was like. You remember when Timbaland was bragging about getting half a mill for his beats and Neptunes had 40% of the songs on the radio? As great as it was for them, there really wasn't a lot for the other producers and other people that were trying to come up, so BeatStars came up in this post-YouTube era to make it possible for having this marketplace. And Abe talks about what it was like back then and just given some of the challenges that existed with the music industry, searching for its own business model at the dark days of piracy and trying to navigate that. But then also with the early days of the streaming era and how that has lifted his business. In the past two years, BeatStars has made more money than it made in the past 12 years before that, and it's on track to have another one of its biggest years yet now. So we talk about what that journey's been like, what led to that, and how this marketplace and how this business has evolved. When Abe was starting this, people laughed at him because they thought it was crazy what he was trying to do. Today, there are plenty of investors with bigger pockets that are trying to come in and eat his lunch. So we talked about what that looks like and why he still thinks that BeatStars is well positioned there. We also talk more broadly about the amount of VC money that's come into music tech, and how he looks at that, and what it looks like for other opportunities. If you're as fascinated about this topic as I am, you'll love this conversation. Abe kept it real and it was great to talk to him. Here's our chat. [00:02:55] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have Abe Batshon who is the CEO and founder of BeatStars. One of the premier places to buy and sell beats and wanted to have him on so we could have a conversation about this entire process, this landscape, and right before we recorded, Abe, you were just telling me about how you were listening to a different podcast. And you could hear when you hear that BeatStars beats on a podcast, Trapital podcast, of course, mine came from there. How do you know that the beat for sure came from BeatStars as opposed to somewhere else?  [00:03:27] Abe Batshon: Well, yeah, I'm a dude. I listen to so much music on the platform. Like, I process everything so much and I kind of, I don't know if it's photographic memory in terms of when you hear something, I just retain that information around that piece of music forever. Like, I know when I've heard something. Yeah, so, yes, I'll randomly, like, you know, turn on the TV or turn on the radio or turn on, you know, TikTok or turn on SoundCloud or turn on anywhere. And I'm like, holy shit. Or Spotify, you know? And I'm listening to, like, some of the trending viral songs or the top Billboard songs. I'm like, yeah, I know those beats. I know those beats. I've heard those before. Yeah.  [00:04:04] Dan Runcie: Do you feel like there's a distinct brand or sound that has BeatStars sound that you can pick up on almost in the same way that well-known and established producer has that sound like you could hear a track and be like, oh, that's a Neptunes track even if I'd never heard it before, do you feel like that's the case for a BeatStars beats?  [00:04:21] Abe Batshon: Good question. You know, maybe eight years ago, nine years ago, yeah, I could have, you know, been like, okay, that's definitely an influence from the marketplace, from the sound, from the platform, but today with the amount of variety and just so many different genres, and sub-genres and styles of music that's getting uploaded to BeatStars, it's impossible to just define it to one, sound anymore, but maybe 10 years ago, for sure. Yeah, not now, not now.  [00:04:49] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That makes sense from the timeframe perspective 'cause I could imagine, especially in the early days, there are artists you have that are likely championing the service. And if they're bringing on others that want to have that artist-type beat there, then there's going to be a lot of that similarity. But over time, especially with where you are now, over 200 million paid out to artists on this platform that just speaks to the reach that you have and everything that you've been able to do from it.  [00:05:16] Abe Batshon: Yeah, man. so fulfilling, so fulfilling to just like know that's the kind of impact the technology and platform is making for, you know, for creators' lives. I'm definitely not satisfied with that number at all. But it's a great, great motivational indicator for me to keep going for the team, to keep pushing. But, you know, our aspirations are a lot bigger than that for sure.  [00:05:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Let's actually go back a bit because I think that could be a way to have the arc of where this is going. Of course, you started this company in 2008, but in the 2000s, it was such a different landscape for producers, beat makers. And I look at that era as being quite top-heavy, right? If you were one of the super producers. If you were Timbaland, if you were Pharrell, if you were Kanye, then you almost had a, you know, quasi-monopoly in a particular area of just what you could charge, what you could do. But for everyone else that wasn't a superstar, it was a much more challenging landscape, I could assume. Can you speak to what it was like that time frame?  [00:06:18] Abe Batshon: Oh, so challenging then. So challenging, you know, I was working at INgrooves prior to me starting up BeatStars and, you know, I'd work with a bunch of artists, and labels and I'd get to know, like, the producers behind some of the work that's being released. And even for those top-heavy guys that I was talking to, they started definitely feeling a shift in how operationally the record labels were approaching licensing of beats and the development of an artist. You know, I think I just saw a recent article. I forget which publication, oh, maybe Billboard just the other day about how everyone's a distributor now. All the majors are just, you know, they're distributors. Each one of their kind of like sub-companies under the parent companies are all, you know, competing with each other, actually as distribution companies, and it's creating like a healthy competition of distribution. And so, you know, that wasn't the case back then, man. You know, back in the day, like, the major record labels weren't operating from a DIY, you know, distribution mindset of like mass distribution, mass releases of content. That wasn't the mindset. So, yeah, it was a much more controlled environment with which producers actually were contributing to, you know, these songs or these albums that were, you know, the majority of what we were listening to back in 2008. And I think you know, what changed at all was, was the emergence of probably YouTube, right? The emergence of YouTube, and SoundCloud, and, you know, and BeatStars, right? And the accessibility and the ability to now reach a broader and global audience of collaborators and music creators. And we were kind of laughed at. We were kind of laughed at in the beginning, you know, everything different that goes against a grain, that goes against a traditional way of how things are done, there's always going to be some resistance to that model or any resistance to those ideas. And it used to bother me back in the day and I used to get some of these super producers, you know, some of them would send me like dirty messages, like you're fucking up the game. You're saturating, you're devaluing our art. And I didn't see it that way. You know, I didn't see it that way. I was seeing it as a new opportunity to create more and broader reach of intellectual property for the independent creator that can actually sustain themselves in a world where it's controlled by a few different organizations, you know.  [00:08:36] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Thinking about those artists themselves. I'm thinking back to that time, there was that stat, maybe it was in 2002 or 2003, where they said that 43% of the songs on the radio were Neptune songs. And I think you could have said the same about Timbaland. You could have said the same about Max Martin or any of these people that are just on the radio so much, but you come in with this platform that very much speaks to where we were in the music industry and where things were with technology with hip-hop specifically. This is the blog era, it's really starting to pick up. You're starting to see more of that DIY distribution from the artist side. SoundCloud was just launched and even Spotify was still in the early days, but streaming still didn't take off the way it did. And I can imagine that some of the pushback or some of their response you got was from people feeling that you were likely ahead of the curve, and because of that, there were still several years before things really took off in streaming. So it was probably interesting just to see the landscape evolve. And then as you had success, you saw other competitors come in and other folks see the landscape and you're like, well, you know, I've been trying to tell you all, this is what the vision has been since the 2000s. But back then, the industry was just in such a place of people were still trying to push CDs. Like people were still trying to fight piracy. And like, when you think about that, I'm not surprised at all that you had faced some of that pushback you did.  [00:10:02] Abe Batshon: Yeah. I'm trying to kind of go back to those days in hip-hop, you know, everyone was the plug for certain things. Everyone was the plug for certain things. And you had to go through this person or this company in order to achieve some of the, like, artistry goals that you have as an artist, you know? And there was a determined route that you had to go, you know. There was a determined route that you had to go and you had to go through certain gatekeepers in order to, you know, achieve success. And it just bothered me from a human level. You know, it bothered me from a human level that we're not allowed to experiment and develop art, you know. Closed environments, the outcome of those. Like you said, how many more Neptunes hits can we have continued to listen to? Nothing against the Neptunes, I fucking love those guys, right? They're amazing, they're geniuses. But even them, they would tell you that, yeah, that kind of monopoly was probably unhealthy for music, for artists all over the world. You know, I'm sure they will tell you that that opportunity was, you know, scarce, you know, opportunity was scarce. And yeah, it was relationship-driven industry, you know, so it was a different time, different time. And I think my goal was to just completely break it. [00:11:16] Dan Runcie: Thinking about that time too. You had the people that were the top producers at those times, and they could charge handover fist for a beat. I mean, there's the line where, you know, Timbaland's like, I'm getting half a mill for a beat. And if I'm thinking about just from the competitive dynamic, what happened there, you did have this very top-heavy landscape. And in some ways they're telling you, Hey, you know, you're fucking up our money. And in some ways you are, but not necessarily in a bad way because you're letting everyone else that couldn't eat at all at least get something, right? So when you now introduce this marketplace and no, you don't necessarily have to pay half a million for a Timbaland beat to get on the radio. You could pay under a thousand dollars, a few hundred dollars to have one of the biggest songs of the summer on your music, and being able to do that lifts it up for everyone else. So I think whether it's your Timbaland's or your Mike Will, other folks could still get, you know, six figures or a lot of money, but I don't know if they're getting that 2006 or those 2003 checks that they were for the type of beats they did. [00:12:20] Abe Batshon: But, Dan, superstars are superstars in terms of creation, right, in terms of music production. Even on BeatStars, right, even on BeatStars, maybe, yeah, there's some producers on a platform that don't have that type of name recognition in a game of only a handful of producers. It's kind of different now to gain that kind of name recognition, but there are superstars on BeatStars. There are superstars that are generating half a million dollars in cumulative earnings in licensing revenue from one beat on BeatStars. So those days of like earning hundreds of thousands of dollars on one track is still happening on the platform. It's just happening in a different model. It's happening in a non-exclusive model where thousands of recording artists are, you know, licensing that same production and have the rights to create another master version of that production. But at the end of the day, that producer generated hundreds of thousands of dollars just from that one piece of content that lives as a catalog item in their store. Yeah. And I'm hearing like huge songs now on the radio that those beats are still available, non-exclusively on the platform, they're still available. So producers are becoming less and less willing to let go of their intellectual property exclusively because there's just so much backend earnings and recurring revenue, business building and, you know, forecasting of earnings for themselves, that it doesn't make sense now for them to kind of give up the rights to just one rights holder anymore. So now it's super competitive and it's gotten to a point where I think competition is healthy in song making like, Hey, here's the beat, $20. By the way, some of these beats, a lot of these beats that live on BeatStars, if they existed back in those 2000s, when it was the heyday of license revenue of 200,000 a beat or 500,000 a beat from Timbaland. Like, these beats are competing with those beats or even beyond them, right, 'cause these kids are pumping out content like crazy, right? They're bending this software in terms of DAW, the accessibility to digital VSTs, and effects, and processing, and sound libraries and, like, their ability to, like, craft, you know, sonically, like, amazing, amazing records that penetrate every market around the world. Like, it's much easier now. Back then it was harder. But, yeah, I think the earnings potential is still there on BeatStars. You know, I think it's still there. It still exists and that's why we're still seeing producers that have had tons of success, you know, licensing to major recording artists still maintaining and developing and building their online presence on BeatStars. Like, it's still a major income stream from them to the point where they can't neglect it. And they can't completely immerse themselves in the traditional way of like, you know, music licensing within the industry. It's cool to see. It's cool to see a balance. You got to have both. You got to have both today.  [00:15:07] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. And I'm glad you brought that point up 'cause that's an important distinction 'cause, of course, we're talking before about the upfront money that the super producers were getting in the 2000s, but people were rarely talking about the totality of it, and what it looks like. And that's what you're talking about here and being able to measure it in totality makes so much more sense because, with the way it currently is now, with an artist releases something on BeatStars, there's so many ways that they can generate money from that, whether that's, especially if it's non-exclusive, as you mentioned, people can pay for it directly. Anyone that is then using that beat, you could earn revenue directly, you know, from anything that's there, depending on the arrangement. But then I think you have this additional benefit where people, especially with TikTok and all these other platforms, they want to be able to remix and make their own versions of songs and being able to do that and how that can compound on each other. That's what makes the platforms like this successful. And maybe it would be helpful to hear you mentioned that, you know, there are superstars on the platform that are making and exceeding a lot of those, you know, revenue totals that we had seen before. What does a typical breakdown of that look like in terms of how much of that comes from upfront sales of people purchasing versus how much of it is the recurring and maybe ballpark? We don't need anything too exact, but maybe to give an idea.  [00:16:25] Abe Batshon: Yeah. So I guess we can only attribute the upfront micro licensing revenue on BeatStars, right? That $200 million, that micro licensing. But if we wanted to get very, very technical, we can talk about the earnings that were actually, you know, generated from those, you know, derivative works, those songs that were made from those beats. And if you calculate the earnings from the millions of songs that are created on the platform every year that get distributed to DSPs and DIY distributors, you're talking probably billions of dollars of earnings, music copyright earnings from, all of these non-exclusive licenses, cumulatively. So I wish there was a way to calculate all that, but it's hard to like quantify that. But I think today, from a platform earnings potential on BeatStars. I think the average seller producer on the platform generates over a thousand dollars a year, you know, which, Hey, a thousand bucks is, you know, not the craziest amount, but if you compare that to the average earnings of artists on these DSPs or some of these, some of these other ways of earning revenue from music. I don't want to poke too many holes at platforms that are, you know, kind of not building their businesses and products with the music creators in mind. I wish they would. I wish they would, but we're not going to get too deep into that. But I think I'm proud.  [00:17:53] Dan Runcie: I was going to say there's somewhat listening right now that is backing into the math of how many streams does it take to get a thousand dollars a year? [00:18:01] Abe Batshon: Right. Exactly. Yeah, I think if we were to calculate the stream versus earning ratio on BeatStars, yeah, our million streams are definitely generating a shit ton more, shit-ton more than what you would earn, you know. But again, it's a different concept, different way of consumption. Things are happening differently than compared to, you know, the more bigger consumer products that are out there, which, you know, we're going to keep up with them at some point though, I think, and that's one of our goals is to build a more consumer-friendly product that actually is not just niche to artists and music producers. So we're excited about what the future of what we can do for our creators, yeah.  [00:18:41] Dan Runcie: Can we talk a little bit more about that? What would that consumer side look like? 'Cause I think as you mentioned, a lot of the creators themselves are the ones that are using the platform, getting the most out of it, but what would the more creator side focus look like? [00:18:56] Abe Batshon: Like a more creator-focused platform that evolves, what the evolution of what BeatStars could be? Yeah, I mean, you know, we are already starting to do it. We're already starting to do it in terms of adding publishing administration, global publishing administration, and partnership with Sony Music Publishing and giving our creators the ability to go and collect on, you know, all their royalties worldwide. I think is a big one from all of these copyrights that are made on the platform that they still have ownership and rights to. You know, we don't take ownership of anything on the platform. Our creators right now keep a hundred percent of all their sales on the platform. They maintain all of their ownership. They dictate and decide what their license terms look like. We're just a technology layer just facilitating this collaboration. And I think, we'll definitely get into a lot more, a lot more businesses that are complimentary to music licensing. So we do allow our creators to sell sound kits and samples as well, too. And I think we're, you know, we're going to build a more sophisticated product around that. Major companies are already licensing for syncs already off of the platform indirectly, even though that's kind of not the primary function on the platform. That's something that, you know, we're exploring and, and going to expand on as well 'cause just another revenue stream opportunity, you know. [00:20:12] Dan Runcie: I was going to ask you about syncs next because I feel like that is so current and top of mind, especially the explosion of video streaming right now in all those projects. And so many people see the benefit of having a good sync. And I think we're having these conversations before, but ever since the Kate Bush song on Stranger Things, those conversations have happened so many more times, more frequently than I've at least heard before then. [00:20:36] Abe Batshon: For sure. For sure. Yeah. We used to have a, man, like eight years ago, we did have a sync license and I don't know why we took it away. We just kind of wanted to laser focus on just the non-exclusive licensing of artists and producers. But yeah, we're already seeing our music and Netflix documentaries. We're already seeing our music, you know, synced on movies, TV shows, independent, films, commercials for Adidas and Madden video games. We're seeing our content already being used in that way. You know, it makes sense to develop a product that's, you know, tailored for that community for sure.  [00:21:06] Dan Runcie: Has any of the explosion of music rights buying and selling, has any of that changed and shaped your business in any way? Because I know that there are super producers themselves that have sold theirs, whether Tableland or Darkchild having done deals themselves. Has any of that shifted anything or have you seen any result of that in your business or any of the transactions that are being made there?  [00:21:31] Abe Batshon: Yeah, so I'm not too aware of too many producers on the platform that have kind of sold their rights away or anything like that. It hasn't happened on the platform, but I'm sure, I'm sure there's been, you know, those investor, kind of like investor copyright types that are out there acquiring rights of music, whether it's, you know, from the producer's side of things. But I'm sure they get approached all the time. I just, I don't know of any, like, specific creator producer on the platform that's done it yet. But I'm sure, like, a lot of people are having those conversations with them for sure.  [00:22:03] Dan Runcie: Yeah, 'cause I know the artists' side, artists get reached out to all the time now about this whether it's from the main investment firms that we know, or even some that in my experience don't really do much in music, but have reached out because they'll reach out to me to see if I can reach out to these artists, right? And I got to imagine that in some ways, not only are they looking for the artists themselves, they're looking okay, where are these artists? Where are the catalogs that they own? So it's fascinating to see, I assume that it's likely a conversation that, especially given the way your business is, I know you said that a thousand dollars is the average payout annually that artists or that the beat makers and producers get on the platform, but I'm sure that it is quite top-heavy itself where, you know, there are the few that are just bringing in so much, and I'm sure that they're probably hearing some of those conversations every now and then.  [00:22:54] Abe Batshon: For sure. For sure. Yeah. I'm sure it's happening a hundred percent.  [00:22:58] Dan Runcie: Yeah. One of the things that I had seen, especially with BeatStars, we talked about how growth you've had recently, and, I believe this was at July 2020, you had $85 million in payouts that you had done to beat makers specifically at that point since you had launched a platform in 2008, and then you had recently announced a few months back here now in 2022, that you had had $200 million. So quite a big jump, it’s almost double in less than a two-year span. One, it would be great to hear what that was like and also, what are the steps that happened or what are the things that you all had done that helped you, you know, double everything that you had done the past decade-plus in the past two years? [00:23:44] Abe Batshon: Yeah. I mean, our growth trajectory, even the years prior were a hundred percent year over year as well, too. So we were already kind of pre-pandemic move, like, that was our growth trajectory prior as well. It just took us a long time. It just took us a long time. We did it the slow and steady way. And the last two years, I would say, for sure the pandemic put a priority, yeah, I guess I guess people started questioning their existence, man. You know, like we started questioning our existence and we're like, am I not going to explore my art, you know? Like, I know I was doing it. I was making more music during the pandemic. And I would, you know, meet a lot of our creators and I and I would hear their stories and like, I started singing during the pandemic, or I started making beats more seriously, I'm home and I needed an outlet to kind of license and sell them. And so I think the pandemic definitely kind of accelerated the priority or like top of mind of creators to take it more seriously or to kind of, you know, explore more serious options for monetizing their music. So it's been a blessing to kind of see the platform and marketplace grow globally all over the world, and yeah, the marketplace is still booming and still going crazy. And I think, you know, we'll achieve over 70 million this year for sure. That's kind of our projection, could be more. So yeah, the licensing activity is continuing to go great. I'm excited. I'm excited about the future, man. [00:25:06] Dan Runcie: That's good to hear because I am not surprised to hear the growth in the pandemic. I think there's so many things we can look back on the past two and a half years where especially something like this, where the art of doing it is something that people could do at home. So many people that are creating products, or creating services, or music, or medium putting out into the world, so much of that picked up and there was so much that was successful. And I think we saw that with the way the stocks went and the way everything was. So you had this run from March 2020 pretty much up until let's say November 2021, when everything was booming, right? The past six months, we saw certain things come back down to earth a bit. And I think there were a lot of the pandemic stocks and a lot of the companies, even the ones in the music industry that had had sky-high valuations, coming back down to earth a little bit, but at least for you all, I'm getting the impression that that hasn't necessarily impacted you from that perspective, given I think you have a different business model than a lot of the companies that had, you know, challenges there, but how the past three to six months been specifically? [00:26:10] Abe Batshon: Yeah, I think our growth has kind of leveled off a little bit. We're kind of, you know, I guess, the normalization of things are happening for sure. And we're having to work harder to like retain our subscribers and users. It's just shifting our approach and adjusting and pivoting to more accessible business models for this time and this moment in our history. I mean, it's for sure a recession. It's happening globally. It's impacting a lot of people's lives and we need to make sure that we kind of still factor that in mind and create products that are are still useful and accessible and functional for anyone with any economic status that they're in, you know, because it breaks my soul if someone can't afford a BeatStars subscription and can't explore their art and can't develop themselves and meet those goals because of this current space that we're in right now. So we're definitely pivoting and adjusting and thinking about new and better accessible business models that can cater to anyone with any kind of economic status. So, we're definitely adjusting things though.  [00:27:11] Dan Runcie: I could imagine. I do think though that these things aren't permanent and, of course, we'll see things pick up, again it's just a matter of the timing there specifically. I do feel like for you all, it's interesting because the future of where this all is heading right now, you, as you mentioned, I think that you were a bit ahead of the curve. So, you know, growth in the early days may not have been as fast, but now we're in this place where people saw the success you have, people see the potential of where things going and now more companies are starting to launch their own beat marketplaces and ones that we're establishing other places. Have you seen that impact, what you've seen in your businesses? Because I know that, at least from other people I talked to that are in streaming of the DSPs, they've talked about how we've switched from this herbivore market where everyone's just capturing people that are generally wanting subscriptions to now they're in this carnivore mode of competing with each other. Have you seen any of that where you feel like the people who are beat makers now, it's not so much capturing new ones. It's essentially positioning yourselves from the competitors who have come after you.  [00:28:20] Abe Batshon: Yeah, I'm definitely, you know, definitely aware of the competitors, and a lot of these guys were admirers of what we've done. And you know, I know them personally. It's flattering, you know. It's flattering to see in terms of people being inspired by the things that I create and build and what we do here as a company as well too. And it's part of being in a capitalistic society that we're in, you know. Monkey see monkey do, you know. I feel like it's increased our kind of our competitive spirits here at the company to want to be more innovative. I think it's a blessing that there's other folks trying to come into our space. For me, I've been doing this for almost 15 years, right? So it's, I need a kick in the ass in terms of where I want to go in my career and the aspirations where I want to see BeatStars. I mean, we've always been driven and always been the hardest working and most caring community that you'll ever see in terms of the music producers. But yeah, I just use it as a competitive chip to keep moving and pushing and pushing for our creators to provide even more fair and useful products for them. I haven't seen a shift in like our business or anything like that because of the competitors, you know. It may take a while for that to happen. If they do something super unique or whatever it is that they're doing, but I haven't seen anything that's like, exciting from an innovation standpoint. It's just monkey see monkey do, copycats.  [00:29:38] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That was going to be my next question, you see, if are there new things that you're seeing the competitors do that make you say, oh, that's interesting, right? 'Cause that would definitely validate the ass-kicking or the bit of the push there. It reminds you of that sports analogy, right? Like how. Michael Jordan had to go create these demons out of thin air because there was really no one at this level, and anytime someone tried to say, oh, Jordan or Drexler, he just like squash it that immediately. So you all having that, yeah.  [00:30:04] Abe Batshon: I've always had that. You know, I'm a sports guy, huge sports guy, played sports my whole life, too. And so I definitely was competing with myself in terms of wanting to be better and extract more capacity of myself and see myself and my team's dreams continue to grow. But yeah, I just use those as just another factor into, and I'm not to say anyone's intentions are bad or anyone's intentions are good, but it's a little suspect. It's a little suspect. It's a little bit, I don't know, what's the word, but it feels ingenuine. It feels like a land grab. It feels like a money game. And for us, it's never been about the money. It's always been about these young people all over the world and old people, creators from everywhere. Like, can we liberate the idea of songs? Can we help push people to be more experimental with their words and their messages and their art and something that's so personal for them. I don't see any of these like venture- companies or big invested type of companies actually having a genuine approach to how they treat or deal with their community. So I'm really not worried about it. I definitely keep them in mind in terms of continuing our fight to liberate music. [00:31:13] Dan Runcie: How do you feel in general about the amount of VC money that has entered music and music tech and the platforms and companies that have been launched?  [00:31:22] Abe Batshon: Dude, where was this money when I was in, like, Silicon Valley? You know, I mean, I'm from the East Bay, Hayward, California. And you know, Silicon Valley was just right down the street. And when I was building BeatStars, man, I couldn't even get a meeting with these guys. Like, I created 12 of the most amazing decks throughout my career that no one ever actually saw. Like, I couldn't sell anyone on the concept of investing into music. But like I understand that at that time, the music industry was going through a huge transitional moment. Like, everyone was really scared about the future of music. So it was pretty disastrous in terms of where music was at that time, and if I wasn't an investor, I probably wouldn't have invested in me either. But I never even got an opportunity to even you know, meet investors or pitch the ideas of BeatStars. We had to bootstrap this thing the whole way. And our creators invested in us, our customers did, we built this thing together with them. We just continue to reinvest every little penny that we made back into the platform. And so I think it made the journey a lot more satisfying, but it's exciting that there's much more investment and people willing to believe and other entrepreneurs and their ideas. I think it's cool. It pushes all of us, you know, pushes our creative boundaries and it's cool to see money flow. And I I'm happy that, you know, other entrepreneurs are not going to have to struggle the way that I did for 13, 14 years before I was, you know, able to kind of like sustain ourselves. So it's like, but you know, we kind of always figured out ways to sustain ourselves build organically, which has been beautiful. And we've been profitable since day one and we just continue to run lean, you know, and just not be wasteful and just, yeah. So it's exciting. I don't know where it's going to go. I mean, I don't know where a lot of the money is actually flowing in music tech, really. You probably know more than me, Dan. I don't pay attention to a lot of that stuff.  [00:33:06] Dan Runcie: You're too busy building to track this stuff.  [00:33:08] Abe Batshon: I'm busy, man.  [00:33:09] Dan Runcie: That's my job.  [00:33:11] Abe Batshon: Busy, dude, too busy.  [00:33:12] Dan Runcie: Yeah. With that though, do you get more interest or offers from any of these tech companies now, because I've started to hear from a lot of the companies that rose up the same timeframe that you did that. Now, when all this money pours in, now they're getting the attention, too, and the interest, too, from these investors that wouldn't have paid attention before, but now it's much less about the initial investment. Now they're trying to either acquire and now they're trying to do a joint venture, do these things. What have those conversations been like?  [00:33:48] Abe Batshon: It's definitely getting aggressive for sure. And I think because of where we are right now, economically, you know, investors feel like they can come in and get a good deal right now for all these startups or companies that have existed even prior to the pandemic that are still thriving through it as well. I'm seeing a lot of acquisitions happen, a lot of private equity stuff happening. And it's interesting. It's interesting. We don't need the money, Dan, in terms of like where we are financially. We're, you know, we're self sustaining. We've got a ton of money in the bank and we have our investment plan internally to kind of finish our, you know, not finish, but continue our roadmap of all the things that we dream of wanting to do and build within our goals at BeatStars. So, thank God I'm healthy. I'm feeling good. I'm in remission. I I battled cancer the last couple years during the pandemic. And you know, that was a shaky moment for me during that time. It was really up and down. I didn't know where my future was and still kind of in it, but I'm thankfully feeling really well and just energized and I'm enjoying independence, I'm enjoying independence. And I really feel that we're in a good spot to kind of push through this kind of down moment of the economy and head down and focus on our creators while everyone is just focusing on profit and revenue. And we're going to do the opposite and just build something that's going to be a utility for people for many years to come, hopefully.  [00:35:07] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely, I mean.  [00:35:08] Abe Batshon: They're coming though. They're throwing checks. They're, you know, they're throwing checks at us. They're making offers, but, yeah, we're just not ready right now. We're just not ready.  [00:35:15] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And like you said, you have the vision for this and the amount that you've poured into it, the amount that you've gone through, as you mentioned, especially in recent years, like all that comes through with the story, and I think that is what connects with both the artists and what connects with anyone that may be interested from a business perspective. And I think you do have the control, the autonomy to make those shots when you want to, and that's the power of bootstrapping, right? We all know the trade-offs where, yeah, it can take time as you very well know. But if you're able to get through the other side, the autonomy you have. You could make decisions like you don't have to have, you know, the investors reading it out of your deck or anything else are trying to wonder why you're not pumping more Facebook and Google ads to go do this or that, right? Like, you're able to do the things on your terms and to clarify, is the ownership a hundred percent you for the company or?  [00:36:03] Abe Batshon: No, it's not a hundred percent me. Some employees have ownership in the company. We did take a minor, a very small, minor investment from Sony music publishing when we did our joint venture together. They've been great partners. They've been awesome. And they've been helping us kind of strategize and scale our publishing business, which I believe in the last 16 months, we've had 26 Billboard 100 hits that are from our BeatStars publishing roster of creators. One of our producers has two songs on Beyoncé's new album. And I know we had Megan Thee Stallion's new single, Pressurelicious, with one of our producers, I believe, it was HitKidd with Future. So it's like, it's so cool to see that our business is touching so many different parts of the music business. It's not just the independent creator like we're powering songs, even for the major, major superstar artists, which is awesome to see. So yeah, I'm excited about the future, man. I think we're just getting started, Dan.  [00:36:53] Dan Runcie: Yeah. and it's always fascinating to hear how companies like yours think about the compensation and things like that for employees because with a lot of the other competitors or even others in the space, especially with the amount of money that support and people are getting, you know, equity in these companies and they are getting them because if they're VC backed, then they have an exit in the mindset and you aren't coming from that perspective. So it's always interesting to hear, okay, what are the other things you're doing? So, yeah, it sounds like you're still doing equity, I know.  [00:37:22] Abe Batshon: Oh, I forgot to mention like there's 400 creators as well. 400 creators that invested in BeatStars when we partnered with Indiegogo back in 2016 to be one of their, actually their initial kind of equity crowdfunding launch partners. And it wasn't because we needed funds or needed money at that time. We did it because I loved the fact that our creators can actually, like, buy ownership into the company, and I can like, continue serving them, man. I can continue feeling like, you know, I have to make sure I'm reporting to these people because these are the people that keep me grounded. These are the people that keep me focused on, you know, how we impact all the other creators' lives. So yeah, we have 400 other creators from the platform that invested like $150,000 total during that campaign. So it was pretty cool to know that they're also on our ownership structure. [00:38:11] Dan Runcie: That's great to see them on the cap table. That's great. I'd like to close this conversation out.  [00:38:16] Abe Batshon: Hopefully, make some money at some point.  [00:38:19] Dan Runcie: Well, I mean, that depends how some of these conversations go with these, you know, companies breathing down your back.  [00:38:23] Abe Batshon: Exactly.  [00:38:24] Dan Runcie: So we'll see. [00:38:25] Abe Batshon: For sure. [00:38:26] Dan Runcie: But I like to close this conversation out of it and talk about focus because you talked a lot about creators and how you're focused on serving them. We're talking primarily about the people who are buying beats, the people that are selling beats, and anyone involved with that production or engineering process. But for you, I know what it's like to build a company. I'm sure there's been plenty of times where not just you or some of the people you're working with are like, oh, what if you did this? What if we did that, right? But you've been able to stay focused on I'm sure, part of it was likely a function of you're building as fast as you can. Given the fact that you're bootstrapped, some of your focus is by design, but then on the other hand, now that things are starting to come in, you're starting to see the success in reaping the rewards. I'm sure there's likely some thoughts of maybe that thing that you had in the back of your mind for a few years, but now maybe it's a little bit easier to do if you're going to be, you know, hitting nine-figure payouts annually soon enough. What are some of those things, if there are, that you have on the roadmap for where things are going for other things you might be doing? [00:39:30] Abe Batshon: Yeah, we definitely want to make some acquisitions for sure. We're exploring some of that too. We're exploring some potential acquisitions, and I think maybe we'll do our first one by the beginning of 2023. Never know. So we're definitely thinking about how can we acquire some technology or companies or communities that really would help elevate what we're doing. So definitely, definitely thinking about that. We're investing a ton in technology, man. We're, I mean our engineering team, we're probably, we'll double by next year. I think we're at like 40, 40 people on the engineering team now. So we have all of these cool projects that these engineering pods are working on and it's exciting to see. So you'll definitely start seeing a lot more innovation more frequently from BeatStars soon. We have spent, and it may look like focus, but really it's been just kind of a restrain of our technology for the last four or five years. We've been rebuilding our whole tech stack, the back end, front end, the whole thing, because, you know, we were still using legacy platform from 2008 when it was just, you know, me and our founding members of the company, Joseph Aguilar, one of our engineers, you know, building it together and we're just some kids, you know, just going crazy. We didn't think that this thing was going to scale to millions and millions of creators all over the world. So we had to kind of pivot four years ago. And we're about 95% done in terms of the full platform rebuild. And from a technology standpoint, we're competing with some of the biggest music services in the world in terms of our tech stack. Now we're prepared to really do some damage now and build on top of what we're doing and optimize our offering and also get into some different verticals as well, too. So, yeah, it's kind of like a new rebirth of BeatStars in a sense, a whole new team, a whole new technology stack, a whole new drive, and purpose. And we're building out our executive team right now, too. It's been just me in terms of executives. I was wearing all the hats, and I don't know why I was doing that. And we just hired a Head of People, Sarah Simmons, who just joined us. We have our CTO, Nader Fares. We hired Damien Ritter as our President of Label.  [00:41:37] Dan Runcie: My guy, Dame.  [00:41:38] Abe Batshon: Yeah, man, Dame is legend and legend to me in terms of what he's done on the independent record label front, you know, and what he's been able to do, the dude's one of the smartest guys I know. And I'm excited to have him lead the initial kind of kickoff of what a BeatStars record label can look like. Like, so many amazing artists have been discovered on BeatStars, even just from our competitions. You know, like we discovered Ali, Ali Gatie, won one of our song contests and he's got billions of streams, you know, Joyner Lucas, and Anees. Anees is an independent artist right now that's doing some amazing things, touring, you know, he's got a hit song called Sun and Moon and just killing it on TikTok and just so cool, man, just so cool to see all of these amazing artists take and utilize the platform the best way and build careers. And, yeah, so it's cool to see all these different things happen and finally bringing some like seasoned leadership to, you know, bounce things off of and build with and collaborate with. And I think I've come to a place in my career now. I feel like almost 15 years in, I can let go of some control and I think I've matured enough as an executive to now understand and articulate what the company needs and what we want in our dreams and now do it in a collaborative way with a bunch of amazing people that have the same kind of mission. So it's exciting to see what this new phase of BeatStars goes into.  [00:42:55] Dan Runcie: Making moves. Love to hear it. [00:42:57] Abe Batshon: Trying to, man. [00:42:58] Dan Runcie: Hey, hey, that says that's the journey. That's the journey. Well, Abe, this has been great. Appreciate you for coming on, and before we let you go, we want to make sure that people that are listening know to find you, so where can they go to either follow you or to follow BeatStars if they want to tap in more?  [00:43:14] Abe Batshon: Thanks, Dan. Dude, I'm some big fan of yours, like I told you before the podcast. Congratulations. Amazing to follow your journey as well. Follow BeatStars at @BeatStars, B E A T S T A R S everywhere. My personal social media shut down everywhere for the last few months. I shut it down, but I'm going to bring it back, just @AbeBatshon and excited to hear the feedback from this episode from folks listening to it. Appreciate you having me on man.  [00:43:37] Dan Runcie: Of course, and best luck to you and best luck to you from health, most importantly, and with the business too.  [00:43:43] Abe Batshon: Thank you, sir. [00:43:45] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Post Malone is the definition of a streaming-era superstar. He exploded onto the scene with the viral hit, “White Iverson” that was uploaded straight to SoundCloud. That was followed up with a record deal with Republic Records, four feature albums, world tours, and now he’s one of the world’s most popular artists.  My guest on Trapital this week is Cheryl Paglierani, a partner at UTA, who became Post’s agent a few short weeks after the release of “White Iverson.” The duo, along with manager Dre London, have engineered one of the fastest and most successful come-ups for an artist during the streaming era. The keyword in the last sentence is engineered because Post’s resounding success was deliberately planned out.  Cheryl prioritized live exposure early in Post’s career. “To see him was to fall in love with him,” she said, which meant getting Post in front of as many different people as quickly as possible was the key to building a fanbase with longevity.  This live strategy helped make Post a must-see attraction — whether it’s on his upcoming 33-city Twelve Carat Tour or at music festivals, including his own-created Posty Fest. For a first-hand look at Post’s enormous rise over the past seven years, you’ll want to listen to my interview with Cheryl that covers strategies on touring, social media, sponsorships, and more.  [3:15] Cheryl And Post Malone’s Joint Rise-Up [5:13] Post’s Upcoming Twelve Carat Tour  [6:44] Exposure Was Key To Post’s Early Success  [9:11] Post Malone Being Genre-Less By Design [10:32] Dynamic Between Post, Dre London, and Cheryl [12:42] Post Headline Strategy  [13:52] Factors That Influence Festival Headliners [15:50] Touring vs. Festival Shows [17:57] Main Trait Cheryl Looks For When Signing With An Artist  [21:29] Philosophy Of Artist-Branded Music Festivals  [23:07] Post Malone Brand Deal Strategy  [24:18] Correlation Between Social Media Followers & Ticket Buyers [26:01] TikTok’s Value-Add For Artists  [28:00] The Trap Of Overperforming At Nightclubs [32:03] How To Prevent Artist Burnout  [33:28] Could Virtual Experiences Help Avoid Burnout?  [34:43] Cheryl’s Personal Wishes For Post’s Career Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Cheryl Paglierani, @cherylpags     Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Cheryl Paglierani: I always say, like, you need to start the build from the beginning because you're not going to want to go backwards. So I think that's where the disconnect can take place if you're not building and doing it all. Like, you have to be smart enough to strategize and say, okay, I'm going to go play the 500 cap or the thousand cap. I'm confident that I can sell it out. And when I do that, I'm going to make the club the after party. And I'm going to kill two birds with one stone, but they don't always do that. And I think that's where you see certain artists that will stream really well and have a lot of hits but have never built proper touring history fall into that trap.  [00:00:37] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:57] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Cheryl Paglierani. She is a partner at UTA where she represents some of the biggest names in music. She does booking for Post Malone, Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, 21 Savage, Offset, Flo Milli, Dominic Fike, and many more. But today's conversation. We talked a lot about her rise with Post Malone. Back in 2015, she met Post at South by Southwest after hearing his music and wanting to meet him in person. And she knew that there was the opportunity then to help develop a superstar. And since then Post Malone has grown into one of the artists that in many ways represents what's possible in streaming. Here's an artist who doesn't necessarily fit in one specific genre, but he's collaborated with so many and his music identifies and resonates with the vibe that is so relevant for today. So we talk about the journey with Post Malone. What it means for artists like him that are doing festivals versus touring and how she looks at some of the opportunities and advantages with both. We also talk more broadly about touring and how artists can make a tour off of a strength of a single, the importance of that. We talk about how she views social media, some of the pros and cons there. And so many other future trends with artists doing live performances. She shared a bunch of insights in this one, very relevant to where the industry is right now and where things are heading post-pandemic. Here's my chat with Cheryl Paglierani.  [00:02:24] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we are joined by Cheryl Paglierani, who is a partner at UTA, represents a number of big artists in hip-hop and music more broadly. But today I want to talk to you about one of the artists you've been able to see rise up the ranks and that's Post Malone, and he sticks out because I've talked to many agents over the years and so many of them talk about that dream of finding that one artist that they can rise up with. And you found that with Post Malone and it was really inspiring hearing the story of you meeting him at South by Southwest, back in 2015, but it would be great to see and hear since then. What was the moment that it hit you that, wow, we did it. The dream and the vision that I had seen back in 2015, we accomplished it and here we are, let's keep going. [00:03:15] Cheryl Paglierani: Right. You know, that's such a funny question because we all started together, right? Like, Post was essentially my first client, like, on my own. And so through rising, like, trying to pinpoint one moment, almost every moment every step of the way felt like that because you had never been there before, so take it back to just him supporting Justin Bieber. I remember being at the Madison Square Garden shows and you're hearing thousands of kids singing White Iverson, and you're looking around and you're in an arena. And even though you're not headlining that arena yet, you're thinking, wow, this is really on the right track. And then I remember on the Stoney Tour when he played in his hometown in Dallas and we played the Bomb Factory, that was a 4,000 cap room. And at that point we were like, my God, we just sold 4,000 tickets in Dallas. We're like, we're popping, right? So you feel then that feels like a really special moment. Up until, you know, we're playing two nights at The Hollywood Bowl, that felt really special. And you look like, wow. It never feels like the end, if that makes sense. It always just feels like a new height to be reached, and it just makes us more excited for what's next. Two nights at Madison Square Garden felt amazing, like, wow. Now we just sold out Madison Square Garden ourselves or AT&T Stadium was then another one of those moments. Every time we reach one, there's another one to be reached. And we're always looking forward to that and, and planning and just excited for what the next one will be 'cause that feeling just never gets old.  [00:04:33] Dan Runcie: Madison Square Garden, it was a great one because that's such an iconic venue. And I think for so many musicians, being able to sell there, being able to sell out there is huge. It's one of the biggest arenas and the most notable arenas in the country. And when looking at where a Post is now, he recently announced a tour that he has over 30 cities, whole arena tour. He's done them before. This one, I'm sure, probably felt a little bit different though, because you're booking in the middle of the pandemic. You're hearing so much, from cancellations and what venues are being available. What was it like finding space for him just given everything that happened with touring in the past few years?  [00:05:13] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah. I mean, well, lucky for us, like, we had been planning throughout the pandemic, right? So, you know, it's like there were certain tours where I had to rebook them and rebook them 'cause you wanted to be ready to go when tours were back. I think we had a little bit more leeway on this one for when we were planning, but it definitely got challenging with in terms of just avails. Because you're not only competing with all the other tours to be going out at this time but competing with sports and just different things that's all coming back at once. And so, I mean, that made it a little, a little bit more challenging, but also just making sure that, as we're booking, we're following all the right COVID protocols and that we're being cognizant, too, of just where people are in their lives, and how we're going to price it. And, and just trying to think of it holistically of where, not just he's at, but where the fans are at and what's going to set us up for success. And I think that we did a pretty good job. We had a very successful on sale and we're looking forward to starting in just about a month from now.  [00:06:04] Dan Runcie: Yeah. He's one artist where I see the tour go up, I'm like, I know that tour is going to sell out. There's other artists, not going to say names, but you'll see the announcement and you're like, I hope they can sell that one, but he's not one that I ever have that thought with. And I'm sure for you, obviously, you'd seen the, from the beginning, but in those early years, like, especially in the Post, White Iverson era, I'm sure there was a lot where you, Dre, him, you see the vision, but likely may want to sell and get people to see the potential of where it's going. What was it like selling at that perspective and trying to build the image when not everyone on the outside maybe was fully bought in and saw things the way that you may have seen it?  [00:06:44] Cheryl Paglierani: I mean, I can't really say that I remember selling Post ever being hard. I think it was always about how can we get him in front of the most amount of people as quick as possible because to see him was to fall in love with him. I think the second that anybody saw him live, they would always come back to me and be like, wow, this guy's the real deal. The performance was never really a factor. I mean, I think it was really just finding the right opportunities and making sure that we were strategically building him to be able to be in a position to really build the right fan base and build to longevity I think a lot of people don't know this, but Post actually supported three times before we have a headline. So he supported a DJ called SBTRKT. It was only a couple of shows, but it still, it was like EDM. It wasn't what you would expect him to be doing at that time. And then we went on tour with Fetty Wap and so that was a hip-hop tour. So he supported Fetty Wap through, through that tour. And then it went straight from Fetty Wap into Justin Bieber. So we had built a foundation that would almost touch multi-genres before he ever even went out and headlined. So I think that it was just being strategic in terms of how do we get him in, in front of not only the most people but different types of people, because he really is so eclectic. And we wanted everybody to be able to see that 'cause he really does have something to offer to everybody.  [00:07:50] Dan Runcie: That's the piece that sticks out to me the most 'cause I've had so many conversations with people and they'll ask me what type of genre do you think Post Malone is? Do you think Post Malone is hip-hop? And it's always this ambiguous question and I think that's by design. He can go and have different types of collaborators. You see it with who he's worked with. You'll see it with who's featured on his album. Can you talk a little bit more about how that piece has helped shape his career and maybe his ascension as well?  [00:08:19] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, you just hit the nail on the head, right, in terms of who he works with. Post is going to work with artists that he's actually genuinely a fan of. I think that you'll see sometimes artists will work with people just because, oh, this is the new hot guy right now. You should go make a song with this person, or this is who everybody expects you to work with so you should go work with this person. But Post is going to work with artists like Fleet Foxes 'cause it's his favorite band ever, who I didn't even know who they were until him, so he's putting us onto them or he's going to work with artists that, that really touch and resonate with him. I think, I don't if you saw but this was record a while ago, but it kind of just started going viral. It's his video singing a Brad Paisley song, like, his videos have gone viral singing country songs, but, you know, then he can, can go make songs with, hip-hop artists. And we always laugh when we see like a headline will write hip-hop, where he gets categorized as that because he's so versatile that it, it isn't that. But to pinpoint it is difficult because he touches so much.  [00:09:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I also think that his position highlights what makes the streaming era work in a lot of ways. I've heard people refer to him as a post-streaming era artist or someone that's a symbol of what's possible now in streaming. And I was talking to a friend about this recently about, in a lot of ways, we're moving past in genres. We're moving towards moods and vibes. And I think that in a lot of ways probably captures Post Malone, but it also captures what people are looking for. You see that in how Spotify looks at playlists, right, it isn't just genres. It's moods that what you're after. And I feel like he speaks to this piece a lot.  [00:09:48] Cheryl Paglierani: Absolutely. I mean, he, he completely does. It just goes back to, I think, his love of music, right? He really loves so many different genres of music and you see that come through in his music. And I think that's why he makes music that that's so relatable to so many people.  [00:10:03] Dan Runcie: And I think a lot of this, too, is the management of leadership behind. So it's you, who's the music agent, you also have Dre London, who is his manager, and you have Post as the artist himself. And it seems as if the three of you have a very strong dynamic that's been intentional and clear about how you're growing him as an artist. Can you speak to that in the different roles that you all have beyond the obvious pieces of where you stand there, but how you all work and how that dynamic clicks together? [00:10:32] Cheryl Paglierani: No, absolutely. I mean, yeah, of course, it's like me and Dre. And Dre has become one of my best friends in the business, like a brother to me. I mean, we have like the best dynamic, of course. It's me and Dre and Post, but we have a whole team. There's Bobby who's Post’s day-to-day, and Jay who manages everything on the road, and Austin Rosen who's Post's co-manager with Dre. And I think really we've become like a family. And I think what makes us work so well is that we all have a role and a pivotal role, but everybody's role is different. And I think, like, we all trust each other to be able to handle it. It's like if you're building a house, right, you need to be able to trust that the pillars in each position are going to hold you up and prop you up. We've been able to build like this beautiful foundation, this beautiful house together, just off the foundation of our, trust for each other and, and how everybody works together. [00:11:17] Dan Runcie: Yeah, it seems like it because I think it's so rare that you can see all three of you really be able to work in sync because we know how many times changes happen in this industry and how many times things shift as well. And I do think that continuity is one of the things that get so underrated. There's so many aspects of music that can be a revolving door or things change quickly. But the fact that there is, in many ways, a tight unit where the three of you can work together. I honestly wish we saw more of that in the industry because I think sometimes the continuity hurts the potential of or the lack thereof hurts the potential of a lot of artists and how far they could go. [00:11:55] Cheryl Paglierani: What's also interesting, I think, Dre and I have our birthdays are a day apart, so it's almost like, even though we're so different in a lot of ways, we're actually so much alike. We can literally look at each other almost and know what the other one is thinking and not have to say a word which has become just this beautiful dynamic between us and I mean, just, you know, working with them, their whole team, I couldn't have asked to be on this journey with better people. I just feel really lucky that they let me be a part of it.  [00:12:17] Dan Runcie: No, that's special. Speaking specifically about his live performances and how he goes about things, we talked a little bit about festivals in the beginning piece, and obviously Post is headlining several festivals in the US. When people reach out or you're looking for spots now, do you even consider anything that isn't a headline slot or this point, or you're like, no, if we're not getting a headline slot, sorry.  [00:12:42] Cheryl Paglierani: No, not Post anyway. I mean, he's just a bonafide superstar at this point. I can't even really think of any acts that would make sense for him to play in front of. So for him, definitely not. For others, I mean, of course with other acts, it's really just a strategy and sometimes more about the look than necessarily the exact position. You know, you want to obviously be billed properly and be in the right slot. But for someone like at Post-level, it's a headline or it's not at all. [00:13:06] Dan Runcie: That's what I figured because sometimes I'll see for certain music festivals, again, I'm not going to say a festival or names, but you'll see people slotted in. You're like, really? Well, they must have a superstar agent that made that happen because I would think that they would be a third row or there's people that are also on that lineup that I think could have been in that headline spot instead. And I'm sure that, you know, the mechanisms of so many of those things more than anyone, and probably think a lot about that, too. What are your thoughts on that piece of it and how the artists do get chosen for headline slots? And I'm sure you sometimes may see it yourself when the festival Posters come up and you're like, okay, that makes sense, but, huh, really, that person? Interesting.  [00:13:52] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah. And like, look, I think every market's different, right? A lot of it comes down to hard ticket sales usually, and I mean, when, when a promoter's booking a festival, there's two, usually, two things that they're looking at the closest and that's how many tickets have you sold in the market and how fast can you sell them? So while you might look at a lineup and scratch your head and say, how is this person headlining? It could be because it's that person's hometown or because that person's show in the market blew out, there could be a number of different reasons. But you know, there's certain artists that can blow out a show in LA that might not blow out that show in New York. Or a certain artist you might see headline in New York festival because they're from the East Coast or they're from the Northeast that would never make sense to headline in LA. So I think some of it has come down to digging a little deeper as to what's that artist's connection to the city or to the festival, to the market, what's their history, have, they done there before 'cause plays a lot into it.  [00:14:38] Dan Runcie: Yeah. That makes sense. Certainly, there are artists that just aren't going to work everywhere. Again, you mentioned the venues that Post Malone has sold out, whether that's his hometown, doing the stadiums, or even the arenas in other places, this isn't as much a discussion point for him. So I do think that that does play a factor. There are other times where I still do see wow, you know, great agent, you know, hats off to them. But it's fascinating though.  [00:15:03] Cheryl Paglierani: I think that sometimes, too. [00:15:05] Dan Runcie: It's fascinating though. And I think the broader growth. And as we've seen, especially the past decade-plus proliferation of music festivals has been great. And I think it's created more opportunity for the bigger artists to really decide how do you want to prioritize the opportunities. Of course, there's some artists that are strictly for the most part, only doing festivals. They may get the bigger guarantee up front, but there's a chance they may not be playing in front of as many true fans as they could have if they did their own concert. And there are plenty of pros and cons there, but I'm curious from your perspective, what's your philosophy on balancing touring versus doing the festival shows, and how do you look at it for the artists you represent? [00:15:50] Cheryl Paglierani: You hit it right on the head with the word you just used. It's a balance, right? So I think you never want to say, like, I don't believe it's ever too early to play a festival. Sometimes people are, you know, you'll hear that said, or it's too early for you to play or you need more momentum. But I think there's certain opportunities and certain festivals to be targeted when you're a new artist and through your journey. So let's say you're a new artist and you're ready to go do that 500 cap tour and you're ready to go, you know, start selling tickets at the bottom level. Yeah, you're probably not ready to then go pitch for the Coachella slot 'cause you want to be in the right position when you play a festival like Coachella or a major one, but you could still be perfect for the Thursday night at Bonnaroo. That is great for showcasing new artists. So I think you want to find that healthy balance of like, okay, what festivals can we target that might be in a market that we wouldn't necessarily go headline, but could still put us in front of a lot of bottoms in that market. And that's what I usually try to find from the ground up is, okay, what festivals are we targeting this year? What's going to be our target next year? What's your plan with the music and how are we building our headline shows around that so that we can be growing as a headline artist at the same time? And then with every artist, it's different too, right? 'cause some, it might not be you're building festivals into, headline or some artists it's going to be, it makes sense for them to find a support slot first. You might need more time to develop your show. You might need, you know, you might not have a full set that's long enough to headline. You haven't put out enough music yet. So I think every artist is different. It's just about your strategy to where the artist is at in your career. [00:17:12] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And especially with the balance piece of it, too. And I know that you represent a number of artists that are at different stages of their careers as well. Do you have any that lean more into the festival-heavy and touring light because I know that's another thing I've heard from many artists where they feel like touring is a bigger risk and they don't necessarily want to do that. They would rather do things a bit more on-demand or do things a bit more when the opportunity comes up, as opposed to having a set time to have an event where, yeah, they're doing a 500 or 2000 cap event that they go around. Are there any artists you have that lean towards that way? And how does the strategy shift at all for any of them? [00:17:57] Cheryl Paglierani: I just think it through my personal roster, I actually don't think I have anyone that's more only a festival-centric artist. I think, you know, just for me personally, too, when I'm looking at artists that I want to sign and who I want to work with, it all first and foremost starts with passion. Like, to me, I'm not really looking at streaming numbers. I'm not really looking at stats that most people would. I'm looking at do I love the music? Do I believe in the artist? And do I think that they can grow into arena selling headliner? So I'm always looking for that from the start. So it's almost like it would be very strange for me to end up with artists that only play festivals 'cause I always try to get involved, you know, very early. There's some artists I work with now that haven't been day one, but almost my whole roster has been day one and, and builds from the ground up. And even though every strategy is different, the goal is pretty much always the same in terms of how are we going to build longevity, how are we going to build a real fan base that wants to keep coming back and keep seeing you over and over again. If maybe the live show's not great from the beginning, the things that we can do to help you amplify your show, can we help with connecting with performance coaches, can we help with bringing production people into the team? Like, how can we help add value to get the artist where they need to be so that there's not a ceiling because if you've reached a point where you can only go play festivals, you've hit a ceiling. If you can sell the festival yourself or you get to that point, you want to be able to get to the point where you can book the area out yourself and, and do an open-air show and sell it all on your own. That's where you want to get to. So there's always going to be a ceiling, I feel like if you cap yourself there. And I say it's kind of similar to, like, artists that you see only play nightclubs because I think it can be hard, in the beginning, to turn down nightclub money. If you're a new artist and you come out and you have a song that's big and all of a sudden, clubs, want to throw a check at you to come play your song and three songs in a nightclub. Like, sometimes that's hard to turn down and they'll take that over, playing the small venue and trying to sell the tickets 'cause the money isn't the same. And so I think like that's just always the trap that I tell every artist avoid, avoid, avoid. You have to go build a fan base if you want longevity.  [00:19:50] Dan Runcie: Where do artists starting their own music festivals fit in this dynamic? Because Post obviously has Posty Fest. He's had it, it's a success. And obviously again, now that we're at least coming on the other side of the pandemic, where do you see that fit in with this dynamic in that balance?  [00:20:07] Cheryl Paglierani: There has to be a connection. There's so many festivals now, right? That if you're an artist and you want to start your own, you have to have probably a good amount of the draw, or I would like really advise against it. But I think that, you know, with Post and creating Posty Fest, he just had such a strong connection to Dallas and a passion for wanting to build a lineup that was multi-genre like him and, give artists an opportunity that he believes in and kind of create something where his fans could really step into his world. And we have an incredible brand team who is able to help us really turn Posty Fest into what Post world would be and bring in all of his partners. And create that without it feeling like overly branded or forced, it felt very authentic to him. And yeah, we're excited to just see how we can keep growing it. [00:20:53] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And especially with a festival like that, the hometown, the audience, the fan base is there. I'm curious how it's viewed from a business perspective because I've talked to some folks in the industry that feel that the artists-run festivals are almost more of a passion play project. The economics may not be necessarily better than what they could do elsewhere, but it's just actually a unique opportunity to be able to create something like that. But then others feel well, people run their own music festivals for economic gain, obviously. And if you have it there, then there is plenty of upside to be had. So how do you view it?  [00:21:29] Cheryl Paglierani: Listen, what you said is absolutely right. I think for starters, you need to start it off as a passion project because to have a festival that's profitable year one, year two, usually isn't very realistic. You have to be able to build it up. With Posty Fest, I mean, we were pretty smart about it. And like I said, his brand team and my partner, Toni Wallace absolutely killed it. We were very lucky to be able to make Posty Fest profitable. And both times that we've done it, just because Post has so much love in the brand space, but it's expensive. It's expensive to create an event like that and to book talent and you just have to be willing to make sacrifices in certain places and be willing to really put in the work to build it year after year, to get it to a place where it's going to be economically profitable. [00:22:10] Dan Runcie: You mentioned the brand piece. And I imagine for Post that's huge. Can you talk a bit about how that factored into the profitability?  [00:22:19] Cheryl Paglierani: Of course, as we're selling tickets, but, you know, every time we do a brand deal with Post, we would build Posty Fest into it. So it's like, okay, you're going to do your deal with Bud Light. Bud Light, we're going to need you to come onto Posty Fest. You're going to do your deal with, we had Nerf, we had Crocs, there was just a laundry list of all of his partners, but every time we would be doing deals, we would be building the festival into it. So come time for the festival, we had economics and, and money from all of his partners to come in and create activations for us, so it's authentic to him, but they're coming and they're creating activations and they're helping us create the experience. And that just took a huge cost off of us to have to create those things organically. [00:22:55] Dan Runcie: His brand partnership with Bud Light feels like one of the most authentic artist-brand collaborations. I can't think of anyone else. Like, so many people are like, oh, Post Malone being the ambassador for Bud Light is perfect.  [00:23:07] Cheryl Paglierani: Perfect. Like I said, he is not faking it. He really drinks Bud Light. That's his drink. And you know, he's always going to do what's authentic to himself. [00:23:14] Dan Runcie: I could imagine what the success of that. Something else that I think has been fascinating with touring has been the influence of social media. And I think there are a number of people who have strong social media followings that people couldn't actually assume that, okay, you had millions of fans that are following you on Instagram or TikTok or wherever that would then translate to those millions of people coming out and buying tickets for your show. And while there's some correlation there, I've always thought there's a bit of a disconnect to some extent because while having a large number may be great, your followers on socials may not always be the fans who are buying tickets for your show, but I know that when you're making decisions for these shows, there's all the data. There's also that instinct factor that you have when deciding who to pitch in, book where, but for you, how important is social media and the numbers or metrics you see from social media in the live performance decisions you're making, whether that's for touring or for festivals? [00:24:18] Cheryl Paglierani: It's definitely a factor, but it's by no means the factor because there are artists that have millions and millions of followers who can't sell a ticket and there's artists who can stream really well, but also can't sell a ticket. Like, there is definitely not any proof of a direct correlation between the two, but I do think that being on socials is really important. It also depends on how you are using your socials. Are you using your socials to connect with fans or are you just posting when you have to post something, right? Are you just posting a flyer to a show or you're not going on your Insta stories and talking to them, or you're not responding in the comments and they don't really feel like, for artists, I feel like we use it as a connection point. We'll see it translate more into, you know, the live side. But I haven't seen yet where I feel strongly enough that, like TikTok specifically, like if you have millions of followers on TikTok, are you going to be able to go sell out a show? That I don't think directly correlates. I think that to build yourself and start being successful in live, there has to be the live piece there. You have to have the live show, you have to have the music, you have to have the connectivity with an audience more so than just creating like cute Insta videos that are going to go viral. But it is going to be interesting to see, I think, as we're getting back into touring and more tours are going out and if that changes at all, but I haven't seen it be directly correlated just yet.  [00:25:36] Cheryl Paglierani: I'm glad  [00:25:36] Dan Runcie: you mentioned TikTok because there's been so much talk about how influential TikTok has been in the music industry. It is the place where so much music gets discovered that ends up performing well on streaming, but given the way the algorithm works, you can have tons of followers or tons of engagement proposed, but like you said, it doesn't exactly translate to having fans that are actually going to buy tickets.  [00:26:01] Cheryl Paglierani: There's no question, right? There's no question at all that TikTok has become super important to breaking new music and bringing awareness to new music, whether you're a brand new artist or your Post Malone, the label's going to try to push TikTok because that's where so many kids are. And that's how you can just make things more visible. When you talk about breaking records and stream, like, I think TikTok can really add value into the streaming side of things and just being heard. But in terms of it, like, translating over into hard ticket sales, I don't think there's a direct, I think it helps, but I don't think there's a direct correlation where you can say, oh, okay, if you have X amount of views or followers on TikTok, you're going to sell this room now. It's not realistic.  [00:26:37] Dan Runcie: And Post has talked about this too. I saw a quote from him recently that was like if I was a new artist that was being pushed to use TikTok right now, maybe there'd be a little bit of pressure to try to find a natural way to use it or even he himself wanting to find a natural way to use it. How have those discussions been? Because on one hand he already has the fan base that was there long before TikTok blew up, but there's so many established artists that are leaning into the platform now.  [00:27:03] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah. I mean, lucky for us, Post has an incredible creative director, Bobby, who is also his day-to-day. I'm not really involved so much in the what goes on his TikTok, but Bobby's really good at finding authentic ways, whether they're out somewhere and Post is just there doing some of capturing those moments and then helping translate them over to TikTok. But even though it wasn't around while Post was on the come out, so it's a relatively new thing. I think they're figuring out really cool ways to still have him featured on the platform, and there's been a number of videos they've put up there that have gone viral.  [00:27:34] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. There was something else earlier that you mentioned about streaming specifically. We talked about how there's some disconnect between social media and being able to sell tickets. But you also mentioned that there's some artists that stream well, but can't necessarily sell tickets as well. What are some common or things that can have that type of dynamic exist or that is the reason why that can happen that you've seen?  [00:28:00] Cheryl Paglierani: The nightclub situation, I think is one that can be a total killer, right? So like, there's so many artists you'll see that will come out. They'll have a song that will get really hot in a nightclub. And instead of going out and doing the work and building the fan base, they'll go take the 10, 20, 30 grand to go to the club, just play the song. It's not their real fans. It's just people that want to party. And then they'll feel like, you know, they'll get to a point where, okay, now you've had two hits. Now you've had three hits. But going backwards to start at the beginning, to really build the fan base and sell the rooms and the money you're going to make to play a 500 or a thousand cap just feels to them like a step backwards. And so they hit that ceiling. I always say, like, you need to start the build from the beginning because you're not going to want to go backwards. So I think that's where the disconnect can take place if you're not building and doing it all. Like, you have to be smart enough to strategize and say, okay, I'm going to go play the 500 cap or the thousand cap. I'm confident that I can sell it out. And when I do that, I'm going to make the club the after party. And I'm going to kill two birds with one stone, but they don't always do that. And I think that's where you see certain artists that will stream really well and have a lot of hits but have never built proper touring history fall into that trap. [00:29:07] Dan Runcie: That lines up with something else I've heard you say, which lines up with how artists now can build a tour off of a song or off of a single that does really well. And you don't necessarily have to always rely on going after the short bag or trying to do the short-term things. No, if you have the single that works, you can build on that. Can you speak a little bit more about that?  [00:29:30] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah. I think like when you're a true artist, like, I remember when we first started building out Dominic Fike's first tour and his EP was incredible. He had a real fan base. We had no doubt that the shows were going to sell. But I think the whole thing was under 30 minutes. Like it was almost going to be a struggle to get a show to where, you know, you want to be at least a 45-minute set if you're going to headline. But having the creativity that, okay, I'm going to throw in a couple of covers that are unexpected so that I can stretch this out and really go, build from the ground up and do that tour, and that's what they did. They figured out a way to make the show entertaining and interesting and with the band and to fill that time, even though it was only one project and, you know, 3 Nights was a big radio hit for him. We were able to still get out there and, and do that tour and start building it the right way with him as a headliner from the start. [00:30:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think, now, especially just because there are so many hits where you can clearly tell that, okay, I don't know if that one's really going to last, but other times he'll hear hit, be like, no, you can truly build something off of this. And that's what I think is unique about this era. And that's what I think is unique to see artists like Post and others as well who've literally been able to say, okay, I have the awareness. I have the exposure. How could we continue to build on whether you're taking your time for whether it's the album or the launch, whatever it is. There are so many unique ways to be able to continue to just build momentum and build the fan base today. And I think that's one of the more exciting things about where the industry is right now.  [00:30:55] Cheryl Paglierani: Yeah, absolutely. Shout to Dre and to Post, we talked about this a lot in the beginning because of course when White Iverson came out, we were getting all the clubs that were reaching out and me and Dre were totally aligned and on the same page of like, that's not what we're going to do and we're going to build this the right way. And here we are.  [00:31:11] Dan Runcie: For sure. And I'm sure part of this, too, with the artists you represent is that so much of the booking and so much of the time can be reflective of just them feeling burnt out, right? Maybe burnout isn't as much of a piece on the touring side, at least for Post, just given the fact that you're touring in arenas now. He's not necessarily doing 200-plus arena shows a year, but there are other artists that are doing nightclubs or doing smaller venues that are doing that clip or potentially even. How is it with some of the artists who that clearly is the phase that they are in their career, but there's just so much more awareness right now in this industry of how do we prevent burnout, how do we support the artists without having them be on the grind that, I think, in many ways became so standard for artists in the industry?  [00:32:03] Cheryl Paglierani: Absolutely. I mean, I think that's actually really important. And I always, personally, when I'm putting together a routing or I'm thinking about what are we doing, I try to put myself in the artist's shoes and think would I be able to handle this? Could I play four nights in a row? Like, am I going to get burnt out if there's not a day off after this many shows in a row? We think about that a lot with Post 'cause even though you're not playing 200 arena shows a year, even playing two nights in an arena back to back and be really exhausting, and that's going to take a toll on him and on his voice and on his body. And I think, like, if you're an artist and you're getting up on stage and you're giving it your all. That's going to wear you out. So, it's always something that we're thinking about when we're routing of, like, okay, let's not make sure that we got this amount of time. We're going to fit this amount of shows in. We're going to make sure that there's a proper amount of days off. And I'm always thinking about that when I'm routing as to how is this going to physically be on the artist because that's first and foremost is keeping them healthy and keeping them wanting to do it. We never want an artist to start feeling like, oh, this is just too much. I can't take it. So we try to make it as comfortable as possible.  [00:33:03] Dan Runcie: Do these VR and metaverse experiences help with this to some extent? I know he recently had the VR experience for his project, the Twelve Carat Toothache, and I know that he had had the Pokémon collaboration that he had recently. Do these types of things help a bit? Because there obviously is less travel and you could still reach an audience and potentially a growing audience based on the way things are heading.  [00:33:28] Cheryl Paglierani: Absolutely. I mean, I don't think it helps per se in a sort of like taking anything off the touring side 'cause the touring's still going to be there, but those opportunities are just easier to pull off because you can do them in LA or like he did the Nirvana live stream from his house in Utah, things like that, where through the pandemic and we were able to still stay out there in a real way without having to go anywhere. So that definitely helps when there is something like that that can be done and adds so much value to your album rollout and just be really cool and really different. The VR experience, I mean, they built out different sets almost for every single, so like that was a full two-day production to film all of that. So it was still a lot of work, but it was again, staying in one place made it easy to pull off.  [00:34:09] Dan Runcie: So five years from now, when Post is still headline status and is booking all the top festivals and touring around the world. What do you think shifts? Because obviously so much has shifted in the industry since White Iverson came out, streaming and all of the other types of opportunities for artists to go direct with their fans or anything else has expanded as well. And we'll continue to see more evolution on that front. What do you think will change specifically in the live performance or, more broadly, how Post and some of your other artists may go about it?  [00:34:43] Cheryl Paglierani: What do I think is going to shift? I mean, I hope that one day with Post and you say, what will change, well, he's always been a one-man show. He's never played with the band. It's always him. And he gets up there and he kills it. I kind of hope that in the future we're seeing him, he might hear this and say, why would you say that? But my personal wish, I hope that like one day we see the show shift into him playing with a full band or maybe playing, you know, everyone always says to me, when's Post making a folk album? When's Post making a country album? I almost hope that maybe we see him shift and actually take a stab at a different genre completely. And just do something that's completely unexpected. Does that happen? I don't know, but it could be a shift. And I also think he has the potential and will reach stadium status. I hope somewhere in the next five years we maybe see. Like, we're able to go into baseball stadiums or something of the sort. Maybe it's not a full tour, these are just like my aspirations and my, my goals and what I want to see, whether, you know, that aligns with him, we have to discuss, but I think those are a few shifts that could be really interesting and cool. [00:35:39] Dan Runcie: Well, Cheryl, this has been great. I think that there's just so much that's happening in this space and I'm excited for you. I'm excited for Post and all the other artists you represent, but before we let you go, is there anything else that you'd like to plug or let the capital audience know about? [00:35:57] Cheryl Paglierani: Anything else I want to plug? I probably should have something for that, but nothing comes to mind. I'm not much of a self-promoter. I don't know what I have to plug. [00:36:04] Dan Runcie: Or where people can find you if they want to follow you. [00:36:07] Cheryl Paglierani: People can find me on Instagram. I'm just @cherylpags.  [00:36:10] Dan Runcie: Okay. And then big things coming up for Post, obviously, we mentioned the tour, a few festivals coming up as well.  [00:36:17] Cheryl Paglierani: I don't know if you saw, but we also announced we'll be doing stadiums in Australia with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in January. So we're really excited for that also.  [00:36:24] Dan Runcie: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Another collab that makes a bunch of sense. All right. Well, Cheryl, this has been great. It's a pleasure. Thanks again for coming on.  [00:36:32] Cheryl Paglierani: Thank you so much for having me. [00:36:34] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

According to Bloomberg, Spotify is exploring a new premium tier, Music Pro, which will include several new features and perks. But given what we know about music streaming, consumers, and record labels, who is this product really for? Will it work? Listen to me and MIDiA Research’s Tati Cirisano break down all aspects of the industry’s goal to get consumers to pay more for music streaming. 05:15 Breaking Down Music Pro 07:52 Challenges in Music Streaming 15:56 How Concert Presale Tickets Work 20:33 Consumer Behavior with Music Streaming 28:31 Alternatives to Music Pro This episode is presented by beatBread. Check out their Deal Comparison Tool at beatBread.com/compare Listen in for our Chartmetric Stat of the Week. If you enjoy Trapital, please rate and review on your favorite podcast platform!

Music exec Benny Pough has shaped the hip-hop industry in a career that’s spanned from Motown Records to Def Jam to Roc Nation and now his own entrepreneurial pursuits. Benny joined me on Trapital to discuss his 30-year journey and where it’s heading next. The defining feature of Benny has been his ability to spot and develop musical talent. He’s responsible for signing the likes of Future, Jeremih, and Yo Gotti, among others. That skill was initially forged from having an ear for what would catch on the radio, but has evolved in the streaming era. Despite this radical shift in music consumption, Benny says “stars will always be stars.” After working at seven different record labels, Benny left the corporate world in 2019 and dove full-time into entrepreneurialism. He runs two separate companies — DVERSE Media and Kandiid. The former is a global music distributor and publisher, while the latter is a mobile app for creators to monetize their content. Benny also manages a diversified real estate portfolio.  Like Benny’s own career, our conversation covers a lot of ground. Here’s our talking points:  [3:13] How Benny Developed His Eye andEar For Talent [4:42] Differences Between Hit-Makers andSuperstars [6:10] How Has Streaming Changed Superstar Development? [7:33] Record Label’s Role in Talent Development  [13:07] Inside Def Jam’s Business Turnaround During Mid-00s [16:02] Aligning Business andArt at Def Jam  [18:15] Teairra Mari and Rihanna Coming Up at Def Jam [21:37] Balancing Short-Term andLong-Term Business Goals [24:39] How Did Benny Adapt To Working At Different Labels? [27:00] Why Benny Became a Full-Time Entrepreneur  [28:34] How Does Benny Split Time Across His Business Ventures? [31:26] DVERSE Media’s Pitch To Artists [33:15] TikTok’s Role In Talent Development Today [34:43] Monetizing Content On Kandiid [36:07] How Benny Got Into Real Estate [38:54] Benny’s Upcoming Book Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Benny Pough, @bennypough   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo.  TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Benny Pough: You can have a star, but if you don't have people who can market it and promote it and put the music together, then it's going to take that star a little more time. Or you can have great executives, but you have artists that don't have drive. They're kind of confused on who their identity is. They write good songs, they don't write great songs, then it's kind of off balance. It's that marriage of really strong executives and really great artistry.   [00:00:35] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:00:55] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Benny Pough. He is a music industry veteran. And when I'm talking about people that understand promotion, understand what it takes to make an artist go from sixty to a hundred, this is the person to talk to. He has identified talent over the years, working at Motown, Perspective, Arista, MCA, Def Jam, Epic, and Roc Nation Records. He worked at Def Jam during one of the turnaround eras for the record label from 2003, all the way up to 2011. So we're talking about that stretch where you had Rihanna, and Jeezy, and Kanye, and so many artists that made a huge impact there. Then he also worked at Epic where he was able to see Future, and Jeremih, and Travis Scott, and Yo Gotti. And so many of the artists there. And now he is building his own company. He works at Diverse Media, which is a music distribution and global publishing platform. He also has an app called Kandiid, which helps content creators and artists connect more directly with their fan base. We also talk about some of the ventures he has outside of music. He does a lot in real estate. We're talking about some of the real estate he does, even in my hometown, which was pretty dope to hear how he understands the neighborhoods pretty well. So this is a great interview. If you want to talk about a mogul that understands each point of this industry, and with this upcoming book where he is sharing these insights as well. This is the interview for you. Here's my conversation with Benny Pough.  [00:02:27] Dan Runcie: All right. Today, we got one of the music executives that has seen this industry and seen hip-hop through so many pivotal moments at some of the most storied record labels. Mr. Benny Pough. Welcome to the pod.  [00:02:40] Benny Pough: What's up, Dan? Been waiting, man! I don't know why you kept me out here so long, but thank you for having me today. [00:02:47] Dan Runcie: People have been asking for this one, people have been asking for this one.  [00:02:51] Benny Pough: Yeah. Yes, sir.  [00:02:52] Dan Runcie: And I mean, I think one of the reasons that people have been asking is because of your track record. You have identified some of the best talents in this field. Yo Gotti, Future, Jeremih, could go on with the list, but it's clear that you understand what you're looking for and you have an eye and an ear for this. What are you looking for when you spot talent?  [00:03:13] Benny Pough: So, you know, being a promotions person is how I started in the business. Like, my first entry point was at Motown records, doing college promotions. And at that point, I realized that, you know, music changed my life when I was able to take a song, and from a college level, and have it played across the airways, 'cause you have to think about over the decades, the mass means of communication was radio. So that changed everything. If you got on the radio in any capacity, you know, it could take you from zero to sixty. So for me, listening to the radio and listening to music one way or another, my ear just got refined to what sounds good on the radio. So with the artists that you mentioned, I heard their music before I even met them. So it's something about, you know, obviously the spirit, you know, that ooze through them that comes out in their music that always just resonated with me. So the next step would be, you know, to meet them and obviously the artists that you mentioned, you know, from Future to Jeremih, Gotti, F.L.Y., it was something special about them that they'd already created for themselves. They just needed, you know, that opportunity to present itself for them to move on to the next level.  [00:04:23] Dan Runcie: And I'm sure meeting that adds a whole nother layer 'cause you could have the voice but you're not just building someone that can record an audio track. You're trying to identify stars. What is it from meeting them in person that adds to it? Or is there something extra that you see when you're face to face?  [00:04:42] Benny Pough: I think what's probably problematic now is that people can become instantaneously popular just from streaming. But never been in, you know, never really been in a studio 'cause you can record in your house. Never performed at a dive because that's not what's required. Never actually performed in front of an audience. So they're great songwriters, maybe producers, but the bar is so much lower on the entry point now, because any and everyone can do it. The difference between the people who make just hit songs or records, and the ones who are superstars is that they have the full package. Not only do they write or they perform, but you know, they have that whole je ne sais quoi, something special about them that people want to hear more and more, see more and more of them. And that's what the key is. And always has been, you know, since the beginning of music, of those people who attract and draw you in. [00:05:37] Dan Runcie: You mentioned streaming and how it is easier and how it's very different from having a hit record as opposed to being a superstar. But do you think that even some of the visual aspects are becoming easier to replicate, too? Thinking about how someone could do so much of the production of music videos, or even the visual of what they can do, whether it's through Instagram and developing a following, but there's still, there could still be a disconnect between having that piece of it as well and really being someone that can push a record label and push themselves.  [00:06:10] Benny Pough: So the power is probably the best time, music and arts, the power's in the creator. You know, ultimately as a consumer, we'll choose what we like at the value point that we will or not. But ultimately as a creator, you can get in where, before you couldn't, because there were, you know, gatekeepers. So now that you have the access and the ability to take your art to the masses. It's great. Now the level of what you have, meaning, you know, whether it's your music or your visual, if people like it, they're going to like it. And if they don't, if they feel it's inferior, then that's your presentation to the masses. So ideally you can't look at it as a negative, but, you know, obviously, as you grow, and you develop, and you have success. All of those levels start to heighten as well.  [00:07:02] Dan Runcie: And do you feel like this has made it easier or harder or how different it is for the people that clearly have superstar potential, but they are coming up in this era where there is more noise? But on the other hand, because some of that noise can filter away some of the artists that don't necessarily have that potential and let the cream rise to the crop, I've heard people use both arguments about what it's like for superstars right now, but what's your take on the current stars now? [00:07:33] Benny Pough: Stars will always be stars, and we're going to find them if that's the true course of action. You know, I worked with L.A. Reid, and I remember him always just telling me the story about Outkast. He didn't sign them the first time they performed for him. It might have been the second or the third, but because they had it and when they finally brought it back to him, you know, the rest is history. Did it make them lesser stars because they weren't signed the first time? No. What they went back and did was hone their skills, hone their craft. And at some point, the rubber hit the road and the rest is history, and that's happened countless times. Look how many times Michael Jackson was passed on. So I don't think the internet or that we're in a technological, you know, era that it changes the pursuit and the passion for people who truly have the desire and commitment to their art. You know, it just doesn't happen that I designate myself to be an artist today. And since I'm going to be an artist today, I'm going to be a star tomorrow, right? It doesn't quite work that way. And the people who have the wherewithal and the gifts, they're going to find it.  [00:08:38] Dan Runcie: Do you think it's harder for people to hit those Michael Jackson levels though? Because I do think that he, of course, I can't think of anyone that was more famous at that particular time. And even some of the artists that you have now. Yes, some of the biggest stars you've seen, they're breaking records and streaming, but culture is just so much noisier and there's so many other things like it's hard for any one artist to reach those same levels. Or do you think that that's still possible?  [00:09:07] Benny Pough: It's just different iterations of it. And I don't think you can ever take the greatness of one artist and measure other artists to that, right? Now you can look at stats and go, well, did you, did this person have this many accomplishments as is that one? Then you start getting to the, you know, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe, right? It's just all different. So it's not the same measurement, but also just realize everyone has greatness and in their time of what was available and what the market was, they exceeded everyone's expectation. So that exists and it's going to exist beyond, you know, today until tomorrow. So it's really about, you know, how do you maximize the moments and all of that is really consistent on how much you commit to your craft. [00:09:56] Dan Runcie: I agree because I think about some of the stars right now, we still see it. It just may not be necessarily the most traditional sense the way people see it. I look at what Bad Bunny is doing right now. We haven't necessarily seen someone like him do what he's doing at the level that he's doing, whether it's the streaming records or even the sold-out concerts. Or even if you look at BTS, I think there's something to be said there for just how popular and strong that fan base is. And then you have your Drakes and your Taylor Swifts, these artists that I think even in 10 years will still be some of the biggest artists of their generation.  [00:10:33] Benny Pough: And that's all catalog. You know, artists that have great music, amazing songs, and are true performers. So, you know, once you get to that level, it puts you in a category by yourself,  [00:10:47] Dan Runcie: Right. And so much of this goes back to the work of these artists working with record labels, and a lot of the names that we mention, they got big pre-streaming. And because of that, I think they entered a phase where record labels did do a lot more of the development to help bring them along to the area that they are now. [00:11:07] Dan Runcie: But I think what we're seeing now is, because of all of the tools and all of the do-it-yourself functions that we're seeing that artists have the ability to do, by the time you're ready to join a record label, the hope is that you at least have some footing behind you, right? This isn't necessarily the place that's going to bring you from zero to a hundred. But if you could get from zero to sixty, you sign with them and then that can hopefully get you to a hundred. And I think that's the piece of it that's a little different than even what we may have looked at 10, 15 years ago with some of the names you mentioned where it was still a bit harder for them to break out without having the additional support earlier in their career.  [00:11:49] Benny Pough: That's the equivalent. I don't disagree with you. The entry points probably are, you know, different, but in some very similar. Ideally you are a thousand percent correct. You can't look to a label to develop you at this point, but when you think about, you know, some of the earliest stars they were developed outside of the label as well, right? So, you know, that kind of overlaps in that perspective. I think the root of all of this is starting with talent, regardless, whether you were, you know, in the past and things weren't as technologically advanced or right now, you know, you have the ability of all of technology. But you don't have all of the components that are going to help you, i.e. great songs, great producers, you know, and all of those true means that are going to really push you to the next level.  [00:12:35] Dan Runcie: Agreed. And I think, for you specifically, you've seen it with so many of the labels you've worked out, whether it's Motown or even the run you had with Def Jam as well. And I do want to talk specifically about the Def Jam run because, as someone that loves business case studies, this is a turnaround story and you had a front-row seat to push that forward. Tell us that story and let's walk through that process. What are the key things you think that really helped Def Jam turn things around from that '93 to, you know, going on into the 2000s run? [00:13:07] Benny Pough: So the crazy thing was, you know, for me getting into Def Jam was, it was amazing. The fact that they were a closed shop. You have to realize Def Jam never really let outsiders in. Everything was homegrown. They were one of the very few labels that was truly closed shop, right? Like, the people who started there from interns elevated all the way up, you know, into the higher senior positions, I mean, i.e. Kevin Liles, who is, you know, the person who reached out to me to come over to the organization. So given that opportunity and I was on the West Coast and wanted to get back home, I was at MCA Records and I wanted to get back home. So when I got the call, I was like, wow, I can go for one of the most renowned hip-hop labels in the world and get back home. So it was a no-brainer. Shortly thereafter I came on, Kevin and Lyor exited the building and L.A. Walked in. And that was, you know, an interesting dynamic because, one, I'd, you know, heard a lot about him and knew, you know, his abilities, but I didn't, wasn't certain on what my outcome would be because he didn't bring me in. [00:14:10] Benny Pough: It was a great union because he was an amazing, as we all know, music maker, hit kind of guy. I was a promotion guru, you know, at that time in my career. So, it gave me a great opportunity to, one, work with one of the best, which also made me one of the best, great music, strong promotions, i.e. put it all together in a pot, stir it up, you got to hit artists, right? And the talent was insane. We had one of the best A&R teams in the business, one of the best marketing teams in the business, one of the best promotion teams, publicity, et cetera. And then we all played as a unit. And I think that's, what's really important in any business, including the music business. When you get a real starting fire and the goal is to really bring on the gold, it's unstoppable with incredible artists and amazing music. So, you know, that's how all of that came together. And through that, you know, between Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, Rihanna, Ne-Yo. We had Fabolous, Justin Bieber walked in, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It was just an amazing, amazing time in music for us and that component of those artists, that team, and everyone wanting the big win put us right exactly where you have in this conversation.  [00:15:31] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. And the other key thing with this, too, is that you also had a few leadership changes, as you mentioned. You had Kevin Liles, and then you had L.A., and then you were there during the Jay-Z stretch as well. And I'm sure with each of those, you were able to keep things moving just with the amount of talent that was coming through, but I'm sure that there were different things, whether it was leadership styles or things that the label needed at a particular time that was able to help it get to where it was during those 2000s.  [00:16:02] Benny Pough: So what's important, what people have to realize, and, you know, we put entertainment as though it's its own kind of business. It's still business. And you know, you have to learn how to manage up and manage down. And obviously, all the bosses have their own idiosyncrasies, but all of their goals is about winning. And obviously, you know, the people component is very important 'cause they're all specific on identifying the right talent, but also the right executives because true leaders understand, in the music business, the combination of both is what's going to help. You can have a star, but if you don't have people who can market it and promote it and put the music together, then it's going to take that star a little more. time Or you can have great executives, but you have artists that don't have drive. They're kind of confused on who their identity is. They write good songs, they don't write great songs, then it's kind of off balance. So when you get that real true alignment of both business and talent, that's when you have, and you look back at it, like go through the history of all of the strong labels. It's that marriage of really strong executives and really great artistry. So it doesn't change, right, where our business isn't different. We have just a non-traditional product.  [00:17:22] Dan Runcie: Exactly. I mean, at the end of the day, there's something that you're trying to sell. You understand the customer, you're trying to get what you can get out there.  [00:17:29] Benny Pough: Yes, sir.  [00:17:30] Dan Runcie: Looking back and you talking through some of these stories with these leaders making me think of that time as well. One of the stories I know that often gets talked about going back to around 2004, 2005, Def Jam is figuring out, okay, who is the artist that we want to propel, especially who is the woman artist we want to propel. And there was so much about whether the label is going to push Teairra Marí, or if the label was going to push Rihanna. And so much of that, I know that you were, had a front row seat in, what was that process like? And what is it like now just thinking about how it went and how, whether you could discern what we eventually saw play out, or if it was still tough to know at the moment how either career would've went? [00:18:15] Benny Pough: So let's be very clear. And especially in my upbringing in the music business and how I've always been disciplined and even in just me as an individual, I don't play sides. I have to give my all to each and everyone because we don't know. Like, I can't say this one is a hit and this one isn't. My responsibility in the pipeline is to make sure that I do my best to expose the product to the marketplace. In both of those scenarios, the company was behind both artists. Ultimately, the public is going to decide who are they going to weigh in more or not. But sitting here today, I wouldn't tell you I did more or less for either of those other than provide an amazing system for them to go through in order to have the opportunity to live their dreams. [00:19:04] Dan Runcie: And that makes sense. And I think that's the most fair way to do it.  [00:19:07] Benny Pough: Yeah.  [00:19:07] Dan Runcie: Were you surprised at all by the outcome or how things played out in terms of the public's response?  [00:19:14] Benny Pough: Rihanna's one of the greatest in the world. I mean, it speaks to its own, right? That speaks to itself and also realized she had, when you think about it, and there's very few artists, when you talk about classics, right? When you can go through hip-hop or R&B, like, classic albums, her first album was a classic album, right? So ultimately the people weighed in on what they appreciated from her at that point. And that in turn is about once where we started in this conversation, the artistry, it's the music and it's the team. So you got to think about a lot of artists who came through Def Jam through those years. We talk about the ones that, you know, went on and had massive success, but there were artists, too, that had great success. There were artists that make a good living and then there are artists like, it didn't work out because, obviously, the people did decide, not us. [00:20:06] Dan Runcie: Right. And that's what makes it so tough, I think, in any type of business, whether you're looking at other areas of entertainment, everything else, you could do the best thing that you think you want to put out. But there has to be some type of demand. There has to be something that is pulling artists through. And I think we saw that with the other singles that came off of Music of the Sun, Rihanna's first album. So fascinating times, it's really special to go back and think about it, especially now. I mean, who knows when we'll see the next album, but hopefully sooner rather than later. One of the things that stands out to me though, with the Def Jam time specifically, is just how much market share the record label was able to grow as well. And I wonder from your perspective, we're talking so much about balancing the business versus the art, so much of the work is focused on, okay, who can you promote? How can you push things? But there's also this zero-sum game of how can you get more market share than the other record labels that you're competing against and all of that. Was it ever a feeling like a bit of a tug of war between the art and the business of pushing these things knowing that there's this ultimate metric that the label's shooting for. But there's this longer-term aspect of trying to build and grow artists 'cause I know with other companies, it's kind of one of these things where you have the long-term goals, but how does that work with the quarterly earnings and I do think that market share is essentially that for record labels in the music industry.  [00:21:37] Benny Pough: So, a lot of that's going to be predicated on leadership. And, you know, the companies that I worked for were very artist-driven. And what was most important about having the artist was making sure that the artist got their best shot and performance. And so that was a driving force for us at Def Jam. You know, it's not being irresponsible, it's just a matter of, you know, investing in giving the music, the artists enough time to breathe. Everything is not going to just be determined in black and white. Everything's not going to be determined in dollars and cents. And the people who are aligned right from the business end, gas on, gas off. Someone has to read it, how much to invest in this artist because of what the tea leaves are versus investing in this artist, predicated on what the tea leaves are. If you have something that's not talking back or something that's not performing, then you can't throw enough money at it. They don't like it, but if you have something that's incrementally or even starts to just explode, then, you know, that's a better bet to hedge your money on. And the executives in the leadership, in the companies that have a really firm grasp of knowing when to gas on and gas off on which particular artist, as well as you know, the whole perspective of the business unit are the ones that have wins in both the artistry, people want to come in because, with the success of the artist, that's what people are excited about. No one signs to a label going, oh, you have the largest market share. They go, oh, Future's over there. Travis is over there. Gotti's over there, you know what I mean? That's what they're going to say. Khaled's over there. They're going to say that they're not going to go, oh, you guys had 11 share? No, they're not going to do that.  [00:23:22] Benny Pough: But in essence, all of it does work hand in hand, right? And on the other end with having successful artists, you have more market share, bigger profits. You know, now the executives, you're going to attract executives 'case they want to be there, right? Because good bonusing, good salaries, et cetera. So, a lot of that is really, really determined by the leadership.  [00:23:43] Dan Runcie: I'm glad you mentioned the Future, Travis, and Gotti 'cause that is your time at Epic. You were able to see this run. You were able to see those artists just push through as well and, obviously, a different record label. I'm sure things were likely different there, but you had worked at several beforehand. What is it like when you obviously know exactly what you're doing, you understand what's required to succeed in your role, but you know, that you're shifting into a different culture, shifting into a different environment? How do you adapt yourself as someone that has already seen success in different labels, but you're moving on to other companies and still understanding that, yes, you know how to make this artist pop, but there's different folks in charge and there's different things that are happening that you also need to be aware of as you're wanting to execute the best promotional campaigns possible? [00:24:39] Benny Pough: So Benny Pough is a brand. I'm not interchangeable in that way. My core values are my core values. And if people are hiring you or bringing you into their organization, they want the best of you. And obviously, and it's no different from going from, you know, the high school football team to the college football team. You have to learn how to adapt, but football is football. And in essence, you just learned in different plays from a different coach, and what they expect you and why they recruited you to bring you over is to bring your talent and show us exactly what we need to be done in order to win. So it doesn't become that complicated and don't forget once again, it's learning how to manage. Like, you can't come in with a crazy ego. You have to be adaptable, amenable, and willing to learn in someone else's environment, but also bring your best game to play.  [00:25:28] Dan Runcie: Were there any of the record labels you worked at where you feel like the culture or the way that they operated things was very different than the others? I know you were at Roc Nation Records after Epic but was any of them truly unique in this area?  [00:25:41] Benny Pough: I worked at seven different labels. All of them were different 'cause it's seven different leaders. And I think, like, the common thread with all of them is that they had an insatiable desire to win. So every person that I worked for wanted to win and they all saw a different path to winning, but that was the common thread. And then systems, you know, obviously, the ones who were successful had winning systems, and the ones who kind of meandered out had different kinds of systems. So I think a lot of it comes into play to the individuals, right? If everybody could you know, coach the New England Patriots, then everybody would be doing the job, right? It's the best of the best it's going to get, you know, to do that and sit in that seat.  [00:26:29] Dan Runcie: Right, exactly. And I know that sitting in that seat and having so much control over understanding what needs to be done is key with this. But I also recognize that you specifically with where you are in your career right now, you've worked at many different labels, but you're no longer working for a label. You've since left, you've left Roc Nation Records a few years back, and you are now building your own companies. Can you talk to me about that process, that transition, and why this was the right time for you to make that leap? [00:27:00] Benny Pough: Man, it's an amazing time in my life because now I have the opportunity of everything I learned, right? Think about the talent that I've identified over the years, the executives that I've groomed over the years, and realizing business and talent is something that I've been blessed to do. So now I can take all of that, what I've learned, and now apply it and reap the benefits for my family and friends. So I'm super, super excited about this time and being in the marketplace and having the freedom and flexibility to chase different and identify different kinds of talent, you know. Had I been at a major label, I wouldn't have invested in an app, right? Had I been in a major label, I wouldn't be launching my first conference. Had I been in a major label, I wouldn't be releasing a book. So it gives me, you know, the freedom and the latitude. But since I'd spent so much time learning the system, I am now approaching this from both a corporate perspective and entrepreneurial perspective, blended to now give the artists that I've signed as well as the ones that, you know, I manage and the business that I'm involved in, you know, the best opportunity to win because I've seen a lot of winning along the way. [00:28:19] Dan Runcie: Exactly and for you right now, you have Diverse Media, you have Kandiid, you also have real estate, and a few other business interests. How do you split your time right now? And writing a book as well, how do you split your time between each of these? [00:28:34] Benny Pough: Organization. It's no different than anything else. You know, whether you're working for someone or working for yourself, it's all time management, allocation of, you know, what needs to be done for this particular company today. You know, the things that need to be responded to, but most importantly, making sure that I'm reading the tea leaves properly because I'm the one that's investing. So it's, you know, being fiscally responsible is important and also taking the signs from the marketplace. As we talked earlier, the things that you learn along the way, just because I love it and no one else does, at some point I got to go to what they say versus how I feel because it's my resources, but I'm having a great time in this section of my life. [00:29:15] Dan Runcie: I got to imagine that's the biggest change as well, right? You're working for these record labels, part of these bigger corporations, someone else is always giving the final checkoff. And some of that may line up with what you want. Some of that may line up with what you don't want, but here, the buck stops with you, and there's sure there's so much freedom with that. How has that piece of it been? Because I know that that is likely one of the bigger changes or bigger shifts that comes with being able to run these types of businesses yourself.  [00:29:46] Benny Pough: It's exhilarating and scary at the same time. You know, what you realize or what I've realized along the way is, you know, was always indicative of having someone on the team to go, what do you think, or let's go through this one more time, you know, to help you formulate that opinion because all the opinions aren't yours and all decisions aren't just made by you. The buck stops with you, but you know, you can lean in and on other different resources inside of the company. When you're independent, it may not be as rich as far as having those qualified people to assist you in the decision-making. So I'm very tactical on how I approach things. Obviously, you have to get more analytic in determining, you know, how to proceed in situations in the companies that I'm invested in. And at the end of the year, it has to make sense, right? It's the bottom line. It has to make sense in order for it to continue.  [00:30:39] Dan Runcie: So let's walk through each of these 'cause I think there are ways to talk a little bit more about each of them, with Diverse Media specifically, global music, distribution, and publishing. This is your insights you're bringing. And you're like, I've been doing this for decades. I'm one of the most experienced people here. And I know what it takes to run the ship. What is the pitch then to artists who may want to, as you kind of put it yourself, they see the superstars that are still at the major record labels? You may not necessarily have the stable of the superstar yourself, but you're pitching yourself as your experience as well. How has that pitch been? 'Cause I'm sure that pitch is a little different when working for yourself as opposed to having the major label behind you.  [00:31:26] Benny Pough: So it's not for everyone, but it's for the right people. I've worked with some incredible talent as an independent now that I have been able to help groom them, teach them, develop them in a process that, one, a major label wouldn't look to them for. So we have different needs. It's a smaller investment for me in investing in someone who's at the beginning of their career. And we are more of a partnership because I'm going to be very specific as well of who we're going to give my time to. And for them, they get direct contact to someone who, guess what, can make a call and help them move a little bit further and faster than they would've on their own. So I enjoy that, that element of it, and it gives me the ability to stay very connected in the music space, but also grow and develop talent at the pace that they primarily would not get at a major. 'Cause once you get on the conveyor belt, it's your time. It's your time when they say it's your time. And I think what we're lacking now is the development, the true artist development. So that's what artists get the benefit from. And it works. [00:32:26] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I think, especially with the type of artist, you're looking at the sweet spot as well. There's so many artists that look at the technology medium as the means of growth or the means of exposure, right? I got to get on the streaming services. I got to get on TikTok. I got to start making reels and things like that. How much importance does that play for the artists that you serve? Because on one hand, as we're talking about at the beginning of this conversation, there can be so much emphasis on just having these songs or having these videos that are being put in this place, so you can write it up in numbers, but that still doesn't quite develop you as an artist, but it is one of these chicken and egg things. So how much of a focus is TikTok for you with the artist that you're working with?  [00:33:15] Benny Pough: TikTok is pretty much the hand were dealt in the music at this point. So you can't ignore it because that's what everybody's leaning into, but then there's a whole other means of developing talent outside of TikTok. And it all depends on what's specific for what you're looking for as someone in the executive seat. I mean, if I can see it on TikTok and everybody at a major label can see it on TikTok, okay, it's cool. But everyone's not going to see the same thing. Like, although it may have all of the mechanisms, it's making all of the growth, you know, week over week. It just may not be something comfortable for me unless you're doing, you're in the commerce game, right? You're just chasing money and that's fine, right? People do that well. I've always been someone who's been more about the artistry and people who are going to have staying power. So, you know, if you get lucky and you get one that becomes lightning in a bottle, that's great. But more importantly, you know, I'm a time over money kind of guy. You know, I'll develop you, you know, spend time with you, you and I like, yo, we figured out, you know, we committed to each other. And when it's okay, we might not have made the billion dollars, right? But we lived a good life and that's equally as important as those who, you know, get a couple million, then they go away.  [00:34:31] Dan Runcie: Right. And I feel like this lines up as well with Kandiid, which is your social media platform that you have. What role do you see it playing for artists and content creators?  [00:34:43] Benny Pough: It's the equalizer. It gives artists the opportunity to monetize on their content, which was crazy. When the pandemic started, we were one of the first platforms to actually introduce that, that people could actually pay to monetize their content. And obviously, you know, OnlyFans took on a whole other different dynamic, but also, too, that was web-based that wasn't an app. Like, we were an app that was in that space, you know, to put us into a different ball game and then having Soulja Boy come on and endorse the company and is also one of the co-founders involved, just opened up all kinds of vehicles and avenues for us as we started to grow and develop in the space.  [00:35:23] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's crucial. It's needed. And I think having the artists themselves as backers helps push it into a whole other level 'cause it goes back to the why does someone want to sign with the record label, they see who's involved with it. Why would they want to use a social media app or a new platform, they see who's involved with it. So that makes sense. The other piece of this, though, and we're talking about this a little bit before we recorded is what you're doing in real estate. You own a number of properties, even in my hometown, which I thought was pretty dope to hear about. Talk to me about that piece of it 'cause obviously very different from music, but there's so many wise reasons why it's a smart investment, but we'd love to hear what that journey was like for you, how it started and how you see it continue to develop. [00:36:07] Benny Pough: Mentally, I fell in love with real estate. If there was a passion, first thing I ever wanted to do was be a truck driver, just like my dad. And then the second thing was to own a home because we lived at a five-family home in White Plains, New York, where my parents had an opportunity to purchase this home from the owner who was moving back to Kansas. And when I realized the freedom that having a multi-unit at that time, you know, what it gave our family was exceptional. My father had the freedom, didn't have to work. My mother worked at the post office and was able to take care of us with, you know, the benefits from the health perspective and the building paid off the mortgage and put money in their pocket. So one day I said to myself, you know, I just want to be like my parents like when it's time for me to retire, I don't want to have to worry about how to make ends meet per se. So that was the impetus to this. Once I got into the music business and realized that, you know, it's one of the few businesses, especially for us as minorities, where, you know, you walk in and six months or a year, you could be making six figures, right? As a young person, there's no guidance, there's no financial planning, you know, there's no one telling you what the value of six-figure you might be making more than your Senator, right?  [00:37:23] Benny Pough: As a music person, so for me, staying in lockstep with what my parents were doing, I realized making this money, I had to prepare for my exit. So every bonus I bought a piece of property, you know, I bought a single family. I bought a single condo. I bought multi-units. I bought buildings. And to the point we were talking about, you know, I had even owned up to a city block at one point. So the benefit of the business was very, very giving to me and realizing that at one day it would end, that you'd have to create no different than any other entrepreneur, people who are out on their own in their own small business, you have to create your own retirement because one day you can be making a six figures or a seven-figure salary. And then the next day that's gone. It may never come back. So you can't live in the moment of just what you're receiving. You need to think about what you're receiving, also to be planning for the day when that's not there, right? So it's important, very, very important for young people or old people who are now, in their careers, figuring out the next steps is that you should always plan for the future.  [00:38:33] Dan Runcie: Well said, and I feel like I can hear some of the insights already that you're likely going to be sharing in the book you have coming out. [00:38:40] Benny Pough: Oh, absolutely.  [00:38:41] Dan Runcie: So talk to me a little bit more about the book. I'm sure that this conversation highlights some of those things that you want to share, but what are some of the things that we may not have covered that are the key themes from the book that you have coming out?  [00:38:54] Benny Pough: So On Impact spawned from a near-death car accident that took place in 2014, hit a tree at 90 miles an hour, sustained a level two concussion. That's when you black out from one to five minutes, L3-4 vertebrae fracture, bulging disk in my back, lacerated liver, and severed two feet of my small intestine. And in that moment, God put a book inside of me called On Impact, which is an acronym for intuition, mastery, pivot, authenticity, connection, and teamwork. And what it does is takes the reader for me with my first job that was, at 11 years old, delivering newspapers to modern day with an undercurrent of music because the majority of my life, I spent in the music business. And at the end of each chapter, I put together what's called a hit list or takeaways from each chapter for an individual to now apply to their daily lives and say pretty much if Benny could do it, I could do it, too. So it's a roadmap for interns to CEOs because I've done both.  [00:39:52] Dan Runcie: Nice. When's the date for it coming out?  [00:39:57] Benny Pough: September 27th, 2022.  [00:39:57] Dan Runcie: Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff, man. I feel like it will be, and I'm sure it already feels like it's going to be a ton of work leading up to it, but I am sure that once you're actually in the thick of it, you're seeing people resonate with it, like that's where the real reward comes from, right? You wanted to be able to share these insights, of course, life-changing and life-threatening challenges and accidents that you have to go through. But that's what gives you the clarity to be able to share this. So hopefully it can provide someone else and hopefully many others with the same insights. [00:40:31] Benny Pough: I think what happens for us is we don't get an opportunity to get the lessons when we need them. So, what I want this to be is a roadmap of giving people an opportunity to see, guess what, there are a lot of similarities for others just like myself. And now you don't have to struggle to figure it out. This is here for you. So I'm excited to share this with the world and give those who just need that little extra push and insight. Come get it.  [00:41:00] Dan Runcie: And they're in the right spot. Good stuff. Well, Benny, this has been a pleasure. We covered so much in your career, what you've been doing since then, especially on the entrepreneurial front, and also with other ventures, but for anyone that wants to keep tabs on you and follow what you're doing. Where could they follow and keep up with you?  [00:41:19] Benny Pough: All my socials are @bennypough, B E N N Y P O U G H. And come visit my website. bennypough.com anytime.  [00:41:27] Dan Runcie: Good stuff. Benny, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.  [00:41:29] Benny Pough: All right, Dan. [00:41:31] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Best-selling author Zack O’Malley Greenburg and I took a break for a new Dad-girl duties to talk about the latest headlines in the music industry — namely Irv Gotti selling a 50-percent ownership stake in Murder Inc.’s past music recordings. He got $100 million from Iconoclast for the deal, plus another $200-million credit line to fund future media endeavors Irv has planned.  After the sale, Irv did an interview with Billboard and quipped that monetary-wise, the music industry is the “lowest form” in entertainment compared to film and television. Zack and I debated that during our episode comparing top-line revenues for each entertainment vertical, plus how Irv’s deal compares to other splashy catalog sales in the past two years.  We also dived into a guest post on Zack’s Substack about how “moods” has become the new classification for music, not genres anymore. Discovery algorithms deployed by streaming services have pushed listeners toward moods — and away from regionalism (e.g. Houston-style “chopped and screwed”) and loyalty to particular record labels. It’s also another tell-tale sign that Gen Z is more fluid, less rigid than prior generations with their labels.  Below are all the music-industry topics Zack and I covered throughout the episode, plus a special segment on becoming Dad’s in the past two months: [0:55] Baby Duties For Zack & Dan [4:11] Irv Gotti Calls Music Industry “Lowest Form” In Entertainment  [6:09] Zack Still Gets Royalties for “Lorenzo’s Oil” [7:52] Top-Line Revenues: Music vs. Movie Industry [8:59] New Artist Perspective Skewing Perception Of Music Business [11:04] Did Irv Gotti’s Deal Get Made Before Market Correction?  [13:08] Irv’s Deal Was For Masters, Not Publishing [13:50] Crowning Jewel of Murder Inc’s Catalog [18:23] Why Mood Is The New Musical Genre [19:26] Gen Z Uses Labels Less Than Prior Generations [25:53] Post Malone The Genre-Agnostic Artist [27:10] Did Streaming End Regionalism In Music?  [29:53] Fan Attachment To Record Labels Has Disappeared [32:30] Stories From Two New Girl Dads [38:21] First Music Show For The New Babies? Tiffany Ng’s article on music being categorized by moods, not genre: https://zogblog.substack.com/p/why-mood-is-the-new-musical-genre Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Zack O’Malley Greenburg, @zogblog   Sponsors:   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Our generation, in general, is pretty hung up on labels. You know, everything from music to sexuality, to whatever, you know, it's like things have to be classified and, you know, there's kind of an obsession over putting things in buckets. Whereas I think Gen Z has a lot more about fluidity and sort of like, you know, questioning why we need these labels at all to begin with, or at least, like, maybe we should just loosen up a little bit about them, which I think makes a ton of sense, you know?  [00:00:34] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level. [00:00:55] Dan Runcie: This episode is the first one I'd done in a little bit, took a quick break from recording. My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world last month, so took some time, focused on family, and finally, ready to get back into the swing of things. And there's no better person to do it with than my friend, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, who recently is coming back from paternity to leave himself. Him and his wife just had a kid in May, and the past couple of months, Zack and I have been talking about our journeys, both leading up to this moment and after. So, and given what we cover in both music and entertainment, it was a good time to catch up on a few recent headlines. First, we talked about Irv Gotti and the $300 million deal he did for selling his Murder Inc. Catalog, doing a deal with Iconoclast for further stuff in media, TV, and film. And this statement that Irv Gotti made about music being the lowest-monetized form of entertainment. Zack and I had some thoughts, so we broke that down. We also talked about one of the articles that was a guest post in Zack's ZOGBLOG that he had published that was about moods in music and how moods and music are definitely taking over genres, especially in streaming, and how that may shape the future of how music's released and monetized. We're getting away from these genre legacy terms like country, rap, and pop and moving more so into chill vibes, or other things that are named by hyperspecific Spotify playlists. And Zack and I saves a little bit of time at the end for Girl Dad Life, where we chatted about some of our mutual experiences and some funny moments that we've experienced so far with having kids and what's that's been like with newborns specifically, so hope you enjoy this episode. Here's my chat with Zack.  [00:02:42] Dan Runcie: All right. We're back with another episode. And I'm joined by my guy who is also probably with limited sleep, fresh off of paternity leave himself, Zack, how are you holding up these days, man? [00:02:54] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Not too bad. I think we got eight hours last night out of Riley, little Riley. So life is definitely getting a little bit more normal but it's, it's all good. sleep or no sleep. It's just a blast.  [00:03:06] Dan Runcie: Ah, love to hear it. I'll hopefully be at that eight-hour stretch soon, a couple of weeks behind you with a newborn, but we'll save some time at the end to catch up on Girl Dad Life.  [00:03:16] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: All right. [00:03:17] Dan Runcie: Let's start things at the top though. We got some big topics we want to dive into, but this first one that caught my eye, and it sounds like it caught your eye, too. This quote is from Irv Gotti, who just did this huge deal. Of course, Irv Gotti, CEO, one of the founders of Murder Inc. He was able to do a $300 million deal recently with Iconoclast, where he was able to sell his share, his 50% share of Murder Inc.'s masters for $100 million. And plus he also got a $200 million line of credit. That's going to be specifically used for future TV and film projects that are likely going to be based off of some of the Murder Inc. IP or other things. But in an interview that he did talking about this deal with Billboard, he said this quote, and I've been thinking a lot about it. [00:04:11] Dan Runcie: He said, "Entertainment industry is music, TV, and film," right? "The music business is the lowest form, and I just bagged a hundred million dollars for some shit I did 20 years ago." And the interviewer then follows up and it's like, you know, can you say more? And he says, "It's just the facts. More money is made in TV and with movies than music. It’s a non-disputable fact. We love the music industry and I love the music industry. There’s money to be made. But [it’s dwarfed by] the money made from TV and film. If I have 100 episodes of television and I own it, they’ll probably put a worth on it at $300 or $400 million. With $300 or $400 million, I could sell it at a 10 to 20 multiple. That’s three to six billion. This is why Tyler Perry is a billionaire. That’s why I sold my masters and did this deal with Iconoclast." So I pause and, although I get what he's saying and I think there is some interesting discussion there, I think there's a lot of nuances there. And I'm not quite sure if I'm completely on board with him on this. That said, I think Irv Gotti is great. I always loved what Murder Inc. did, but I think that this particular statement is a bit more nuanced, especially with what we've seen happening in music the past few years.  [00:05:29] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, you know, and I think he got into some fuzzy math there at the end. I mean, I don't know, you know, to multiply what by 10? And we're talking how many billion dollars? Like, when Disney pay a billion for the entire Star Wars library, so, I know that was a great deal for them and it's worth a lot more now. I think the math might be a little bit off, but I would kind of flip it and say, you know, sure. You know, there are movies that gross billions of dollars or, you know, hundreds of millions or into the billions, low billions. But like, there aren't albums that do that. Okay, but, you know, in terms of libraries, I mean, we just saw Bruce Springsteen get half a billion dollars for his. [00:06:09] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: I mean, we're seeing, you know, masters in publishing go for hundreds of millions of dollars. The fact that Irv Gotti got a hundred million dollars for half of the Murder Inc. catalog. I mean, that's a wild number. No, not to sort of sleep on the Murder Inc. catalog, but, you know, it's not Bruce Springsteen. So, you know, I think that actually, the fact that he was able to get a hundred million dollars shows that the music industry is actually alive and well, right, in terms of the valuations. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure how much I, I, I agree with that, especially when you look at, you know, like for example, I was in a movie when I was a kid. The movie's called Lorenzo's Oil and I played Lorenzo. It's a, a big role, and I still get checks for 60 bucks, you know, every few months. And that's nice. And I'm sure that Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon who were in it get much bigger checks, but, you know, they can't really go and, like, sell that catalog. You know, you don't have masters as an actor. I suppose you could go and sell the royalty streams or companies let you do that now, but it's not the same in terms of intellectual property. There's not like an equivalent to, you know, songwriting you know, like the sort of, the same kind of IP that, you know, at least, if you are an actor or an artist, or, you know, you would have access into your, to your masters in a way that you wouldn't as an actor unless maybe you're Tom Cruise and you negotiate some crazy backend deal. So, I think the grass is a little bit greener on the music side than Irv is, is giving credit for.  [00:07:42] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I think the difference that you're highlighting is that it's not so much the top-line number. It's more so just how the business model under that number is distributed between who owns the underlying content and who doesn't. And I think if you're Irv and you're trying to compare this from this perspective of, if you're in music and you're trying to do a deal with Universal, whether you're an artist or you were an indie label at the time, trying to do a distribution deal or some type of joint venture. I forget exactly what Murder Inc. had at the time. But comparing that isn't the same to comparing what Tyler Perry is doing because even what Tyler Perry's doing, he is very much a unicorn in that right. There's not that many actors that are owning the underlying IP of the work that they're doing. Tyler Perry is the writer, the director, the producer for all of these things. That's why he is getting those things. And that is a very unique use case because in most cases, those are all different people in television. And I think, to be honest, TV is likely getting even murkier now because so much of the money that was going into these projects was based on this concept that these video streaming services could just have infinite growth and just keep growing and growing. [00:08:59] Dan Runcie: And now we're kind of reaching this point where people are like, okay, Netflix had 220 billion people paying $10, $15, almost $20 a month. Maybe that was as high as it could potentially go. I mean, I think there's plenties to break down there, but if those dollars aren't going to be as high as they may have been in that perspective, then we're going to see the shift. I did look at some top-line numbers, which are, I think, a good way to kind of balance things out. The music industry almost made $30 billion last year. I think it was around $28 billion last year for recorded music overall. So that does not include concerts or any of those things. I know that Irv isn't referring to that, but then if you look at the box office, I mean, that's more money than the global box office made, granted last year was a pandemic year so I know it's a bit tough to compare these things. And there's a lot more other things there, but it's not so much that this industry itself doesn't make as much money 'cause, yeah, you mentioned Bruce just got half a billion for all of his stuff. He owns this stuff and you know, that, you know, Born in the U.S.A. is going to be playing for decades, at least with, you know, as long as your Baby Boomers, and Gen X, and I guess even Millennials that are big Springsteen fans continue to listen. But I think that's different than how Irv might be looking at it. The thing is though it's not just Irv. I think that has its perspective. I think a lot of other folks have that perspective too, but I think it stems from when you are at the lowest rung of being the talent in the particular industry, I think music at that stage is likely a bit less advantageous than it may be for, you know, an actor per se. And maybe that's a bit of the difference where if you're a musician that's just signing on for a deal, it's going to take a lot longer for you to maybe recoup that money than an actor would, you know, signing on for an equivalent level size of something. But that's definitely very different than putting that as a global claim about the broader industry.  [00:11:04] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: That's true, but I, I would still argue that if you are an artist getting into the game as a, as a musician, the default would be that you would probably have shared ownership of your masters. If you were an actor getting into the acting game, the default is like you get an okay chunk of money for one movie, you know. It doesn't come with IP in the way that it would. And so it's not until later in your career that you can start to say, Hey, I want to be a director. I want to be a producer. Until you start to get, or, you know, or maybe you're kind of DIY from the beginning and, and you're doing it, all of it yourself, but that's, that's so unusual. You know, I don't know. I mean, I, I think the other thing too, is that like, and maybe this is part of what Irv was alluding to, I mean, that a hundred million dollars that he got, that to me seemed like a number that was more along the lines of the stuff we were seeing, you know, six months to a year ago before interest rates doubled. And we kind of stopped hearing about these big deals. So I wonder if that deal, and I kind of asked around a little bit and I couldn't get a, a firm answer, but I would suspect that that deal, you know, was agreed upon you know, like last fall or something before the economic environment changed and, you know, and it just didn't close until now 'cause these, these deals can take six months to a year to close and, and that's why, you know, you've got such a good multiple. But like these days, you know, when the interest rate is, like, gone from 3% to 6% or whatever, I guess it depends on the kind of deals you're doing, but, you know, that's a huge difference. And it sort of like makes buying music assets a lot less interesting because you know, when just, like normal financial instruments, you know, and not to get, like, too nerdy about it, but, you know, in the bond market are generating something closer to what a music catalog would do. I think, like, these big financial institutions are going to be more inclined to kind of like lean on their expertise rather than trying to, to do these exotic things or, you know, get involved with, with music catalogs and intellectual property and that sort of thing.  [00:13:08] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I could see that. I think the other piece of this, too, that may get lost in some of the details, especially, is that this isn't a publishing catalog deal. This is masters, at least partial ownership there, or not partial ownership, but at least the revenue generating from at least half of what Irv had, and at least in streaming, your recorded revenue from the master side is at least three to four times higher than what the publishers are getting. Of course, there have been some, there's some recent changes where the publisher royalty has increased. I think increased from 10 and a half percent to 15.1% recently. So that'll help, but still, that piece of it does in many ways, so even, let's say you were to compare this number for the Murder Inc.'s masters to let's say what Justin Timberlake got for his catalog deal. You can't necessarily compare that because Timberlake's was for the piece of the music sound recordings that were less valuable, relatively speaking, at least currently than this. So I do think sometimes, like, those things do get lost in it, but it would be interesting to see, yeah, what would that be like now if those deals were starting to shine a closer look if those conversations were happening? I think it would be interesting and also a bit unique because this deal is with Iconoclast. This isn't one of the standard players that we've seen that are handing out, you know, the nine-figure checks to these companies. Who knows what the conversations could have been like with Hipgnosis or Round Hill or some of the others. I feel like he may have alluded to that to some extent in the interview, but it was hard to get a sense specifically. [00:14:52] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. And you also wonder, I mean, how much, if it was about, you know, being able to say, oh, now we have a catalog that, like, there is some Jay-Z in there. There's some DMX in there. I think there's some J.Lo in there. You know, in addition to like a lot of Ja Rule and Ashanti, and you know, but that's kind of like a trophy to have that. You know, I don't know that it's quite so often that you know, anything by Jay-Z comes up. I think it was, there's a piece of Can I Live on there, which, which is pretty cool, so, you know, that that might have added, you know, a certain premium to it.  [00:15:23] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I was going to ask you that. What do you think is the crowning jewel of this catalog? I mean, every one of these catalog sales, it has the typical 80- 20 or the power law thing, where there is a few big songs that are really generating everything. I mean, you mentioned J.Lo. I mean, I'm Real has to be one of the biggest Murder Inc. songs they had, or maybe Always On Time with, you know, Ja Rule and Ashanti. Are there any others that stick out? [00:15:48] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: I mean, the Jay-Z one for sure. Which DMX song was it? It was a pretty big one. I think it's What's My Name?  [00:15:54] Dan Runcie: Oh, What's My Name. Oh, that, that was on X's catalog. That was Ruff Ryders and Def Jam.  [00:15:58] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Oh, that was. Okay.  [00:15:59] Dan Runcie: But Jay-Z, they, they were on It's Murda though, right? It's Murda from Ja Rule's Venni Vetti Vecci that had Jay and DMX.  [00:16:07] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: That's right. Okay. [00:16:08] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Is that right? [00:16:09] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: It was, it was some, it was like somewhere in the discography. I was looking at it though. Oh, well, I'll track it down someday. We'll have to talk about it the next time. But there was, there was a big DMX single that somehow ended up on there that caught my eye. But, you know, like a lot of the Ja Rule stuff, I think. I think maybe Livin' It Up was on there.  [00:16:26] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah, that was big. [00:16:27] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: That's a huge one. [00:16:29] Dan Runcie: Yeah, like Down 4 U, like Down Ass Bitch, like, you had a few of those that were in it. I think Ashanti had some big ones, too, like Foolish. Foolish was huge.  [00:16:38] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. Oh, yeah, here. Okay, it says What's My Name. It said that he produced What's My Name. So that's why, even though it wasn't... [00:16:45] Dan Runcie: Oh, interesting. [00:16:47] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. What's Luv? That's a huge one.  [00:16:50] Dan Runcie: Oh, that's a big one. Yep. With Fat Joe and Ashanti, yep.  [00:16:53] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. Yeah. Can I Live, Holla Holla, you know, so there's, there's some really good stuff on there. And I think you're right. It's probably, there's a couple, you know, without us having a, a look at the statements, it's hard to know, but it, it wouldn't surprise me if one of those songs is just like a sleeper hit that just continues to, I mean, we know it's a big hit, but it, it could be, like, way more lucrative than we ever imagined. Or one of those could have been in a movie, you know, more, more than the others or something like that. So, you know, I think a lot of these songs are going to be, actually, that's what one of the lawyers I reached out to about this said. He was like, you know, there's a lot of stuff in there that is very interesting from the sync perspective. You know, to the sort of like Millennial, Xennial crowd that grew up on that that would love to see it in movies, and TV, and video games, so yeah, that could be part of it, too. [00:17:38] Dan Runcie: Big on sync. Also, big on the likelihood of being turned into some viral TikTok trend. I don't know if that is a quantifiable metric they're using, but I would, I think it is. I just think of so many, the TikTok things that blow up and that era of early 2000s, late 90s hip-hop has done really well in a lot of ways. And sometimes it's so random, but I do think that that Murder Inc. sound captures so much of that. It's only before long that someone finds some, like, weird thing that happened in one of the music videos, and then that then becomes viral, and then it becomes like a whole TikTok viral campaign.  [00:18:16] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yep. Yep. Although don't know how, how much they'll be getting paid from TikTok, but that's a whole other, that's a whole other story. [00:18:23] Dan Runcie: We'll have to save that one for our next, for the next chat. We got to see how that whole situation firms up. But so the next topic that we want to talk about is a fascinating piece that was a guest post that was written by someone that you had worked with, Tiffany, and she wrote a really interesting essay on why mood is the new musical genre. And when you picked me on this, I read it, and it stuck out because I was like, you know what? It's a hundred percent right. If you look at Spotify and you look at how all these streaming services have shifted, how music is being consumed and listened to. Yeah, it isn't rock, pop country, hip-hop. It's a lo-fi chill vibes. It's, you know, backyard barbecue hang. It's all of these super niche things that reflect a lot more of where music listening is going. And I could only imagine there's so many broader implications that it can have, but I'd love to hear what you think about it.  [00:19:26] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah, absolutely. So I've been out on paternity leave and, you know, not really writing, but Tiffany who's a really great writer and, and was doing some research for me while she was a senior at, at my alma mater, at Yale. And, and she and I were actually, we worked on the same, basically, arts and culture desk on the school newspaper, you know, whatever it was, 15 years apart. So she, while I was out, she wrote this great long piece kind of talking about how, you know, from her generation's perspective, this idea that, yeah, that you would classify things by genre or really identify yourself as like a hip-hop fan or a rock fan or whatever, is all kind of moot. It's like an old people thing. And that her generation is more about moods and, and like you say, it's backyard barbecue or whatever it is. And people don't, you know, really care about genres so much anymore, you know, amongst the sort of Gen Z crowd, and she, you know, really kind of dug into some, I think, great examples of it and talked about Spotify classifications and how they put together, Audio Auras that give you your kind of, like, yearend picture of your listening tastes. And I think it's a really great point. And I think that, you know, our generation, in general, is pretty hung up on labels. You know, everything from music to sexuality, to whatever, you know, it's like things are, have to be classified and, you know, there's kind of an obsession over putting things in buckets. Whereas I think Gen Z is, is a lot more about fluidity and sort of like, you know, questioning why we need these labels at all to begin with, or at least like, maybe we should just loosen up a little bit about them, which I think makes a ton of sense, you know? I mean, I remember when Halsey put out that song, New Americana, and she talked about being raised on Biggie and Nirvana. And I was like, yeah, that's me. Like, I get that. But that always felt weird when people were like, well, what kind of music are you into? And I was like hip-hop, and grunge rock, and like some other stuff. That was always sort of weird, but I think it's good to see the next generation kind of embrace that more and that's what the article kind of dug into. [00:21:22] Dan Runcie: The label and generation identification is a huge thing. Do you remember growing up when the labels of how we were and folks were in middle school and high school was such a thing that people went down the road, it was like, oh, you're a skater? Oh, then you listen to Linkin Park. Then you listen to this and you dress, and you wear like JNCO jeans, like with the chain hanging from the back of your pocket to the front or whatever. You're a prep? Okay, you shop at Abercrombie & Fitch. You're probably wearing Adidas Superstars and you probably, I don't know, clothes from, like Structure or like Express, and stuff like that. Like, there were all these buckets, too, and then it extended as well. If you listen to hip. You probably wore Timberlands. You probably had Nike Air Force 1s, Ecko, or whatever the popular clothes were at times. Like, all of these things and this generation and timeframe is just like, no, that's not the case. And I think this mood thing factors in a lot of that. I think we're almost seeing this to some extent with things we've kind of just seen, like regionality as well.  [00:22:29] Dan Runcie: Like, I've heard a lot of people talk about how from, you know, certain generations it's like, oh, like, well, people in Seattle, they dress like this. Like, you could go to Seattle, walk or like, you know, the Pacific Northwest and everyone's wearing flannel like it's a Nirvana music video or whatever. Or if you go down south, like I would visit my cousins in Florida growing up and they would be listening to Ying Yang Twins and all these other songs that were popular at the time. And we just weren't listening to that stuff nearly as much growing up in the Northeast. And it hit that vibe. And I think now, too, because of the internet, so much of that generationality piece just, or not the generationality, the geographical identity is also dissipated, too, where people in Seattle can, you know, feel no different, especially from a youth perspective, could feel no different than someone growing up in Miami or Fort Lauderdale or whatever it is. So I'm curious to see how is that going to shape? Even the legacy labels that we do have on things. I think that the Grammys is, you know, clearly an institution that has prided itself on the number of options that it's given particular artists to have and celebrate their particular genre of music based on these legacy labels. I think it takes a lot of time for those things to change, but will we see that? Could you eventually see things where I think pop radio in a lot of ways? And radio, in general, is still one of the things that's still holding onto this generational, you know, label divides much to a fault because I think there's still certain types of artists that are precluded from being heard on Z100 or being heard on your mainstream stations, so, I think that it may still take time to get there, but I'm curious to see what did that look like 20 years, 20 years from now? Will we still see the same restrictions on radio and in award ceremonies? 'Cause I think those are the two areas that feel harder to disrupt than the broader culture that already has been disrupted by it. [00:24:32] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. And one of the other things that Tiffany wrote about in this article which you, oh, you can read it, just it's zogblog.com, and you can go through the newsletter. It's the latest post. I'll be back writing in a week or two, I think. But anyway, it's up there on zogblog.com and she said, she pointed out the IGOR one for best rap album, even though it's not really a rap album. Like, it's already happening, right, like, in categories at the Grammy's. So, right, like how, how soon until we start to change that or, or even have sort of like, broader, you know, kinds of labels. Like, what if it's like, you know, best chill album, you know? Best barbecue album? I don't know. So I'd love to see how that, how that kind of turns out. But, man, I remember, you know, in the nineties, when you would sort of put on your AOL profile what kind of music you listen to. A lot of people sort of also define themselves in opposition to certain genres. They're like, I listen to anything but country and rap, you know? That, I remember a lot of people that, anything but rap, anything but country. That was sort of their battle cry. And you know, I just don't see too much of that anymore. And I think that's a great thing, you know, like, why should you have to limit your taste? It's like, you know, you don't want to be a traitor to, to your emo, whatever, by, by listening to hip-hop. But now we have like emo hip-hop. It's great. I think it's cool that we have, you know, all these kinds of like mixings and subgenres. [00:25:53] Dan Runcie: Yeah, if anything, I think I'll see the angst more for particular artists themselves and not necessarily the broader genre, right? Like, I know there's people that, you know, they just don't like Post Malone for a number of reasons. And it's like, I get it, but you can't put Post Malone in a musical category to be like, oh, I don't like this type of music 'cause I guarantee you, whatever, you know, genre of music, you want to put him in, there's going to be an artist that sounds like him, may not look like him, may not have a fan base that, you know, vibes the way that his does, but you're probably going to like something of that, you know, type of thing, right? [00:26:30] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've gotten into so many arguments about how to classify Post Malone. Some people say he is hip-hop, which I don't really, I wouldn't classify him as hip-hop. Is he pop? I guess. I guess that's what you'd call it, but, you know, I wouldn't really say that he's rock. [00:26:45] Dan Runcie: I would call him pop, yeah. [00:26:47] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Pop yeah. Pop or sad frat party or something, you know? I mean, mood. I think mood is a great way with him, too.  [00:26:54] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I mean, is there any other broader implication that you can think of with how moods will just continue to shift over time and how moods may play a bigger role in music, either how it's consumed or how it's monetized?  [00:27:10] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: You know, I mean, I think really what's on my mind about that right now is I go back to what you were saying about regionalism. And, you know, I wonder if sort of this movement away from labels of genre, more toward labels of mood has to do with the fact that you know, there's sort of like, you know, national moods almost that you can attach to music in a way that you couldn't when things were sort of regional. And, you know, there was that whole moment where radio, sort of like the consolidation of radio, that kind of switch over to like the clear channel model. And you, you had sort of like the same, you know, whatever it was, KISS-FM or something like that, and you had these big playlists that were just kind of on rotation, the same playlists like all over the country, and you kind of lost a little bit of that local flavor. But actually, you know, as people were lamenting that the whole thing shifted over to streaming. And there's no regional streaming, right? And so I think it sort of follows that mood would sort of like become a new means of classification because once you eliminate the regional aspect to it you know, I don't know, it's, it's sort of like it maybe unnecessary movement to happen over time. And I think, you know, There's some cons to losing the regionalism and, you know, you get some unique sounds and certainly within hip-hop, it was really cool to see like Houston versus Bay Area, you know, like very specific microclimate-type sounds that you could get that, that, you know, within kind of bubble up and percolate into different like more mainstream hip-hop sounds. But you know, then again, I think it's cool to just other genres meld into other genres and have that be kind of the mixing that happens too. So, you know, pros and cons, but I think, I think there are a lot of pros to the mood thing over the genre label thing. [00:29:00] Dan Runcie: So before long, we're going to have to pour some out for the dirty south hip-hop playlist. Got so much play over time.  And maybe this regionalism trend or trend away from regionalism is just the way things are going. This is a sports analogy, more so, and there's other reasons behind it. But I look at what's happening in college sports right now with these major teams joining the Big Ten, joining the you know, or the Big East no longer really being a thing, and how so much of that is just a sign of where things are right now. And so much of what people really appreciated about what these conferences could tell you about a particular place in the country, that's not necessarily going to be the case if, you know, Texas and its whole culture is coming and joining, you know, joining the ECC, right? It's just very different.  [00:29:53] Dan Runcie: And I think to bring this conversation full circle, too, it's like, I've heard through the grapevines about record labels that had wanted to start their own metaverse experiences and being like, okay, this is the record label's metaverse experience. And then someone wisely told them, Hey, no one cares about your record label. Like, that's not the draw here. Like, I mean, in the folks that are inside the industry, of course, you can share the accolades and stuff like that. But the fans care about the artists. They're not going to be drawn. Like, the days are done of people being like, oh yeah, no Def Jam, like, in the heyday, I'm there. Like, that's just not how it works anymore.  [00:30:29] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. You know, I mean, if you're really in the business, you know, which labels have which ethos. But, you know, it, it really has blurred together more and more. And yeah, I think in the old days, you know, people would be like, oh, I'm an Atlantic records fan. You know, because when they pulled out that vinyl, you know, they saw that logo, and they knew that there was a certain type of artist and that Atlantic Records were a curator of the type of music that they liked. And maybe it wasn't the same genre always, but there was, you know, they knew that it would be good. But if you're a casual listener, there's not really even an opportunity to easily know what label anybody is on. So why would you care? And I think, especially since you know, I mean, I think there was a heyday in the nineties of hip-hop artists shouting out the record labels that they were on or that they owned and that was sort of, you know, important. Definitely, like Ruff Ryders had a very different ethos from Bad Boy. And, you know, you might classify yourself, you know, more in one bucket or another and identify with that. But I think so much of that has just dissipated in the streaming era, 'cause yeah, you're not looking at a physical thing. So you know, who knows, who cares what labels anybody on, and why the hell would you really want to go to an individual label metaverse thing? I'm glad somebody told them that they shouldn't be doing that anymore.  [00:31:43] Dan Runcie: Definitely. No, definitely. All right. Well, we saved some time at the end for the section that's near and dear to both of us, as, you know, if you followed either my writing or Zack's writing recently, you know, that we both had kids very recently. So Zack had his daughter in May. I had mine in June, and it's been great to just, you know, connect and bond and hear more about how things were for both of us leading up to this point and now after. So I figured now that we're on the other side of it with relatively newborn and young children, we could have a little section here called Girl Dad Life, where we each share one interesting or funny experience that's happened for both of us trying to navigate fatherhood here. So Zack, I'll let you start. What's your experience been like? And what's yours? [00:32:30] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. You know, less than a, like a specific story, it's really more about an overall vibe mood, if you will. Man, I know it sounds corny, but the moment you become a parent, this compartment opens up inside of you and it's just filled with a new capacity to love that you didn't know was in there. And it just is like overwhelming and beautiful and is, is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I think that one of the things, you know, like I think the best advice I would give is, is that there's no, like, right way to do it. And people have been having babies for a very long time without all the gear and whatever, and we've survived, as the human race. But I think the thing that, that always surprises and delights me is that you know, Riley, despite being eight weeks old, I mean, from the very beginning, has been a little human who, who knows what she wants. And it's like pretty straightforward. If she's crying, you know, she needs to go to sleep. She needs food or she needs a diaper change. And if she doesn't like that, it's time to put on, like, any number of different songs or albums that she likes. And she's, talk about a musical omnivore. Oh, my God. She loves, like, Shirley Bassey, Big Spender. She loves Biggie, Mo Money Mo Problems. You know, she's really like, no genre constraints when you're an infant. And I think it's just really cool to see that, you know, she could be crying and then that beat comes on and she starts smiling, you know? [00:34:00] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: I would also say like, I, I read this book called Bringing Up Bébé, and it's all about the French method of child-rearing. And they're really big into this idea of, like, the baby is a human with thoughts and preferences the minute they come out of the womb and sort of just like paying attention, you know, and, and also giving them a second to try to figure whatever it is out. Like, if your baby starts to cry, you know, don't necessarily just, like, drop everything, rush in and, you know, give your baby a second to try to figure it out. And sometimes they won't. And then you go and tend to them, but, like, if you don't give them a chance to figure it out as babies, then they'll never be able to sort of figure it out on their own as adults. So I thought that was a really cool insight. How about you?  [00:34:43] Dan Runcie: Yeah. It's funny. You recommended that book to me, a couple of other friends did too. And I read it and yeah, it was a really an interesting read and it was a good reminder of, like, yeah, people have been doing this for plenty of years, and just because your baby doesn't have the newest, fanciest insert whatever, stroller, bassinet this and that, like, the fact that you're thinking about this to this extent means that you'll probably be fine and the baby will be fine. But a few funny stories that we have that I could share, so one of them when we were in the labor delivery phase, one of the folks that was in the room with us, she was a volunteer doula that was helping with a few things. She had asked me, she was like, oh, did you want me to take pictures? Because she could see I was trying to, like, multitask. My wife had wanted me to take some pictures and I was like, yeah, sure. So then not only did she take pictures, she took a video of everything, from like the moment of, you know, when my wife started pushing to everything after. And then I remember like when, you know, my wife was still recovering, I watched it, and I was like, oh wow, I did not realize she captured everything. And then my wife was just like, I do not want to see that. And then I think she heard me watch it. And then she was like, okay, I have to see that. She was like, was that me? Like? I was like, yes, yes, that was you. But it's okay. You know, completely normal, unexpected. So that's, what's there. But, yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree with you more on, you know, everything from the love, life-changing perspective, you know, something we had wanted, and, you know, it's been so good from that perspective and just pick it up on cues and stuff. There are definitely a few funny moments that we'll always crack ourselves up as 'cause you have to, right? It's like, I mean, you know, we both know what it's like with the whole sleep deprived, everything and, and all that. But you do start to notice the baby's patterns and stuff. And like how they'll react to, you know, when you're either about to feed or when you're about to give a bottle or any of those things and just the instant reaction, so. It's something else. But, you know, it's been good. I mean, we're recording today. Today's actually one month since she was born.  [00:36:38] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Oh, my gosh.  [00:36:39] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Time has is flown by, time has flown by. And this is, like, the first podcast I had done since then. Everything else up to this point had been pre-recorded stuff we planned, so slowly getting back into the swing of things. I think I'll most likely be back in like a full-time perspective, maybe sometime later this month, but I think, you know, just going slowly week by week there. It feels good to have the work stuff to mix in with everything, but like, life-changing in the best way. [00:37:03] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah, well so you're coming up on five weeks and actually one of my favorite moments so far happened at five weeks. My wife and I went out with Riley  and we went out for dinner at a sidewalk cafe in New York. And, you know, Riley's, like, sleeping, we're having a great time and chatting and eating. And you know, after maybe like an hour, she starts crying, and so I take her out and I'm kind of rocking her, and she's crying. And there are these ladies sitting next to us  and I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.  And they're both like, no, really don't worry, we have babies at home. And my wife goes, do you have any advice for us? And the one lady goes, how old's your baby? And Danielle says five weeks. And she goes, honey, you don't need any advice. You're at a restaurant with the five week old.  Like, God bless you.  And that was exactly, exactly what we needed to hear. And I think it's also like a great indication of, you know, your old life isn't over. You could still do stuff. You just have to plan it a little more carefully and be flexible. And  I was shocked like if you had told me a couple months ago that I'd be doing that at five weeks, I wouldn't have believed you. But it's been really cool to just have the summer to chill out and spend time with Riley, and it's so cool to be having like the same timing as you would kind of like  go through the milestones, so.  [00:38:18] Dan Runcie: Definitely. When do you think you'll bring Riley to a music festival or some type of event like that where she's wearing the headphones and you and Danielle enjoying yourselves? [00:38:29] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: We already got her headphones. [00:38:31] Dan Runcie: Ear muffs, I should say. I said headphones. [00:38:33] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, right, right. Ear muffs. Well, we put them on, we did a trial run on the 4th of July. And initially, she smiled a lot and I think she thought they were pretty cool. And then she was like, get this shit off of me. So I don't know. We actually were thinking of venturing into Central Park to SummerStage. A couple of weeks ago, I think Trombone Shorty was there. And then our plan just got blown up with like the various feeding schedules and things like that. So I don't know. I think we're ready to try. I think it just has to be a SummerStage thing, and it has to be like not too hot or too cold, and go for it. But I think the first time we're just not going to buy tickets. We're just going to stand outside, and see how it goes, you know, for like a half an hour. And then if that's okay, then maybe we'll work our way up. But yeah, I mean, so great to be in a, in a place where live music is just, you know, a short walk away. She hates being in the car, so it's a good thing we're in New York.  [00:39:29] Dan Runcie: Perfect. No, that's great.  [00:39:32] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: When's your first concert plan?  [00:39:34] Dan Runcie: It's funny because last year Outside Lands here in San Francisco was in October. So in my mind, I was like, oh yeah, we could do it in October. But then I forgot that it was a pandemic year and Outside Lands is in August. So that's like two weeks from now. It's, like, the first weekend in August that Outside Lands is, and a concert might be a little much in, you know, two weeks if you're listening to this one week from recording. But I'm hoping that, you know, some early fall, hopefully, we could do something.  [00:40:00] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Yeah. Fingers crossed for both of us.  [00:40:03] Dan Runcie: Definitely, definitely. Well, Zack, this is a pleasure. Appreciate you coming on. We'll make sure that we link to Tiffany's post in the show notes and, yeah, so next time, we'll hit you up and then, you know, we can definitely save some stuff for our next Girl Dad Life quarter, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of stuff happening in the industry. Everyone's on vacation right now, relaxing, but soon enough things will be ramping back up.  [00:40:26] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: Amen. Well, thanks for having me on Dan as always, and best of luck on fatherhood on your end, too.  [00:40:31] Dan Runcie: Likewise. Thanks, man.  [00:40:32] Zack O'Malley Greenburg: All right. [00:40:34] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.

Twenty-four years after their debut album, Black Star — the duo of Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey — is back with its sophomore release, “No Fear Of Time.” Talib joined Trapital to discuss the long-awaited return album (which dropped in May) and why it was released exclusively on the paid-subscription podcast platform Luminary. Spurning traditional streaming platforms like Apple Music or Spotify was about serving its true fans, Talib told me during our interview. The pair was already in business with Luminary, hosting an original podcast “The Midnight Miracle” alongside Dave Chappelle. The way Talib sees it, the group’s most dedicated fans — one’s that care about them on a personal level beyond just spitting bars — were already rocking with them on Luminary. And after a career that’s spanned four decades, Talib is more interested in engaging his core fanbase rather than reaching the masses.  Disruptive art is on-brand for Black Star. Similarly, Yasiin’s latest solo album was exclusively distributed inside a 10-week art exhibit in Brooklyn. For Talib, he’s blended different musical genres and sounds his entire career. “As an artist, it’s my duty to try everything I can,” he told me on this episode.  For a closer look at Talib’s creative and business approach, you’ll want to hear our interview in full. Here’s all our talking points during the episode: [3:16] Black Star’s New Album “No Fear Of Time” [4:10] Why The Album Released Exclusively On Luminary Podcast Network [8:07] Why Talib Moved Away From Patreon [10:37] Art Vs. Business [14:11] What Talib Has Learned In Different Creative Pursuits  [15:55] Yasiin Bey Makes Talib “Step Up” [19:23] TikTok’s Influence On Modern-Day Music [23:00] Why Talib Avoided Clubhouse  [25:12] Talib Doesn’t Miss Twitter [29:41] Speaking Out Against Online Trolls [33:51] Putting Out Music On “Own Terms” [35:24] Talib Did 200 Shows A Year For Two Decades Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSS Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Guests: Talib Kweli, @talibkweli   Sponsors: beatBread is your music platform to get funding and stay in control. You can get advances from $1,000 to $2 million, and you keep your masters. To learn more, go to beatBread.com   MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital   Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital   Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop’s biggest players by reading Trapital’s free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTION [00:00:00] Talib Kweli: Most of my music is available for free on YouTube. On Kweliclub.com, you can get all my mixtapes for free. You can get the album Fuck the Money for free. My biggest song Get By, you could, if that shit came on in the store, you could Shazam it and listen to it on Shazam for free, you know what I'm saying? [00:00:16] Talib Kweli: Like, it's got 15 million views on YouTube. You could go listen to it on YouTube for free. You mean to tell me I can't get $10 or $5 or $30 with a new Black Star album with all this free music you're getting? What are we even talking about? You know what I'm saying? Like, how are you ignoring all of this, to complain about this? [00:00:42] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level.  [00:01:03] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is the one and only Talib Kweli. He is one half of Black Star which is back with its second album since their debut 24 years ago, 24 years. It's crazy how long it's been. But it was great to talk to him about why he chose to release it now and also why he chose to release it exclusively on Luminary. [00:01:25] Dan Runcie: Luminary is a paid audio platform, specifically known for podcasting. So we talked about that decision, why it was important for him and Yasiin to release it on a platform where they already had a podcast and what that means for him moving forward. And what it ultimately focuses on is the quest for autonomy and control and independence in being able to reap the rewards that come from it. [00:01:49] Dan Runcie: This is nothing new to Talib Kweli. He's released music on his own website, Kweli Club. He's used Patreon as well to release his music. So we talked about what the decision was like to release on Luminary and more broadly what this means for him as an artist. He's someone that has toured a lot over the years. [00:02:07] Dan Runcie: So we talked about what it's been like since the pandemic. What it's been like finding the right sound and themes given so much of the conscious rap that Black Star and Talib himself were known for over the years. And we talked about a whole bunch of other trends in the industry. Great conversation, really insightful. [00:02:24] Dan Runcie: Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Here's my chat with Talib Kweli. All right. So today we have the one and only Talib Kweli, one half a Black Star, which is back with its latest album, No Fear of Time. So the album's been out for a little bit, man. How are you feeling? How do you feel about the response?  [00:02:41] Talib Kweli: I feel grateful and blessed, and I'm happy that the fans have gotten a chance to hear it. I've been listening to it or iterations of it for a number of years now. And I'm just happy to have gotten it out.  [00:02:53] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I bet. I think too, I'm glad that the fans are hearing it 'cause one of the big discussion points about the album, which stuck out to me, was how you chose to release it. And I give you so much respect for doing it on your terms and not necessarily following the main path because we all know that artists have their own autonomy and independence. Like, you don't have to just do the standard thing. So credit to you on that.  [00:03:16] Talib Kweli: Well, yeah, you know, all praises due to the most high and really, I give the credit to Yas he was the one that really stuck to his guns on that. You know, my music is widely available or many platforms, not all of it, you know, some, some things I have exclusive, but we've had offers as you can imagine all through the years to ways to put out the Black Star album in a more traditional way. [00:03:37] Talib Kweli: Yasiin stuck to his guns on that. And by default, just me, me being in a group with him, I benefit from that. Because the situation absolutely was a beneficial situation to me and, to be frank with you, one of my most favorite situations I've been in business-wise in terms of my relationship with my art and how it gets out to people. [00:03:59] Dan Runcie: That's good. That's good to hear because I know that you've done a few different things independently. You've released albums on your own website before, you've done Patreon. What made you choose Luminary this time?  [00:04:10] Talib Kweli: Well, we were already in a very fruitful relationship with Luminary due to the fact that we had the podcast on Luminary with Dave Chappelle, the Midnight Miracle Podcast. [00:04:19] Talib Kweli: And it was attractive to us, the idea that fans who are willing to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, fans that are already spending money with us, fans that are following us enough to know where we at, fans that are interested in our conversation, right? Fans that are interested in us as men, as human beings and not just like feed us, feed us, feed us art, feed us content, but fans that are really interested in what we think and how we see the world and how we see art.  [00:04:50] Talib Kweli: Those fans, I feel like, that niche was either already on Luminary rocking with the Midnight Miracle or if they had heard about the Midnight Miracle, that would be exciting to them. And so just automatically it weeds out the people who are like, Nah, I'm not interested in you as a human being. I'm not interested in how you feed your family. [00:05:11] Talib Kweli: I'm not interested in your, your thoughts on the state of the industry. I just like them bars and the beats. I just want to hear the music. But that's not the fan I want, you know, and that's not a fan. That's pop music. Pop music is like a blanket, trying to blanket and cover everything and get every single ear. [00:05:28] Talib Kweli: And I don't need every single ear and I don't need all eyes on me. I just want to rock with the people who want to rock with me. And that, that's the first thing beyond the fact that, you know, the business of Luminary is, that we're in is a fair arrangement. It's not, you know, it's not ownership. [00:05:45] Talib Kweli: It's just fair. It's the antithesis of what happens with most of these streaming networks, most of these DSPs. So it's, it's just a, it's a good situation. And it's not, you know, the news was, was announced that Dave Chappelle at other people had been invested in Luminary. So it's not just something where it's like, we're asking people to come to something that we personally don't put our money where our mouth is, you know what I'm saying?  [00:06:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah. Because that's what I saw. I saw that Dave Chappelle was an investor. I assumed that maybe you and Yasiin were as well. And 'cause I know some people, I wondered, okay, well, if I was going to do $5 a month, is that $5 that I could just put directly in Talib's pocket? [00:06:25] Dan Runcie: But you're like, Hey, we also want to support the people that have clearly been with us, paying for Midnight Miracles, paying for our content. So it's not just about the monetary aspect. It's about being able to share and celebrate with the people that have already been with you.  [00:06:39] Talib Kweli: Yeah, exactly. And I can't speak for Yasiin's investment to what he do with his money. You know, that's, that's really his business. I really don't know. But for me, I, I have Kweli Club, as you mentioned, and I'm very proud of Kweli Club, but people are not there. You know, I've never been on Bandcamp. I just started a page on Bandcamp this week for the first time because I've heard about Bandcamp. [00:07:02] Talib Kweli: But in my mind, I'm like I could do that with Kweli Club. I could have my own Bandcamp. And Kweli Club is still rocking and is a unique experience to sell books there, there's product and information and things you could get from me there that you can't get no place else. But now you can also get my music, some of it on Bandcamp and the Black Star album is on Luminary. And I think I'm going to probably do some more things with Luminary.  [00:07:23] Talib Kweli: It has all these other podcasts and it's like, whether you're into those podcasts or not, right? Like, you might not want to hear Trevor Noah, or Roxane Gay, or Russell Brand, or some of the other podcasts they have there, or the People's Party, or Midnight Miracle. But you can't say, well, we're just asking you to pay for this album. You can't say that 'cause that's not accurate. What you're paying for, you're getting a lot more than an album.  [00:07:47] Dan Runcie: I agree with that. And I think the distinction here, too, that I think about, I know you mentioned on your website, of course, you could do it there, but that's not necessarily whereas many of the fans are, as you mentioned, how does this compare to Patreon? For instance, I know you've used that in the past to release art and release your work specifically. [00:08:07] Talib Kweli: I respect the Patreon audience, and the Patreon people, and the people who started it. It's a very good idea. That is very artist-centric. But for me personally, it was Patreon just like everything else is based on your level of engagement. It's a social media platform, right? So the more you engage there, the better it's going to be. [00:08:25] Talib Kweli: And they got, what, the Discord. They're plugged in LinkedIn with, and it's just for me, we're already engaging on other social media apps to then take that time. And I engage where I enjoy, right? I don't do it just for business. Like, I'm talking about things I enjoy. And also that, because I enjoy the engagement, it's also rewarding to me. [00:08:45] Talib Kweli: It brings followers and listeners, whatever, but you just to add time to do it on Patreon, I didn't, I couldn't get into the engaging in the social media part of Patreon. And I feel like for me personally if you're not going to, I feel like if I wanted to engage to the level of some of the other creators on Patreon, I probably would've done better there, but my interest never, never quite got to there. [00:09:11] Talib Kweli: And so that's what this is, there's no disrespect to that platform. I just think it's a personal taste or what you enjoy doing. And I see, I see people who do very well on Patreon.  [00:09:20] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I feel like for you specifically, we are talking about being able to invest in a platform, not just with your money, but with your time as well. [00:09:32] Dan Runcie: And if you're going to get the most out of a platform, you got to put a lot into it. And you already had work in luminaries. So I feel like that connection was there for you. And this also makes me think back to when you had released your Gutter Rainbows album. This was back in 2011, and I feel like at least of what you had written at the time, this was a bit of a, a turning point for you because I think what we're talking about is the autonomy, and the independence, and the impact of that, especially from an economic perspective where you're like, you know, you put up your own money, you tripled your investment in a few months, and you're like, even at the more commercially successful albums you had before that, you never saw something like that. And I feel like that shaped a lot of your experience and outlook forward. [00:10:15] Talib Kweli: Yeah. And it's even in 2022, it's even more like that. I'm still learning, and growing, and bending, and shifting. And the space I'm in now is even a lot more independent than I was when Gutter Rainbows came out. Now it's just like the industry's completely broken down. Like, when Gutter Rainbows came out, it was like on the way to really, really breaking down. [00:10:37] Talib Kweli: But now it's completely broken down. It's like the wild, wild west. And it's like really about what you invest in yourself. It's really about focusing on the business aspect of it, like where you completely leave the ego out of it. And that's so difficult for a lot of artists because a lot of art can be, for better or for worse, ego-driven. And it can be, you know, people say that art is reciprocal. You want people to like your art, you put it out in the world, and you search around to see who's feeling it. And that could really have an adverse effect on your ego and what your value system is, right? [00:11:10] Talib Kweli: And, you know, me as an artist personally, I've spent money. I've invested in things that I knew I wasn't going to see no return on, over and over and over again, just for the sake of the art, just for the sake of the culture. And I'm not just talking about my art. I'm talking about other artists on Javotti Media, you know, there's things that I've invested in and I'm like, I don't see a path to making a profit here unless by some stroke of luck or miracle, something, someone feels as strongly about this art as I do. [00:11:39] Talib Kweli: And it gets a placement somewhere. Someone picks it up for a movie or something, like that's possible, or use it in a commercial, stuff like that. But I mean, those are long shots. That's not a guarantee. That's not like a plan for success, unless you're going into those situations where you're, you're knowing how to pitch those things and have those relationships, which I did not and do not, you know, so yeah. [00:12:02] Talib Kweli: My thinking on it now is not that at all. Because I've done that. I've done the artist thing for so, so, so, so long, and I'm not really a businessman at all. I'm a businessman by default. I'm a businessman because I have to be, I love, I love this art so much. I love this culture so much. And in order to sustain myself, in order to live the life I want to live and to feed my family, offer this art I had to learn a certain degree of money management, time management, business management in order to just do what I do, but I don't enjoy it. [00:12:32] Talib Kweli: and this is why this conversation was in, in doing this podcast was interesting to me because I think it's very important whether I enjoy it or not. [00:12:41] Dan Runcie: I think that's an important distinction, because I do think that we see artists now that clearly you could get the sense that music is an afterthought for the bag that they're trying to get. But at the end of the day, I still believe that most of the people in this want to do it primarily because they love the art and they are much more aligned with you where it's like, they had to do this because they didn't want to get, you know, taken advantage of by the system. [00:13:05] Dan Runcie: They didn't want to not have things work out in their favor. So by default, you have to have some, you know, cursory level of knowing what works and what doesn't. And as you kind of mentioned earlier, that bar has increased a lot since Gutter Rainbows, that has increased a lot since so many of these things. [00:13:22] Dan Runcie: So the landscape forces you to do that, or else you may likely get taken advantage of unless things work out luckily in your favor. [00:13:31] Dan Runcie: I think, too, for you, something else you mentioned with this, just thinking about needing to reach so many fans, if you are relying on this major system, so much of that relies on taking you away from the core people that are really rocking with you, because if you're trying to reach the masses and you're trying to do what a major label may want you to do to try to reach the masses. [00:13:53] Dan Runcie: then you may have, they may want you to either shift your sound. They may want you to try to do all these things, which further take away from the autonomy and control that you clearly want to be able to have. So I get the sense that this more recent stage of your career has likely been more freeing from that perspective. [00:14:11] Talib Kweli: Yeah, I mean, as an artist, I really, really, really want to try everything. I've definitely tried in my music to make music, to take aspects of what I do, who I am as an anti-racist person, as a pro-black person, as a person who likes a certain type of what they call underground hip-hop and take those sensibilities and stretch them, expand them and find global audiences. [00:14:34] Talib Kweli: And I've worked with artists all over the world from different genres. I've tried many different styles. I've sang. I've done double time. I've done, you know, I've round over trap beats. I've done it at all. I've tried every single thing because as an artist, not only is that my right, feel like it's my duty to try everything I can. [00:14:52] Talib Kweli: But in that trying, what I've learned is is that the more I try different things, the more I start to lean towards being comfortable in being the best at what I do, finding that thing that what it is that's unique about me and finding that. And I've tried that through my career. [00:15:09] Talib Kweli: People, there's albums of songs, things that people are, like, maybe be like, I don't like when Talib did this, or I don't like when Talib did that. And some of that, some of it worked and some of it didn't. There's some of it that I love that people hate. And some of it that people hate that I love, I don't even know if I just said the same thing twice, but you know what I'm getting at. [00:15:27] Talib Kweli: But in this state, business-wise and creative-wise, I'm closer to the vest and more about what is it that I do best. And try to put that on display.  [00:15:40] Dan Runcie: Right. And that last piece you talked about in terms of doing things you loved that the fans didn't like, or the fans not doing things you liked, but then you actually liked it yourself. Did any of that influence how you and Yasiin went about this latest album?  [00:15:55] Talib Kweli: Well, the good thing about Yasiin is that he try, he does try as much as I do. He tries different styles. Absolutely. I've heard him rap and sing on all different types of things. But what really helps shape the Black Star sound is I'm the steward of the beats and the administration. [00:16:12] Talib Kweli: Like, I'm going out and finding the beats, and looking for producers, and booking studios. I'm doing all that. But what Yasiin is doing is he's trying to get closer to God in his lyrics. You know, all his albums, all his projects start with Bismillah and all his bars and where he is trying to go lyrically is always about a higher level of self. And trying to get closer to God, whatever that is for you. And so it makes me step up, frankly, and it doesn't make me just step up, but it makes me because let's not get it fucked up. Like I don't slouch from my, on my other projects. You know what I'm saying? So it's not just about stepping up, but it's also about the focus. [00:16:54] Talib Kweli: It's just different. And it's like that when I worked with Styles P, it was a different type of focus. When I worked with 9th Wonder in them, it was a different type of focus. When I work with Hi-Tek, it was a different type of focus and, you know, even on my solo albums, even the producers I work with, whether it was DJ Scratch or Kanye, will.i.am, whoever. Like, wherever I go with that person is is pulling some out of me. And what Yasiin pulls out of me is wanting to be closer to God.  [00:17:19] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I definitely get the sense of that. And even listening to y'all two conversations, hearing it from the album and even just, you know, his own evolution with religion, I always got the sense that, for you two, like spirituality and the importance of that was always going to have a theme through its music. [00:17:36] Dan Runcie: And it's been interesting to see how, like, that piece from a tonality has evolved over time as well. The debut album you had, there were so many things that were timely to that era. And I think in this album, too, we're kind of seeing so much of it because I think that there's a lot of things, whether it's about, you know, black liberation, freedom that I think were relevant then, relevant now. However, it looks different in a way that I feel like you all are able to keep a lot of the same themes, but have more of a modern shift to it, which I don't think necessarily applies to a lot of people that are still creating music from the late nineties and putting it out today. [00:18:13] Talib Kweli: Yeah. I hear you. And I think that was very intentional on our part. This album was formed over a lot of conversation and, you know, it's 24 years since the last project in them, you know, there was a lot of attention to detail. A lot of attention to detail, but also with the idea that it's got to sound loose. It's got to sound organic, and raw, and loose. It can't sound overproduced.  [00:18:37] Dan Runcie: Right. And it has to be timely as well in a way that it can both stand, you know, the test of time. But it also, you know, whether you're talking about millennials and how people are relating to particular things, it has to relate to that piece. [00:18:51] Dan Runcie: And I feel like that resonated with me, at least, for being able to hear things as well. But there was something else you said even earlier in this conversation that I was thinking about in terms of doing things and you always willing to try things, whether it's going with EDM, working with different producers. I'm curious, how does that shift with looking at different formats as well to put out music? Because I know that there's this ongoing debate right now about artists and whether or not they should be forced to use TikTok or not, and whether or not people like to use TikTok. How do you feel about that? [00:19:23] Talib Kweli: Yeah, I was watching the Billboard Awards and that's when I first, I knew in the abstract that everything was moving towards TikTok, right? But watching the Billboard Awards, it hit me when they were introducing every single artist that was popular. Most of them I hadn't heard of or heard their song, but every single thing they were announcing was like, this is how it performed at TikTok. And for how I grew up, that was the radio. [00:19:43] Talib Kweli: And so I was like, now we're an era where the radio is not on his way to be obsolete, but completely obsolete. And let me be clear. I don't mean radio as a concept. I mean, commercialized pop radio and that system. Because clearly what you're doing is radio, you know, what I'm doing with People's Party and in Midnight Miracle is radio. So that's driving, right? [00:20:04] Talib Kweli: I feel like we're in almost in a golden age of radio, but as far as, like, with the music business, man, oh, man. Yeah, TikTok is, I just posted something today from, or that Earn Your Leisure poster about Isaac Hayes Jr., for Fanbase, talking about the algorithms and Instagram, and how, when it first started, you could gain 300,000 followers, very quickly, a million followers very quickly, but then once they had video and once they had ads, well, now you could be a network and now, the advertisers are going to come to you instead of coming to Instagram. So now they've made it so, that's why they shadowbanned people and limit content. I have a million people following me. If I post something, maybe 5,000 people will see it or like it, I don't know who, how many people see it. [00:20:44] Talib Kweli: I have to look at the insights, but I'm definitely not reaching everybody who I'm supposed to reach. And they'll be like, oh, well you could, if you pay us, you know what I'm saying? And so it's just interesting to see how with TikTok, which is Chinese-based if I'm not mistaken, I don't think they're doing that. I think they're allowing the content to reach who it's going to reach, or I might be mistaken about that. I don't know.  [00:21:05] Dan Runcie: I think that's going to shift with TikTok as well though, because I think we kind of saw the early stage where you could put up a song and, you know, like a Megan Thee Stallion song could blow up or whoever song could blow up. [00:21:16] Dan Runcie: But I think now they got over a billion people using it every day. I think we're going to see or using it every month rather. I think you're going to see the same type of shift happen there, too, eventually.  [00:21:27] Talib Kweli: Yeah. I mean, I post on TikTok and no one follows me on TikTok. It's like 4,000 people following me on TikTok. But again, it's the same thing with the Patreon thing. I'm not there, right? I'm not engaging with the people. I'm not clicking on videos, and scrolling through it, and, like, commenting. And I'm not doing anything. I'm just posting things, trying to get some engagement because people are there. I'm putting things up. But that's not really where my fans are looking for me yet at this point. [00:21:54] Dan Runcie: Right. Yeah. And especially with the demo that you're reaching, and they're not looking at you to go do some TikTok dance or something like that, right?  [00:22:01] Talib Kweli: Yeah. I saw The Game doing a TikTok dance. I mean, I hope that that's what he really wanted to do, you know what I'm saying? I hope that he's like, yo, I think that dance is hot, and I'm going to do that dance. Instead of like, damn I got to get on TikTok and do a dance, you know what I'm saying?  [00:22:15] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I do think even that piece of it's going to change too, though, because kind of like we saw on YouTube, right? Like people avoided YouTube for a while because they're, okay, I'm not going to go out here and go dance like Soulja Boy and try to do some viral video, but it eventually matured. And I think we're going to see the same with TikTok where, yeah, you don't have to do some dance that could fit in a vertical video, but you're going to see, you know, folks that you know, are trying to reach your demo, doing whatever the version is that's relatable to them. So it'll take time. In some ways, I feel like it's already happening. Yeah. [00:22:47] Dan Runcie: For you, I do think about even, you know, we're talking about spending time on different platforms. Did you dip into Clubhouse, especially when, you know, the hype on Clubhouse was big or?  [00:23:00] Talib Kweli: Oh no. They kicked me off at twitter for, they didn't like the way I was talking on Twitter. If they can't take what I write in text, they damn sure ain't going to be able to take my voice, you know what I'm saying? Clubhouse got popping right when I got kicked off of Twitter, and so I started getting like, you know, you got to invite people, right? [00:23:17] Talib Kweli: So I started getting like, literally I would get 15, 20 invites a day of people like, you got to join. People would take time out of their day to call me, be like, yo, you should be at Clubhouse. It's perfect for you. And because of that, I was like, there's no way I'm ever going on Clubhouse. because nah, like me talking to these things? Nah. That would go left quick.  [00:23:41] Dan Runcie: The wild thing is I do think that people can get away with saying wilder shit on audio than they can on written text on Twitter, at least from some of the stuff I've heard.  [00:23:51] Talib Kweli: Yeah. That's exactly right. That's exactly right, which is why I don't need to be on it. That's exactly right because here's the thing, here's the problem with me, right? I'm a very intersectional person, you know, I'm not out here, slut-shaming. I'm not here calling women bitches and hoes. I'm not out here using the R word or using the F word. I don't do none of that. I'm not a bigot. I don't use bigoted language. [00:24:14] Talib Kweli: But I'm very good with words. And so with the shit that I write in text, and I'm very blunt and direct. And so the shit I write in text, I feel like it triggers a lot of people in terms of, like, because I'm like, Hmm, nah. And I'm just very blunt and direct. If you come at me wrong, I can be insulting without lowering to this vibration of bigotry, right? Or, that's not true. Every man has fucking bigotry issues, but I try my best. I feel like I try more than most of the people I converse with, right? And so, that me, that shit just comes off as snark, bro, and people just be upset, 'cause they feel like you making 'em look stupid and they get very upset and very tight. And that's what it would be for me at Clubhouse. I would say some slick shit and people would get very upset very quick.  [00:25:04] Dan Runcie: No, I hear that. I hear you on that. It's been, what, almost two years since you've been off Twitter.  [00:25:09] Talib Kweli: Yeah, it's been since 2020.  [00:25:11] Dan Runcie: Okay. Do you miss it?  [00:25:12] Talib Kweli: No, I don't. It was time. I had been on Twitter for 10 years. I don't miss it at all. I enjoyed my time there though. But, you know, I don't miss it because I honestly, for real, in my heart of hearts, I really, truly, truly, truly do not want to be someplace where I'm not wanted. Like, I stand by that. Like, mm-hmm. Like, if they don't want me there, I don't have no desire to be there. [00:25:35] Dan Runcie: Yeah. You're not missing much. I'll be honest with you. As someone who spends too much time on that place, you're not missing much.  [00:25:42] Talib Kweli: Yeah. What I do realize is that being on Twitter, as much as I was on Twitter and then not on Twitter, is that the things that I was talking to people about on Twitter, and these things, let's not get it twisted, right? [00:25:53] Talib Kweli: These are things that are shifting the culture. And these are things that are shaping the world. The things I was talking about in particular, I wasn't talking about frivolous shit. I wasn't talking about rat beefs or whatever I was talking about, you know, real things. The things I was talking about on Twitter became mainstream news years later, things that I was ringing a bell on, and a lot of us were ringing a bell on and people were just not paying attention. [00:26:14] Talib Kweli: But what I realized was a lot of the things that were elevated in my mind to a level of super I importance that we have to talk about this, people who are not on Twitter, not thinking about none of that shit, not talking about none of it. And so that's why a lot of the stuff that I was going through on Twitter, a lot of stuff that became so ugly and toxic, part of it that I wasn't understanding was when I was like, yo, how is this happening? How's the community letting this happen? Because the community really didn't care, really didn't care. And I'm not saying that to disparage anybody on Twitter. I don't want to seem like now, now, cause I'm not on Twitter, like, haha, oh, y'all whack up being on Twitter. I'm not saying that because Twitter is still a very important tool. [00:26:57] Talib Kweli: That's why all the conversation about Elon Musk and all that stuff is so prevalent and so important. There are people who still use Twitter in amazing ways. Absolutely. But I agree with you. Twitter is a cesspool and it was a cesspool when I was there. It's just a lot clearer not being there and a lot more understanding for why people didn't give a shit about it, you know, now looking at the engagement. I'm glad I was there. I learned a lot. I gained a lot. It was a gift and a curse, but mostly a gift for me. But yeah, it was time for me to go and they decided that before I did, but they were correct.  [00:27:31] Dan Runcie: And I think with that, too, it's a bit of that double standard that I think public figures like yourself are kind of put towards, right? People can, you know, reply at you and talk all sorts of shit to you and take what you say out of context. But if you go back at them, then they're going to say, okay, he's putting his fan base back at me. He's doing this.  [00:27:47] Talib Kweli: Yeah, that's such an important part of this conversation, right? And I want to be clear here because like I said, I'm an intersectional person. So, you know, I don't want to be the guy that he's here to protect black women. And, well, what about men, you know what I'm saying? Because as a man, I'm a member of a privileged, oppressor group, I'll go as far to say. But there's a phrase, black men are often the white men of the black community, right? Now that phrase is funny, is hyperbolic, right, but it's based in some truth. And I understand why people would say that. When women be like all men are dogs. Yeah. I get it. I don't personally feel like I'm a dog. I've done some dog shit before, but I don't personally look at myself like that. I don't feel offended by that, but just because black men can and often are the white men of the black community, if we're going to be hyperbolic, right?  [00:28:37] Talib Kweli: Doesn't mean that we're not still part of a marginalized group of people. It doesn't mean that we're not still under attack. Doesn't mean that we're not still faced with many threats and that we don't still need protection, 'cause we absolutely do. And the conversation in our community has to be about the black community, has to be about women, and children, and men, and gay people, and disabled people, and rich people, and poor people, has to be about all of us. [00:29:07] Talib Kweli: If we're talking about the conversation around systemic oppression. And so the idea that because I've earned an extra layer of privilege, 'cause I'm already born with some privileges. I'm already born in America, born as a man, but because I've mastered my craft, worked hard to master my craft. And it's earned me a degree of fame, and a degree of celebrity, and a degree of money that a lot of people can't earn or not in a position to earn resource and all that, because of that, I'm now supposed to allow people to disrespect, not just me, but my family and particularly the women in my family? [00:29:41] Talib Kweli: And I'm not allowed to be a human being and want to respond and have a response? The things that people say about celebrity is that they're disconnecting, that they don't engage. I don't view myself as celebrity. I view myself as an artist. Well, as an artist, I'm going to talk to the people and for better or for worse, you know? What I realize now is that me talking to the people has put a target on my back because a lot of these people don't even deal with these people. They just block people, look and call 'em trolls. [00:30:10] Talib Kweli: They don't even talk to anybody. And I'm not built that way. And I understand the logic behind it, but I also, there's also a method to my madness as well. And so the idea, I push back hard against the idea that you have a pass to undervalue my humanity or to not treat me like a human being because you haven't earned what I've earned in terms of cultural currency, you know, because you choose to be anonymous, or because you are not famous, or because you are not, I don't know, whatever, like, I can't abide by that. I can't. I find myself inclined to speak out against that idea that we lack humanity, or we are less human, or we deserve to be treated less than because we're famous, or because we have a million followers, or whatever the metric is, I don't know.  [00:31:00] Dan Runcie: And I think this point brings the conversation full circle, right? Because so many people, when you and Yasiin decided to release the album on your terms, they're like, oh, well, you're not going to put it on streaming. You're missing out, that you shouldn't be doing this. And y'all are like, This is our music. You can't tell us what to do. Like, this is our craft. And I think it just goes back to the entitlement of people feeling like they have the ability to dictate what you do when you are the one that is in control of what you do.  [00:31:31] Talib Kweli: Yeah. I mean, that's, I'm glad you brought that up 'cause for me, those conversations are difficult, right? Because I'm an advocate for artists. I'm a fan. So when we talk about fans, right, we're not talking about, I'm not separate from that group. When you see me post on Instagram videos of me with Bun B, and I'm jumping up and down just like any fan would. I'm not playing it cool, you know what I'm saying? Like, so I'm a fan as well. And me as a fan, I'm a fan of these artists as human beings. That's why I wrote that article In Defense Of Ms. Hill ' cause it's like, if I'm a fan of her music, then yo sis, take your time. If you don't feel like showing up at the show tonight, Hey, I guess we got to eat that one tonight. [00:32:09] Talib Kweli: But you're still Ms. Hill, you're a human being. You're not some product that rolls out on stage. You press a button, it just goes. If you're having a human issue, you're a human being that's having a human issue. Let us know when you got some new shit and I'll be happy to support. I likely, if you give me an option, I'll overpay for it. [00:32:25] Talib Kweli: How about that? Because I can't quantify what you've given me, and that's honestly how I feel. So it's hard for me to relate to these fans, be like, I want, first of all, that's even the wrong language to be using with me, talking about what you want, you know what I'm saying? If you want the Black Star, I'm going to make the Black Star out. [00:32:41] Talib Kweli: And if you can't, then meet us halfway, bro, and come to where I'm at, because guess what? The first Black Star album, Universal says they own and they don't own it. We've never signed a contract for that album. So they've been profiting off of that. So if you bought that or listen to streaming, you've been paying some rich white company that has nothing to do with Black Star. [00:33:01] Talib Kweli: Every song in that album is available on YouTube. Most of my music is available for free on YouTube. On Kweliclub.com, you could get all my mixtapes for free. You could get the album Fuck the Money for free. My biggest song Get By, you could, if that shit came on in the store, you could Shazam it and listen to it on Shazam for free, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's got 15 million views on YouTube. You could go listen to it on YouTube for free. You mean to tell me I can't get $10 or $5 or $30 with a new Black Star album, with all this free music you getting? What are we even talking about? You know what I'm saying? Like, how are you ignoring all of this, to complain about this? [00:33:39] Dan Runcie: Right. It's like, you've had so much up to this point. It's not like you haven't had anything, you know, like, if you want to be able to put this one out on your terms, then yeah, here it is. You know, you don't owe anyone anything.  [00:33:51] Talib Kweli: Yeah. I find it hard to relate to the people who don't understand that, which is why, if you notice, when I've been on social media and people ask about it, my response has been, well, this album is not for you. [00:34:00] Talib Kweli: And maybe I should stop doing that because that's such a triggering thing to say to people. And I've been saying it a lot 'cause I mean it. But then it starts these long arguments with me. Fuck you and you're mean to the fans. It's like, nah, my fans are listening to the album. Now whether or not they like it or not, that's subjective.  [00:34:18] Talib Kweli: My fans were listening to Midnight Miracle. And if they weren't, if you are a fan, who's watching this podcast right now and you didn't know about Midnight Miracle, go listen to it because you're a fan. You want to hear what we got, you want it. If you are a fan of us, be a fan of us. [00:34:33] Talib Kweli: I don't believe to separate the artists from the music. I don't do that. I feel like that's a cop-out. Let me not say that because, let me just speak for myself. You can't do that with me because I am what my music is. All them lies they be telling about me, it doesn't go with my music. It doesn't go with my actions. [00:34:51] Talib Kweli: It doesn't go with the truth. i I am what I say in these bars. I stand on that. I'm very proud of that.  [00:34:57] Dan Runcie: Right. And I think the other piece of this, too, that I think has now just become the norm in music is that so many artists are predispositioned to be like, okay, lemme just put my music out on streaming. [00:35:07] Dan Runcie: Treat it like it's marketing, get it out there. And then let me make my money when I go on tour. But the way that you all have it set up, I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. You can get the money from the art, and you could also get the money, you know, if you and Yasiin choose to do a tour together. [00:35:24] Talib Kweli: I mean, I was touring, I was touring before the pandemic. I was doing 200 shows a year. So that's more than anybody, you know, like I was, that model right there. Think about it. I got 16 albums out, doing 200 shows a year. So that's what, 'you're describing my life. That's exactly what I was doing. And I don't do that anymore, and I don't plan on doing it again. [00:35:43] Talib Kweli: But when I look at pictures or videos for myself from that time, I don't even recognize that person. Like, how was I doing that? That's not sustainable. I was on some super human shit. I don't know what, I don't know how I was doing this. I don't know how I was dropping music and touring at that pace. [00:35:57] Talib Kweli: And still, like, doing activist work, and supporting my family, and just being me, and being on Twitter, you know what I'm saying? Like, all of it, I was doing all of it and I don't know how I was doing all that.  [00:36:06] Dan Runcie: How many shows do you think you'll go back to? If 200 was a lot, what do you think is the ideal range? [00:36:13] Talib Kweli: As you're saying, as I'm saying this to you, I'm thinking about it. I'm like, damn. I got a lot of shows coming up, but I can't let it get back to 200 a year.  [00:36:20] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I mean, 'cause at that rate, yeah, I mean, you're talking, I mean, like more than half of the days of the year you are out there putting it all out there. I mean, yeah. [00:36:29] Talib Kweli: 20 years straight, I did that for 20 years. [00:36:31] Dan Runcie: And it's wild. It's wild. I mean, I think at least the position that you're potentially in now, you can earn more money from the actual music you're putting out. You clearly have, you know, a bit buy-in with a platform that has other people that are invested in it as well. [00:36:45] Dan Runcie: And then with any other business interest that you may have, like, this is something to build up on, right? It's clearly, like, recurring revenue that you have and if you and Luminary continue to grow, then you can also tour and do any of that other stuff on your own terms.  [00:36:59] Talib Kweli: Absolutely. Yeah.  [00:37:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel that's the way to go with it. Well, Talib, this has been a great conversation. I feel like we covered a bunch just in terms of the importance of autonomy, importance of independence, and where you see things going. But for the people that are listening and they do want to follow, I'm sure they already know if they're listening, but where should they go to check for the latest of what you got going on? [00:37:18] Talib Kweli: Man, just follow me on Instagram. If they don't kick me off Instagram, 'cause they be threatening to kick me off Instagram too. They don't like when I talk about racism on Instagram. So for as long as I'll be on Instagram, follow me there. I just joined Fanbase today. So I'm looking forward to exploring Fanbase. [00:37:32] Talib Kweli: But I mean, you got to come see me in the flesh or don't actually, you know, like just, I don't know. Like, I've been out in the flesh a a lot, man. I don't know. I don't know. Just holler at me when you see me, and I'll try to make my presence known. For the near foreseeable future, I'm definitely going to be at Luminary. So I definitely encourage people to subscribe to Luminary.  [00:37:52] Dan Runcie: Sounds good. And I appreciate the Fanbase shout out too. Shout out to Isaac Hayes III. I had him on the podcast couple of months ago. Love what he's building.  [00:37:59] Talib Kweli: Yeah, me too. I've been knowing about it for a minute, but now as I'm starting to, like, really assess what's valuable to me, I'm, like, starting to look at things a little different, and I'm like, yeah, Fanbase. We can't keep talking about it, right? At some point we got support.  [00:38:14] Dan Runcie: Right. Exactly. We know that this is the culture that pushes it forward. It's our culture. I mean, have the people that are about it to be the ones that actually own it in, we can see what happens. [00:38:22] Talib Kweli: Yeah. Word up.  [00:38:24] Dan Runcie: Yeah. All right, man. Appreciate you.  [00:38:26] Talib Kweli: All right. Peace.  [00:38:27] Dan Runcie: All right, man. Thanks.  [00:38:29] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share with a friend, copy the link, text it to a friend posted in your group chat, post it in your slack groups, wherever you and your people talk. Spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple Podcasts, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you like the podcast that helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.