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Tariffs, Tours, and Trade Wars: Why Music Investment Won’t Slow Down
Thursday, May 8, 2025 • Duration 35:47
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.
The 2025 Live Music Draft
Monday, May 5, 2025 • Duration 37:21
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.
Reddit: How To Monetize a Marketer’s Goldmine
Monday, March 31, 2025 • Duration 34:54
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.
The State of Music (with Will Page)
Thursday, May 25, 2023 • Duration 01:14:52
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.
Artist Independence (with Steve Stoute)
Thursday, May 18, 2023 • Duration 01:05:31
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.
How Brands Become Ideologies (with Marcus Collins)
Thursday, May 11, 2023 • Duration 33:57
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.
Rerun: How KevOnStage is Building His Comedy Flywheel
Thursday, May 4, 2023 • Duration 55:58
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)
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The Rise of Interscope Records (with Zack Greenburg)
Thursday, April 27, 2023 • Duration 56:52
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
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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.
Rerun: Investing $200 Million In Music with Matt Pincus
Thursday, April 20, 2023 • Duration 55:01
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:
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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 Business Behind Coachella (with Tati Cirisano)
Thursday, April 13, 2023 • Duration 43:56
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.
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