Speaker 1: Hey, This week we have a very special episode my
Speaker 1: interview with Troy Carter at the Music Media Summit in
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, California. Yes, today, Troy is director of Creative
Speaker 1: Services that Spotify, really spearheading change in the music business.
Speaker 1: But before that he was a manager. He managed Lady Gaga,
Speaker 1: Broke Lady Gaga. What John legend Back has done so
Speaker 1: many things with acts. You're gonna hear about his ops
Speaker 1: and his downs. Troy is completely honest. I know you'll
Speaker 1: love this. So, Troy, how did you get into this
Speaker 1: crazy business? I started off just as a kid in
Speaker 1: West Billy. Uh grew up loving hip hop music and
Speaker 1: hip hop culture. Um. I wanted to be a rapper.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write graffiti. I wanted to be a breakdancer.
Speaker 1: So anything that was immersive and hip hop culture, you know,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be around it. So you're not
Speaker 1: a woman, I can ask this question. How old are
Speaker 1: you today? Forty five? So when you get into it,
Speaker 1: MTV ruled okay, But Philadelphia always had a heavy soul culture.
Speaker 1: So how did you first get infected by music? But
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't have cable. We only had the
Speaker 1: five channels and um, and we have Friday Night videos
Speaker 1: and the USA Networkers on NBC. It was I forget
Speaker 1: which network it was. It might have been NBC. David
Speaker 1: Benjamin ran that I remember, but it was like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it would come on late at night, and
Speaker 1: it was before music was segregated, so you would watch
Speaker 1: run Dy m C. You would watch Blondie, Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: Prince you know. So it was all types of music there.
Speaker 1: So it kind of exposed me to pop music, rock music.
Speaker 1: But and you know, and and like I said, and
Speaker 1: I love hip hop. So but it made me well
Speaker 1: round it from from a music Was there music in
Speaker 1: your house growing up? It's a ton of music in
Speaker 1: my house growing up. So. Um. It was a station
Speaker 1: in Philly called w d A S and UM, which
Speaker 1: it was a local station. A guy named butter Ball
Speaker 1: ran the station and um, but it was a lot
Speaker 1: of the Philly International records, UM, a lot everything from Uh,
Speaker 1: Marvin Gaye was big in our house. Earth Wind and
Speaker 1: Fire was big. Um she Stevie Wonder. So I grew
Speaker 1: up on a lot of souls. Did you play an
Speaker 1: instrument growing up? Nope, didn't play an didn't play an instrument. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're listening to music and you're watching Friday Night videos.
Speaker 1: At what point do you say I can do that?
Speaker 1: You know what? My my, my brother and my cousin
Speaker 1: they used to DJ and. Um, so I tried DJ
Speaker 1: and I was terrible. And then I said, um, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you know I'm gonna try to be a rapper.
Speaker 1: So I so I started rapping. And in ninth grade,
Speaker 1: me and my best friend had this idea. We met
Speaker 1: in English class and we said, you know, if if
Speaker 1: we ever meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, they're gonna
Speaker 1: give us a record deal. So we used to go
Speaker 1: and and try to hang out at Jazzy Jeff's studio,
Speaker 1: go down there almost every single day. Um, Jeff never
Speaker 1: would let us into the studio. How many other people
Speaker 1: were hanging out other than the two of you? It
Speaker 1: just it was three. It was three of us. The
Speaker 1: group was called too too many, and um we called
Speaker 1: ourselves too too many because we only used to have
Speaker 1: enough money for one of us. So so it was
Speaker 1: three of us that used to hang out in front
Speaker 1: of But when you were hanging out, uh where, there
Speaker 1: are also a lot of other people want to be
Speaker 1: hanging out at the studio. No, so they were all
Speaker 1: inside the studio, so we were trying to get in,
Speaker 1: so we would only want to bees and um so so,
Speaker 1: and we sincerely had this idea like we were that
Speaker 1: naive that we were gonna meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh
Speaker 1: Prince and they are going to give us a record deal.
Speaker 1: And my best friend, he used to always say, thoughts
Speaker 1: become things. You gotta think positive, you gotta think positive.
Speaker 1: And one day they let us in and we auditioned
Speaker 1: for him, and what happened. They gave us a record
Speaker 1: deal with a lot of experience under your belt. This
Speaker 1: is not the way the story usually goes. Do you
Speaker 1: think you were deserving of a record deal? Yes, but
Speaker 1: you know what, what we found out though that we sucked,
Speaker 1: you know, so I think you know Will what Will?
Speaker 1: We met Will Uh DJ, Jazzy Jeff and his manager
Speaker 1: James Lasseter. It was like a whole crew of guys
Speaker 1: hanging out in the studio and we popped in our
Speaker 1: demo and you know, um and Will said, how are
Speaker 1: you guys getting home? And we said we don't know.
Speaker 1: So he said, okay, I'll give you guys a ride home,
Speaker 1: and he drove drove us home that night, and he
Speaker 1: told our families, you know, dropped us off, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know I got them, and um, but we I
Speaker 1: think more than anything else, more than even the music.
Speaker 1: He was expected our hustle and you know, we were
Speaker 1: silly kids, and you know so I think he liked us.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Maybe you gave you a record deal? Yes,
Speaker 1: and we signed. We signed the Jive Records through Will's
Speaker 1: production company, and we put out a record and got dropped.
Speaker 1: It was like all within like all within like a
Speaker 1: year and a half is like the super this kind
Speaker 1: of whirl and uh, oh my god, our dreams came
Speaker 1: true to oh my god, this is the biggest disaster.
Speaker 1: My life is over. Did you get an advance? Did
Speaker 1: you get any money? Got in advance? I think we
Speaker 1: we got in advance of about I think it was
Speaker 1: like thirty five thousand dollars, which might have been thirty
Speaker 1: five million dollars and um, you know, because we had
Speaker 1: never gotten any money like you know before and um,
Speaker 1: and we divided it up amongst the three of us.
Speaker 1: And what did you do with your twelve grand I
Speaker 1: went straight to the car dealership like every rapper and uh,
Speaker 1: and I bought a used OUTI five thousand. That was
Speaker 1: a stick shift and I had never driven a stick
Speaker 1: shift before, but I wanted that car. And I think
Speaker 1: I burned out the clutch by the time I got home.
Speaker 1: So I burned through the money in the clutch within
Speaker 1: like weeks, just because you told me the story, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to forget it. You do tell a
Speaker 1: story of buying a Lexus use Lexus and getting stopped
Speaker 1: for driving while black. How long after this was? That?
Speaker 1: That was? That was after? That was? That was years later?
Speaker 1: And um, I started promoting shows in Philadelphia, so I
Speaker 1: would promote these concerts. Um so like Notorious b I, G.
Speaker 1: Jay Z, Foxy Brown, a bunch of the New Woutang clan,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the New York rappers, and um and
Speaker 1: I bought a car off of Foxy Brown's manager, a
Speaker 1: guy named Don Poo and UM and you know, I
Speaker 1: drove the car back to Philly and that next week, No,
Speaker 1: with no exaggeration, within one week, I had gotten holed
Speaker 1: over by the police six times within one week. But
Speaker 1: you know it was one time. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a Saturday afternoon, and um, I had bags like luggage
Speaker 1: and the trunk and I pull up and up, um
Speaker 1: and up at Derby and I get pulled over by
Speaker 1: the police and they make me get out of the
Speaker 1: car sit on the side of the curb while they
Speaker 1: throw all of my stuff out on the street. And
Speaker 1: so where I was at it was like a shopping district.
Speaker 1: So it's a Saturday afternoon in front of the movie theater,
Speaker 1: hundreds of people. You know, it was it was the
Speaker 1: most it was probably one of the most belittling things.
Speaker 1: And then once everything checked out, you know, the cops said,
Speaker 1: you know, put your ship back in the car, and
Speaker 1: just you know, they put they pull off and I'm
Speaker 1: left putting my underwear and everything else back into the
Speaker 1: you know, into into the into into my car. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's so you have an experience like that
Speaker 1: where many experiences like and that's right, was going but
Speaker 1: that was a experienced before I was gonna ask you
Speaker 1: about previous growing up. How does that what where does
Speaker 1: that leave your viewpoint in terms of race relations. Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's complicated, right, because I think you know,
Speaker 1: I think you got so it was more police relations
Speaker 1: than race relations, where where where I grew up because
Speaker 1: it was only black people who where where I grew up.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't really any real racial issues. But we're
Speaker 1: the cops black or white both, so blue is what
Speaker 1: they were, right and um and and so we were
Speaker 1: harassed and and and profiled and we didn't have It
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing where when things happened in your neighborhood
Speaker 1: you called the police, you know, so um and that
Speaker 1: and that was the that was the relationship and um
Speaker 1: so So I didn't really learn about race relations until
Speaker 1: I really started traveling to a lot of places, you know,
Speaker 1: through through out throughout the country, and um and then
Speaker 1: that that's when I really started, you know, seeing Philly
Speaker 1: is very segregated, but it was very segregated, gated by
Speaker 1: the way. So Italians lived in a certain area, Blacks
Speaker 1: lived in a certain area, Puerto Ricans lived in a
Speaker 1: certain area, Jews lived in a certain area, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing where it was any real I never
Speaker 1: felt that sort of tension because everybody stayed in their
Speaker 1: own pockets for the most part, almost kind of like
Speaker 1: l a Alas racially segregated too. But when you were
Speaker 1: making the deal with dj Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith.
Speaker 1: Are you still in high school? Yeah? I dropped out
Speaker 1: of high school and then, um, I dropped out in
Speaker 1: eleventh grade and my mom she put me in a
Speaker 1: program called job Corps, which is like jail meets college
Speaker 1: and uh and it's and it was important to posit
Speaker 1: in Maryland. So basically she said, if you want to
Speaker 1: do this music thing, you better come home with a
Speaker 1: piece of paper. And you know, because I just wanted
Speaker 1: to pursue music. And at eleventh grade, I quit school.
Speaker 1: Just stopping there for a second. You quit school because
Speaker 1: you were that excited about music, or you're also a
Speaker 1: poor student or an attentive student. It was I just
Speaker 1: was bored, Like I would I would go to school,
Speaker 1: check in with my advisor, hang out with my friends,
Speaker 1: and then we would go on these adventures you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes like for me is crazy. I would end up.
Speaker 1: I would end up at a library some days and
Speaker 1: just studying subjects that I wanted to study. We would
Speaker 1: have or we would have hooky parties, you know until
Speaker 1: my mom got home from work and then we would
Speaker 1: clear the house out and um, but we every day
Speaker 1: was this sort of adventure. But school I just I
Speaker 1: was curious about learning, but not what they would teach
Speaker 1: me in school. So how long did the job Corps
Speaker 1: program last? I stayed in AP Corps for a little.
Speaker 1: I got my I got my g D and record time.
Speaker 1: It was like I was trying to get out of
Speaker 1: this place as fast as you could. How fast did
Speaker 1: you get the GD? Probably? I think a little under
Speaker 1: a year maybe, And it was like, because it's the worst,
Speaker 1: this is where the courts a point juvenile delinquents, so Virginia,
Speaker 1: New York, d C. You know, so they just put
Speaker 1: you all in one place essentially, and um, and you
Speaker 1: want to get out as fast as you can. But
Speaker 1: isn't that the place that would tend you know, their
Speaker 1: theory on jail is you got to jail you to
Speaker 1: learn how to become a criminal. When you're in this program,
Speaker 1: did you learn how to act bad? Yes? So so
Speaker 1: job Corps it was, um, it was. It was definitely
Speaker 1: a place where you had it was many sort of
Speaker 1: many criminal imprise enterprises and clicks built around and it.
Speaker 1: You know, you had gang members on campus from different gangs,
Speaker 1: you know, through throughout uh, you know, the Northeast corridor
Speaker 1: and I think because I was always small, you know,
Speaker 1: and and you know, and I didn't get caught up
Speaker 1: and being just with the guys from Philly. So I
Speaker 1: would hang out with the New York guys, the Virginia
Speaker 1: guys and kind of stay away from any sort of
Speaker 1: the the the warring factions with with within within within
Speaker 1: job corps. And so how long were you in job
Speaker 1: Corps overall? For for almost a year? Okay, So when
Speaker 1: you got your g D you were out. I was out.
Speaker 1: And the deal, the record deal was after you. That
Speaker 1: was after Okay, So the act fails, you've blown the money,
Speaker 1: then what? UM? You know, I remember being at my
Speaker 1: grandmother's house when I got the call that they were
Speaker 1: dropping us from from the record label and UM and
Speaker 1: I and I was in her in my grandmother's room,
Speaker 1: and because I was on the phone, I got the
Speaker 1: call and it broke my heart because, you know, it
Speaker 1: was something I felt like we worked really hard for. UM.
Speaker 1: I really didn't have a plan B of what I
Speaker 1: was gonna do. I was embarrassed that, you know, we
Speaker 1: had gotten this far and and and now you know,
Speaker 1: how do we tell people this? UM? And from there,
Speaker 1: I just I started I learned a lot about the
Speaker 1: business from that from that experience, and UM, and I
Speaker 1: asked James Lasseter, who was Will Smith's manager, UM, could
Speaker 1: I start working with him? And I started working at
Speaker 1: the recording studio and I was his assistant. Was it
Speaker 1: pretty much just that fast? It was probably over, if
Speaker 1: I had to guess, maybe over a six month time
Speaker 1: period where I sort of transitioned into more of the business,
Speaker 1: because we ever have a straight job working at the supermarket?
Speaker 1: Any of that? Did I while I was a kid? No,
Speaker 1: while in this interim between h getting dropped from the
Speaker 1: label and going to work for the management, I had
Speaker 1: one period where I couldn't find It was that sort
Speaker 1: of And I don't know if I even if I
Speaker 1: ever told this this story before, but UM, I remember
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a job, and I didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: I had kind of given up on on the on
Speaker 1: the record business. And at one point I've filed for
Speaker 1: UH for for welfare and I got I had gotten
Speaker 1: one check, and I remember giving the money from my
Speaker 1: check to my aunt because my younger cousin had just
Speaker 1: gotten killed, and you know, they were doing this funeral
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then I'm like, it's just uh that
Speaker 1: was It was just like a low point and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this isn't what I want my my life to be.
Speaker 1: And um, but as a kid, I worked at McDonald's,
Speaker 1: I worked at Burger King, I worked at um uh
Speaker 1: Olga's kitchen, which was like a restaurant, and so I
Speaker 1: had all types of odd jobs here, here and there.
Speaker 1: And so you go to work in the record eating
Speaker 1: studio and for your the manager lasseter, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Um everything car getting car wash, booking sessions for DJ
Speaker 1: Jazz Jeff, carrying records for Jazz Jeff. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: with James, when I was James's assistant, the best part
Speaker 1: of it was I used to have to run his
Speaker 1: phone calls. So I had to listen in on every
Speaker 1: phone call that he did by rolling his calls. So
Speaker 1: it kind of taught me the sort of vernacular and
Speaker 1: and sort of cadence how people talk to each other
Speaker 1: on on the phone, you know. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things was, you know, I thought everything
Speaker 1: was all business with people, but you know, just hearing
Speaker 1: them talk about people's families and kids and you know,
Speaker 1: people they would talk for ten fifteen minutes about everything
Speaker 1: else before they kind of got into this. I think
Speaker 1: people you're so hungry when you get into the business,
Speaker 1: you have meetings, immediately started the sales pitch. They don't
Speaker 1: really people want to know who are you, what's going on?
Speaker 1: You are reasonable person. So so that that was good
Speaker 1: for me to learn very lead because um and and
Speaker 1: James and he and are still really really close to
Speaker 1: this day. But he he was a guy who we
Speaker 1: grew up eight blocks away from each other, like and
Speaker 1: what we didn't know My mom and his mom used
Speaker 1: to catch the bus together, and you know, he had
Speaker 1: become Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince's manager because he was
Speaker 1: the only guy in the neighborhood with a car, like
Speaker 1: you know, because because back back then you used to
Speaker 1: have to put you know, turntables and everything and load
Speaker 1: the cars up or whatever. He was the only guy
Speaker 1: with a car. So um So seeing a guy who
Speaker 1: grew up, you know, right in our neighborhood, it kind
Speaker 1: of showed me like, okay, if James can do it
Speaker 1: and talk to like studio executives and record company heads,
Speaker 1: and it just made it less than a little less
Speaker 1: in timidity and for for me, And so what was
Speaker 1: your breakthrough from being assistent gopher to the next level. Um, James,
Speaker 1: uh So, so like in between that time, you know,
Speaker 1: I was promoting these shows and and Philly and okay,
Speaker 1: just a little bit slow. You're promoting him yourself or
Speaker 1: with James. So so James h ended up moving to
Speaker 1: l A and he was doing he started doing Fresh
Speaker 1: Prince of bel Air. I had come out to l
Speaker 1: A for a little bit. I went back to Philly
Speaker 1: and I was from promoting. I started off promoting like clubs,
Speaker 1: and then I would get acts to performing in the
Speaker 1: clubs and um, and I would collect money from guys
Speaker 1: and my neighborhood essentially, so it would be guys who
Speaker 1: have money. I said, you know, at that time, I
Speaker 1: didn't know it was called money laundering because guys would
Speaker 1: give me money like hey, this is great. And so
Speaker 1: in reality you were money laundering. You were just unaware.
Speaker 1: I just was unaware. Now, no statue and all those
Speaker 1: guys are probably in jail. Um. But I would do
Speaker 1: these do these shows with all of the rappers. And
Speaker 1: this is before it was Live Nation and all of
Speaker 1: the big conglomerate it's and it was a local guy
Speaker 1: in Philly. Named Larry Maggott who used to promote the
Speaker 1: concerts in Philly if their spectrum where the roof blew exactly,
Speaker 1: and but they didn't do hip hop because hip hop shows,
Speaker 1: you know, and then fights and shootings and couldn't get
Speaker 1: insured and um, and I was one of the crazy
Speaker 1: guys who would do it. And I've started meeting all
Speaker 1: of these people through these relationships, and I met Puffy
Speaker 1: through promoteing a notorious b I bit slower. Being a
Speaker 1: promoter is a license to go out of business. Okay,
Speaker 1: people usually like even Leor, he had one successful gig
Speaker 1: and then he lost all that money and more on
Speaker 1: the next gig. So in your a particular case, every
Speaker 1: gig I didn't think would be in the black. No,
Speaker 1: it's you know, you had really really really great nights
Speaker 1: and you had some really really really bad nights, and
Speaker 1: you know it was it was. I remember it was
Speaker 1: a rap group on Jive called foos Chnickens and um
Speaker 1: and I used to love their music, and I think
Speaker 1: I might have been the only person that loved the
Speaker 1: music because literally, no exaggeration, I had five people show up,
Speaker 1: but I still paid him a hundred percent of the
Speaker 1: money built the relationship. It was bad shows where we
Speaker 1: were down, but every single act got paid. So but
Speaker 1: wasn't it the money of the so called criminals that
Speaker 1: was paying them? Yeah, and what of the criminals? What
Speaker 1: are the criminals say when they were losing money? They
Speaker 1: were happy to be there. It's like you're hanging out
Speaker 1: with Biggie, Okay. So it's like hanging you're hanging out.
Speaker 1: So so everybody, everybody, and and was funny about hip
Speaker 1: hop as the streets and music. We were all contemporaries,
Speaker 1: So j and Dame and their whole crew. They were
Speaker 1: street guys from New York coming to hang out with
Speaker 1: us Big and Don Poo and Mark Pitts and all
Speaker 1: of those guys. They were street guys coming out to
Speaker 1: hang with us. Wu Tang from Staten Island. So it
Speaker 1: was it was a thing where everybody felt it was
Speaker 1: everybody was really respectful of of of each other in
Speaker 1: that way because we knew what it took to get there.
Speaker 1: And and it was almost a thing where you couldn't
Speaker 1: go out the back door. It's just, you know, just
Speaker 1: from a street code perspective, you can't leave out of
Speaker 1: the back door. So you got these guys to come.
Speaker 1: And this is before it was like bank wiring and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. So you would pay them that
Speaker 1: money up front, the front up front, but when they
Speaker 1: showed up, you better have you know, you had to
Speaker 1: have the rest of that. You're talking about the street
Speaker 1: you know, cred and the similarity. But getting people from
Speaker 1: different communities, was there also friction? Never mind the money,
Speaker 1: you know what, most of the most of the friction
Speaker 1: sort of came from just the nature of the beast
Speaker 1: of doing these type of shows and these type of neighborhoods. Right,
Speaker 1: so it's you got rival factions that are gonna are
Speaker 1: gonna show up, and um, it could be a bad
Speaker 1: night when somebody steps on somebody's shoe and they don't say,
Speaker 1: you know, excuse me or I'm sorry, and that could
Speaker 1: end up in something or it might have been something
Speaker 1: that happened weeks before that. You know, people just happened
Speaker 1: to to to see each other, so you and um,
Speaker 1: it's par for the course. Okay, So we didn't know,
Speaker 1: to be honest though, we didn't know any different. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, sort of and it wasn't strange.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like it's kind of like that movie Hoop
Speaker 1: Dreams when they celebrate the kids sixteenth birthday and they said,
Speaker 1: we're thrilled he just made it to sixteen. And when
Speaker 1: when I said, it took to me eighteen and twenty
Speaker 1: one in my mind with what were the ages in
Speaker 1: my mind that that I made it to eight teen,
Speaker 1: and that that I made it the one and my
Speaker 1: closest cousin. He and I grew up together and we
Speaker 1: were like this. Um, he got killed when he was
Speaker 1: when he was seventeen years seventeen. What was what precipitated
Speaker 1: his death? He was out at the Chinese restaurant, Chinese Takeout,
Speaker 1: getting chicken wings, and somebody decided that they were going
Speaker 1: to rob the restaurant, drobed the guys who were at
Speaker 1: the restaurant that night, and I ended up The guy
Speaker 1: who killed them was a guy who I grew up
Speaker 1: with and we went to school with and everything else.
Speaker 1: He didn't even know it was my cousin. So um
Speaker 1: and yeah, ended up killing him. Did that guy go
Speaker 1: to jail? Yeah, they went to jail. Okay, So in
Speaker 1: your pursuits you meet Puffy and how do you maximize
Speaker 1: that relationship? Well, Puff, um, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: concert that I was throwing with Notorious b I g
Speaker 1: Um and Wootang and a few other acts on Penn's
Speaker 1: campus and um, and I got a call that Notoria,
Speaker 1: Notorious b I g was Um, he wasn't gonna make
Speaker 1: it down in time for the show because he was
Speaker 1: shooting the video for Big Papa at that time. And
Speaker 1: I get into an argument with Mark Pitts on the
Speaker 1: phone that turns into an argument with Puffy on the
Speaker 1: phone and um, and but yet they still came down.
Speaker 1: The show was over. You know, we had the refund
Speaker 1: a few people, but he didn't make it and um,
Speaker 1: but they told Biggs manager make sure Troy gets his
Speaker 1: money back. Um, we'll give you another show. And we
Speaker 1: were hanging out that night. I was having an after
Speaker 1: party and Puff was holding court and you know, v
Speaker 1: I p section and you know, I'm talking and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know, I want to come work
Speaker 1: for you, And he said, all right, well your first
Speaker 1: job is get me that girl from behind the bar.
Speaker 1: And um, and I got puffed the girl from behind
Speaker 1: the bar. And then a couple of weeks later, I
Speaker 1: was interning that bad boy. Then you moved to New York. No,
Speaker 1: I commute three days a week. I would commute on
Speaker 1: peter Pan trailways, um seven I think it was seven
Speaker 1: dollars each way peter Pan Trailways from Philly to uh
Speaker 1: to uh To to New York. And so you're interning,
Speaker 1: you're obviously, you know, doing your best to do a
Speaker 1: good job. What's your break a bad Boy? You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't get a break at Bad Boy, um, you know,
Speaker 1: but what I did get was an education you know
Speaker 1: Puff and even still to this day, you get a
Speaker 1: sort of master class and hustle and just seeing this
Speaker 1: guy operate that company just off of like I would
Speaker 1: see Puff at the club at night, and then I
Speaker 1: would see Puff in the office in the morning, and
Speaker 1: then at he had his recording studio called Daddy's House
Speaker 1: where he you know, would be where he would make records.
Speaker 1: So you know, it just it was this sort of
Speaker 1: NonStop thing, but this sort of masterful dance of being
Speaker 1: able to navigate sort of hip hop culture in the
Speaker 1: streets with corporate America and uh so that it just
Speaker 1: was that master class. So I didn't get a break
Speaker 1: in terms of uh, you know, I made it. It
Speaker 1: was you got cursed out. You got um worked to
Speaker 1: death and you just wanted more of it, like you know,
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't get enough of it? And what
Speaker 1: was your next journey after that? Um? Afterwards, I started, UM.
Speaker 1: I went back to work for James Lasseter in in
Speaker 1: l A. And UM, he and Will started a movie
Speaker 1: production company called Overbrook Entertainment and UM, so I was
Speaker 1: James's assistant and I did that and UM and James
Speaker 1: ended up firing me. I think after like a year
Speaker 1: and a half, he ended up firing me and UM
Speaker 1: sending me back to Philly. And then that's when that
Speaker 1: was my big break. When he fired you because you've
Speaker 1: done a good job. I didn't he do or he said,
Speaker 1: I'm colding you back, keeping you here. Um, I wish
Speaker 1: I wish he was holding me back, keeping me here.
Speaker 1: I was arrogant as you can you could get. UM.
Speaker 1: I thought I knew everything and James like it was
Speaker 1: no humility. And I remember, you know, I didn't have
Speaker 1: a I didn't have a car when I living in
Speaker 1: l A. And if you live in l A, you
Speaker 1: know how hard it is not to have a car.
Speaker 1: And UM, and at one point I was dating this
Speaker 1: girl and Um and I would take the car service
Speaker 1: to go visit this girl. But and at the end
Speaker 1: of the week, I would just pay the general manager
Speaker 1: of the company when I got my check, here's the
Speaker 1: car service, you know, here's the money for the car service.
Speaker 1: And for some reason she told James Troy's been using
Speaker 1: the car service. And he came in the office and
Speaker 1: aired me out and you know, in front of everybody,
Speaker 1: and told me, you know, he kicked me out of California.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, he fired me on the spot,
Speaker 1: kicked me out of California. Me and him get into
Speaker 1: this huge shouting match in his office, and Will and
Speaker 1: Jada actually walked in like right after and Um and
Speaker 1: Will said, you know what, go back to Philly. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll give you a severance, but go back to Philly
Speaker 1: and you know, get get yourself together. And I went
Speaker 1: back to Philly with my tail between my legs. And
Speaker 1: what would would you start up in Philly? UM? I
Speaker 1: started up UM. It was. It was a company called
Speaker 1: Black Friday that guys from my neighborhood that I knew.
Speaker 1: They basically UM started this management company. It was like
Speaker 1: a management production company. And they asked if I would
Speaker 1: come and basically run the company for him. Can I could?
Speaker 1: I could? I build it and started up for him,
Speaker 1: and Eve was even Beanie Seagull where the client there.
Speaker 1: And it was a hot mess, and I ended up,
Speaker 1: you know, after a while, I'm like, I can't do
Speaker 1: this anymore. It was a lot of disorganization. One one client,
Speaker 1: UM came into the office. One day. I got a
Speaker 1: call that the client got into an argument with one
Speaker 1: of the guys who owned the company and start shooting
Speaker 1: at him in the office. And that was it for
Speaker 1: me and I and I ended up that and I
Speaker 1: left at that point, and Eve was leaving and she
Speaker 1: had enough, and she asked if I would help her
Speaker 1: find the manager. I took her to meet with Chris
Speaker 1: Lighty a few other managers, and then she asked if
Speaker 1: I would do it. Okay, so you do it and
Speaker 1: tell me how you ultimately get to there to making
Speaker 1: your deal with Sanctuary. So I started managing Eve UM.
Speaker 1: I ended up signing a few other clients. Me m
Speaker 1: up my partner at that time, Jay Irving. We built
Speaker 1: company called Irving Wonder in Philadelphia, which was like you know,
Speaker 1: boutique management company and UM and we got a call
Speaker 1: from Matthew Knowles one day and Matthew asked if we
Speaker 1: would I want to sell our company to Sanctuary. He
Speaker 1: had just sold this company to Sanctuary. They were looking
Speaker 1: to build their urban music division and U and he
Speaker 1: basically told me how much money? And I said, when
Speaker 1: where do I sign? Because I never, like, I had
Speaker 1: never seen that type of money in my life. So,
Speaker 1: you know, without asking, I'm like, let's go, let's get
Speaker 1: this done. And how did it end with Sanctuary? Terrible?
Speaker 1: But you kept on money, right, Yeah? But you know
Speaker 1: the thing is what I what I learned about Sanctuary,
Speaker 1: Like with the Sanctuary situation, I was so focused on
Speaker 1: the exit and the money that I was that it
Speaker 1: blinded me from all of the red flags that I
Speaker 1: should have noticed as they were doing their diligence on us.
Speaker 1: We should have been on our diligence on them, on
Speaker 1: them and um and it just wasn't that. We went
Speaker 1: from a really cool culture at our company, like actually
Speaker 1: Jay Irvan and and his wife, Um, that's who I'm
Speaker 1: up here in Santa Barbara with this weekend. You know,
Speaker 1: it was me and my best friend we built this company.
Speaker 1: We hung out every day. We hung out with our employees,
Speaker 1: we hung out with our artists, and then we sold
Speaker 1: this company the Sanctuary and the culture it just with.
Speaker 1: The culture was terrible and um, and the leadership wasn't great.
Speaker 1: Um and I'm just being honesty. They were terrible people.
Speaker 1: The you know, the guy running the company was a
Speaker 1: terrible person, and he ended up we you know, we
Speaker 1: were trying to buy our company back. And because you know, I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I grew up like I love the
Speaker 1: music business. I love what I do. Um, I grew
Speaker 1: up loving this business. I grew up loving the music.
Speaker 1: And then it felt like I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to work in the morning. I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: into the office, and I wanted to buy the company back.
Speaker 1: And so I started this negotiation to buy the company back,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't reach a deal. And then somebody told me,
Speaker 1: who works in finance, They said, hold out for a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, because if you hold out, I don't
Speaker 1: even think they're gonna be able to make salary. They're
Speaker 1: not even gonna make your your your uh your paycheck.
Speaker 1: So I'm walking into a restaurant and I never forget
Speaker 1: it's on my birthday. I'm walking into a restaurant and
Speaker 1: my attorney at that time, David Landy, calls me up
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, are you by yourself? I
Speaker 1: said no, but I can walk out. I said, what's up?
Speaker 1: He said, Sanctuary. I just got a facts from Sanctuary
Speaker 1: and they're suing you and Jay for calls. I said,
Speaker 1: what's the cause? He said, they don't have a cause.
Speaker 1: And what we found out was the cause was they
Speaker 1: couldn't make our page checks and they didn't want to
Speaker 1: pay us out. And and you know, our business is
Speaker 1: very rare when anybody in our business gets suit for calls.
Speaker 1: And to have that on the front cover of a variety,
Speaker 1: you know, magazine or whatever, and to know that like
Speaker 1: it just was they just with terrible people, and we
Speaker 1: ended up being able to you know, they ended up
Speaker 1: having to pay us out, and you know, I you know,
Speaker 1: I ended up starting a new company. But it was
Speaker 1: a valuable lesson and culture and people and that the
Speaker 1: new company is atom Factory, right, Adom Factory until the audience,
Speaker 1: Why you named it atom factory? Um? The idea where
Speaker 1: Adam Factory was you know thinking about it was something
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, something small but yet powerful. And
Speaker 1: you know, and and and the name Adam just kind
Speaker 1: of some summarized it for me, like you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, because I never wanted, you know, talent roster
Speaker 1: with a hundred people on the roster. But how can
Speaker 1: I build a small company but that still has some
Speaker 1: gravitizing importance? So how do you sign leading gaga? UM?
Speaker 1: Got guy I met got got through a guy named
Speaker 1: Vincent Herbert. And Vincent Um I had known since I
Speaker 1: was coming up in the business. And he caught me
Speaker 1: up one day and he said, I got this girl
Speaker 1: who you have to meet. Um, I'm flying her from
Speaker 1: New York tomorrow and I'm gonna bring aodbye. And you know,
Speaker 1: he showed up and she walked in with you know,
Speaker 1: these big sunglasses on and you know, no pants and
Speaker 1: fishnet stockings and played hit after hit. Um it was
Speaker 1: what what I loved. What I loved was it looked
Speaker 1: like she landed from another planet, but she owned it.
Speaker 1: And I told Vince, I said, you gotta bring her back, Like,
Speaker 1: just promise me you'll you'll bring her back. And a
Speaker 1: few months later he he actually he lived up to
Speaker 1: that promise and he bought her back. Now, when you
Speaker 1: signed or did anybody else want her? No, she had
Speaker 1: she had just gotten dropped from deaf Jam. Um, probably
Speaker 1: a few months prior toized meeting, she had gotten dropped
Speaker 1: from deaf Jam. And UM, you know she kind of
Speaker 1: I went to West Virginia for a while and like
Speaker 1: spent some time with a grandmother and um. And so
Speaker 1: she was like, you know, it was one of those
Speaker 1: things with where you had nothing to lose, like you
Speaker 1: know I had. I was going through a terrible time financially.
Speaker 1: You know, this was like two thousand and seven when
Speaker 1: we met, going like so right, you know, I had
Speaker 1: invested everything into this new company, even fired me right
Speaker 1: before that. And um, and you know my wife and I,
Speaker 1: you know, we were losing our house. You know, her
Speaker 1: and my mother in law literally pawned their wedding rings
Speaker 1: to save our house. They Um, you know, our kids
Speaker 1: were getting kicked, you know, like we couldn't pay school
Speaker 1: tuition or anything like that. So financially I was completely wiped.
Speaker 1: Um and when Gaga came, that was like the only
Speaker 1: thing I had to work on essentially, And she had
Speaker 1: just gotten dropped. And I think it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where is you have nothing to lose and
Speaker 1: like you gotta make it work. And we both really
Speaker 1: really had to make it work. And what did you
Speaker 1: tell her to get her to sign with you? You know,
Speaker 1: I took her to a fancy restaurant called Spaghetti Warehouse.
Speaker 1: We went to Spaghetti Warehouse, I swear to you, and
Speaker 1: um and uh, and we just talked. I think we
Speaker 1: spent like a couple of hours together. And then I
Speaker 1: remember I think it was I think it was. Wasn't
Speaker 1: it Layla's birthday? Baby? Yeah, and because I remember it
Speaker 1: was my daughter's birthday and um, and it's and I
Speaker 1: had to stop for cupcakes on the way home. So
Speaker 1: it's literally me and Gaga standing on um little Santa
Speaker 1: Monica at like Sprinkles cupcakes. Remember it used to be
Speaker 1: like a line outside the door, and like you know,
Speaker 1: she's you know, looking like Gaga on like in front
Speaker 1: at Sprinkles and we're but we hit it off right away,
Speaker 1: like we like it was we got each other right away.
Speaker 1: And um, I believed in in her vision and she
Speaker 1: trusted me with everything and we we you know, and
Speaker 1: and but a few things like this is what's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like like a lot of times, you know, you you
Speaker 1: you hear, you know, the sort of romantic stories about
Speaker 1: you know, how everything happened or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: Vincent Herbert had just walked away from his record label
Speaker 1: UM that he had with a guy, Barry Hankerson. So
Speaker 1: Vincent kind of left his record label behind. So this
Speaker 1: was his new thing and Goga was the only thing
Speaker 1: he had. Jimmy was in the middle of his divorce
Speaker 1: at that time, UM, and you know, Interscope was probably
Speaker 1: this was probably one of Interscope's tough as years, you know,
Speaker 1: during during that time period or whatever, and so Jimmy
Speaker 1: was kind of doing his thing and left us alone
Speaker 1: on the guy got projects, so basically kind of gave
Speaker 1: us carte blanche. So we were kind of running doing
Speaker 1: our own thing. So she was making these records and
Speaker 1: he was focused on Pussycat Dolls. So every record that
Speaker 1: she would make, Jimmy was taking the records, like you know,
Speaker 1: and she would give records to Pussycat Dolls or Rodney Jerkins.
Speaker 1: I remember one record that you know, uh, she had
Speaker 1: written with Rodney Jerkins and she wanted it for herself
Speaker 1: and Rodney's like, no, she's a new artist, I'm not
Speaker 1: giving her this record. I need to get this record
Speaker 1: to Britney Spears. Brittany is you know, she's a superstar.
Speaker 1: We're giving this record the Britney Spears and Goga was pissed.
Speaker 1: Um the record was called Telephone, so of course, you know,
Speaker 1: Gaga becomes gay gay and Brittney recorded the record as
Speaker 1: a demo and she's like, nope, get that record back.
Speaker 1: And she put Beyonce on that record, and that record became,
Speaker 1: you know, a number one hit. But she couldn't keep
Speaker 1: a record because everybody would take it because she wasn't
Speaker 1: a big star. But I started keeping making sure we
Speaker 1: could keep those records. So just Dance we kept, which
Speaker 1: became a number one record. Um, Love Game we kept,
Speaker 1: became a number one run record. Poker Face we kept
Speaker 1: that one became a number one record, and um so
Speaker 1: it just was really fighting and so did a block
Speaker 1: in and tackling. We'll take a quick break and come
Speaker 1: back with more of my conversation with Director of Creative
Speaker 1: Services and Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music
Speaker 1: Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. This week. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: with Troy Carter. Recently, I interviewed Brian Fogel, who created
Speaker 1: Oscar winning documentary Chous. Be the first to hear next
Speaker 1: week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm tuned in
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast or your podcast Apple Troice. While you're there,
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review the podcast. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: get back to my conversation with Troy Carter. Now. The
Speaker 1: story is she was making dance music at a time
Speaker 1: dance music was not on the chart or on the radio,
Speaker 1: and the interscope went to the wall for you. Is
Speaker 1: that true? Yeah, it was. We were getting a lot
Speaker 1: of push back from Top forty radio because they thought
Speaker 1: that it was too electronic because it was sort of
Speaker 1: four on the floor and read one who was the
Speaker 1: music producer was just um, you know, he came out
Speaker 1: of Sweden, so it was you know, sort of Swedish
Speaker 1: sound at that time. And we didn't take no for
Speaker 1: an answer, but neither did Brenda Romano, who was working
Speaker 1: Top forty radio at that time, and so she just
Speaker 1: kept knocking on those doors. And but the Internet and
Speaker 1: being able to kind of build that story and come
Speaker 1: back to radio was really important. So we were building
Speaker 1: audiences um on YouTube and you know, and building this
Speaker 1: sort of international following on YouTube. We were doing the
Speaker 1: same thing on Twitter, We were doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: um on a couple other platforms. And then NAT started
Speaker 1: translating into call out at radio, so they would put
Speaker 1: the record on and kids already knew the record. You know,
Speaker 1: the radio was late at that time because kids were
Speaker 1: already familiar with the sort of what's happening with Spotify now.
Speaker 1: But saving that for a little bit later. Okay, Gaga
Speaker 1: blows up. It must be an amazing learning experience for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's It's what I realized was, you know,
Speaker 1: it's levels you know, and the business and its levels
Speaker 1: in life. You know, um, because with Eve, Eve had
Speaker 1: a wildly successful career for hip hop artists, you know,
Speaker 1: and and even you know, we did her TV show
Speaker 1: and it lasted for you know, a few years, but
Speaker 1: you know that was primarily you know, it was African
Speaker 1: American audiences that was consuming you know, the the TV show.
Speaker 1: So we weren't we didn't have that level of pop
Speaker 1: exposure at at at that time. So and I had
Speaker 1: glimpses of it through Sanctuary because Destiny's Child was you know,
Speaker 1: managed by Sanctuary and a few other pop acts. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't personally exposed to it. So with Gaga, only
Speaker 1: had experience as a hip hop manager, so I kind
Speaker 1: of managed her like a hip hop act. So we
Speaker 1: were doing three shows a night. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: sound was terrible half the time. You know, you know rappers,
Speaker 1: you know they're holding the micro like this or whatever,
Speaker 1: and um, so we didn't know sound, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Iveen. She was opening for New Kids on the Block.
Speaker 1: And I remember Jimmy pulling me to the side after
Speaker 1: the first show at Staples Center and he said, the
Speaker 1: show was great, sound was terrible. This is what you
Speaker 1: need to do to fix the sound. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the guy you need to call to fix the sound.
Speaker 1: And he taught me, you know, sort of sonically with
Speaker 1: pop acts as supposed to sound like. And then I
Speaker 1: met Arthur Fogel and Michael Rapino and they taught me
Speaker 1: what pop acts as supposed to tour like. You know,
Speaker 1: So it was it was I was I felt like
Speaker 1: I was in school learning a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: So where I knew this sort of basic um fundamentals
Speaker 1: of protect your client with everything you have, and so
Speaker 1: my instincts were worked, you know, in terms of of
Speaker 1: protecting a client, but in terms of global touring and
Speaker 1: making and building a global superstar. I've gone to countries
Speaker 1: I had never gone to, and you know, it just
Speaker 1: was a whole new experience. And at any time in
Speaker 1: the height of her career did another manager try to
Speaker 1: steal your act all the time? You know, I remember
Speaker 1: I remember getting a call from um just this is
Speaker 1: as she was really this is as the first single
Speaker 1: was taken off, and her lawyer, Um, her first lawyer,
Speaker 1: called up and and said, um, uh, I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna mention him. Uh. Big, big, big manager calls calls
Speaker 1: up and he wants to take a meeting uh with
Speaker 1: with with Uh. This is why I love her. By
Speaker 1: the way, big manager called up the lawyer tried to
Speaker 1: set the meeting up and and like around me and
Speaker 1: she called me. She called me and she said fire
Speaker 1: him the lawyer. Yeah, that's great. But eventually it does
Speaker 1: end with Stephanie. Now we've talked about that. But for
Speaker 1: people who don't know the story in retrospect, I know
Speaker 1: there was an issue she had to do boyfriend, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Did you see it coming? No, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think you ever see that ce ce ce that type
Speaker 1: of thing coming and um and you know, and and
Speaker 1: of course you know I can't get into any of
Speaker 1: the specifics or anything like that, you know, Um, but
Speaker 1: and I and I don't want to sit here and
Speaker 1: bullsit you and and and you know, say any sort
Speaker 1: of fake story. But you know the reality is, you know,
Speaker 1: she and I had an incredible relationship, like and even
Speaker 1: to this day, I still I still love her despite
Speaker 1: anything that's happened with her. Uh No, we don't we
Speaker 1: know contact with her right now. And um, but you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to go through that sort of
Speaker 1: period of time and and where you're pretty much living
Speaker 1: on a bus together. You know, you're traveling the world together,
Speaker 1: you know, um, just down to like you know, birth
Speaker 1: of kids and you know everything. So where and and
Speaker 1: it's not like I had a big roster, you know,
Speaker 1: for the first when I was managing Goga, I think
Speaker 1: for the at least for the first couple of years,
Speaker 1: she was really the only client that I was that
Speaker 1: I was focused on. So she and I were really tight,
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't so when when it when it comes,
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever prepared for word, you know,
Speaker 1: so and and it's emotional. You go through the sort
Speaker 1: of the emotions of hurt and anger, and and and
Speaker 1: and everything else or whatever. But the reality is, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't give it back for the world
Speaker 1: because I think it was an incredible experience. She helped
Speaker 1: my career just as much as I helped her career.
Speaker 1: We both came up in and and and the business
Speaker 1: together and m and life happens, man like you know,
Speaker 1: life life happening. Now since you've managed her, stop manager,
Speaker 1: she has not had a hit. She's had very successful
Speaker 1: road business. First with Tony Bennet, she's brought If you
Speaker 1: were to manage her again, what do you think she
Speaker 1: should do to sustain and build her career. The The
Speaker 1: good thing is, you know we're talking about and I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying this, she's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: and when I say one of the most, I'm not
Speaker 1: even saying broadly. I'm talking, you know, top five most
Speaker 1: talented artists and in the business. And it's very hard,
Speaker 1: you know, probably you know, when you look at her
Speaker 1: live show, it's probably only a couple of artists you
Speaker 1: know that that is up on that level in terms
Speaker 1: of live live concert performances, playing like piano is you know,
Speaker 1: it's vocalists like you know, performance artists, top top top, top,
Speaker 1: top level find it's just getting the records. That's all
Speaker 1: it boils down to. It's like you know, if, if,
Speaker 1: who who are you collaborating with and and the reality
Speaker 1: is finding making making great records with superstars is hard
Speaker 1: and it's a villain because you have to have incredibly
Speaker 1: strong producers in the room who can push back. You
Speaker 1: have to have an incredibly strong person at the top
Speaker 1: of that record label because Jimmy, basically Jimmy was tough,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you bring records in. Jimmy's a record producer,
Speaker 1: so Jimmy's gonna tell you how that record sounds or whatever.
Speaker 1: Vincent was a record producer and a songwriter, so Vince
Speaker 1: is gonna tell you how to how that record sounds
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so it's a filter that it goes through.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the people in the room that
Speaker 1: are that are collaborating and you put the record out,
Speaker 1: you gotta beat you gotta beat that record up, and
Speaker 1: you gotta be tough on tough on that record. But
Speaker 1: I think she I'm not worried about her. To be
Speaker 1: honest with you, it's like, you know, artists like she
Speaker 1: She's just one of those artists. She's gonna be around
Speaker 1: for fifty years. Certainly. See was like that. So while
Speaker 1: she's at the peak of her success, you meet a
Speaker 1: guy who guides you into the investment tech world. Can
Speaker 1: you tell the simple multitude about that? Yeah, it was um.
Speaker 1: You know, we were doing we were doing a lot
Speaker 1: of experimenting, um with social media and I and I've
Speaker 1: always been curious around other businesses, you know, so that's
Speaker 1: been a thing where I just want to learn everything
Speaker 1: I can about what you do. Like so if I'm curious,
Speaker 1: I'm going down the rabbit hole. And um, and we started.
Speaker 1: I remember I got invited to do a day trip
Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley and I never gone to the valley before,
Speaker 1: and never gone to Palo Altoo before. And um, and
Speaker 1: I flew in in the morning and my first meeting
Speaker 1: was with I think it was David simmon off from Yahoo,
Speaker 1: a like at a coffee shop at like eight o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, and you know, and just he's telling
Speaker 1: me about the valley and you know, and just his
Speaker 1: history and everything and very very interesting. And then my
Speaker 1: second meeting was at Palentteer and UM and if you
Speaker 1: if if Palanteer is probably the most sophisticated technology company
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley and it was founded by a guy
Speaker 1: named Joe Lonsdale who was Peter Tiels like you know protege,
Speaker 1: you know, as Peter was coming out of PayPal, and
Speaker 1: you know, I go into their offices and it's like
Speaker 1: the TV show twenty four And what Palentteer basically does
Speaker 1: is they track um, terroristic algorithms on the internet. So
Speaker 1: and so when after nine eleven, when the FBI was
Speaker 1: building air thing and c i A was building an
Speaker 1: air thing, the d A was building air thing, none
Speaker 1: of the technology talked to each other and you know,
Speaker 1: and really worked in a way, and Palatiner figured it out.
Speaker 1: So I'm seeing this with my own I'm like, am
Speaker 1: I even you know, it's like, you know, some serious stuff.
Speaker 1: And then we went to Facebook and all of these
Speaker 1: companies and then and that night they threw me a
Speaker 1: barbecue at Joe Linsdale's house and UM, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: to all of these guys and you know, people could
Speaker 1: barely look you in the face and you know, there's
Speaker 1: like as Berger's Convention. I told my wife, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this wrong in l A right now, and
Speaker 1: like it's like everybody's driving I'm driving a Rolls Royce
Speaker 1: and these billionaires are driving prius Is and uh and
Speaker 1: this is revenge in the nerds and the nerds one
Speaker 1: big and um. And then they started inviting me into
Speaker 1: into deals and said, you know, you want to invest here,
Speaker 1: And I started investing here and then investing there. Look
Speaker 1: it into my conversation with director of Creative Services at Spotify,
Speaker 1: Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, California. I hope you're enjoying listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want
Speaker 1: to listen to sound bites from the interviews and see
Speaker 1: some of my guests, check it out. It at tuned
Speaker 1: in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now we're of my
Speaker 1: conversation with the director of Creative Services at Spotify, Troy Carter,
Speaker 1: on The Bob Left Sets Podcast. You were pretty much
Speaker 1: the first person, certainly in the music business who was
Speaker 1: investing you know what, because I went in and I
Speaker 1: would probably go to the valley at least twice a week.
Speaker 1: So I would be in l A three days a week,
Speaker 1: and I'd be in San Francisco and Palo Alto two
Speaker 1: days a week, and I would start parking myself and
Speaker 1: people's offices and setting up shop in their offices during
Speaker 1: the day. And um, and then when I remembered it
Speaker 1: was um. One of the guys I met was it
Speaker 1: was a guy named Shervin Pishevar and Shervin Um. He
Speaker 1: had just sold his business and he started um investing
Speaker 1: at a firm called Menlo. And he caught me up
Speaker 1: and he said, I want to do this thing like
Speaker 1: this sort of uh, we're gonna be like this, this
Speaker 1: sort of Jedi investment group, and I just want you
Speaker 1: to be one of the Jedies. And um, and he
Speaker 1: caught me up about I think Warby Parker was one
Speaker 1: of the Was it the first deal that Shervin Um
Speaker 1: asked me about? And then um the second deal was
Speaker 1: was uber. But then he said, well, you know I
Speaker 1: want to do. I want to start putting l A
Speaker 1: people into into the deals. Can you help introduce me
Speaker 1: to some people in in l A? And UM, so
Speaker 1: I started introducing them to to some people in l A.
Speaker 1: And we put some l A people into the Uber
Speaker 1: deal and then kind of started building this thing that
Speaker 1: sort of bridge between San Francisco and and in l A.
Speaker 1: Did you get compensated were establishing those relationships? Uh, just
Speaker 1: as an investor. So so just for my my my
Speaker 1: compensation was Shervan would put me into people would put
Speaker 1: me into more deals, and then the way. And this
Speaker 1: is the other thing I loved about the valley that
Speaker 1: was so different from the music business. The music business
Speaker 1: is zero sum. It's like some in order for you
Speaker 1: to win, somebody has to lose. And then when and
Speaker 1: then the structure of a record label, um, whenever there's
Speaker 1: sort of a windfall, only the people at the very
Speaker 1: very top of the pyramid get get wealthy and nobody
Speaker 1: else gets gets wealthy essentially, and um and in technology
Speaker 1: and an investment, the way it works is the opposite,
Speaker 1: because you you you want the healthiest syndicate around the
Speaker 1: deal so that the entrepreneur and the company has the
Speaker 1: best chance of success. So if I know that this
Speaker 1: person here and this person here and this person here
Speaker 1: could be very helpful, I want them, then I want
Speaker 1: them in the deal because I'm gonna do better. And
Speaker 1: so that's how that's how this sort of is a
Speaker 1: network effect. So like you know, Rocking, I would put
Speaker 1: rock Nation into deals, then they would put me into deals. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Scooter and I start putting each other into deals. Gayo,
Speaker 1: Siri and I started putting each other into deals. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. I remember is funny enough one of our companies,
Speaker 1: one of the first companies I invested in UM. It
Speaker 1: was a company called zim Ride that came to my
Speaker 1: office and we invested and they would calm work out
Speaker 1: of our offices in l A and then UM after
Speaker 1: Uber launch, the founder caught me up and he's and
Speaker 1: he said, I want to see can you connect me
Speaker 1: with Live Nation because they have these festivals and we
Speaker 1: have this our car pooling business. I want to see
Speaker 1: if we can car pool people back and forth. So
Speaker 1: I called up microL Rapino. UM, Michael was great. He
Speaker 1: did the deal, and Michael put you know, put some
Speaker 1: money into the company. And fast forward, that company went
Speaker 1: from zim Ride to become in Lift. So you know,
Speaker 1: and this is eight years ago. So in terms of
Speaker 1: that that sort of value at that particular time, seven
Speaker 1: or eight years ago and when it becomes now that's
Speaker 1: how you That's so when you say the compensation, is
Speaker 1: that sort of flow that that that that happens. But
Speaker 1: I'm not asking anybody for money or anything in return.
Speaker 1: In your office, you have a whole wall of the
Speaker 1: companies you've invested in at this point in time. How
Speaker 1: many companies do you think you've invested in? Um is
Speaker 1: probably about a hundred and twenty. And of a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty, how many went completely bust? Uh, completely bust?
Speaker 1: Probably thirty or forty? Probably third about thirty I would say,
Speaker 1: are completely bust? How many winners? Probably forty? I would
Speaker 1: put him in in and a third, a third and
Speaker 1: a third. You got you got winner, you got winners,
Speaker 1: neutral and and dogs. Okay, so you're doing this. You're
Speaker 1: done with Gaga and then he's like record label. I
Speaker 1: might just have a record label, right, and then you
Speaker 1: have Making Trainer. Okay. The interesting thing from the outside observer,
Speaker 1: when you're involved with Making Trainer, she's everywhere and successful,
Speaker 1: and since you've been gone, she has not achieved that
Speaker 1: level of success, showing that your ability. But at what
Speaker 1: point do you you were an investor in Spotify, At
Speaker 1: what point do you wake up and say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cross the street from being a manager to working for Spotify.
Speaker 1: So I invested in Spotify, and I think it was
Speaker 1: like two thousand and eleven, two thousand eleven, and UM
Speaker 1: and Daniel and I we we ended up. We we
Speaker 1: didn't initially meet when I invested, and then I think
Speaker 1: it had to be about six or seven months later.
Speaker 1: UM as a group called called Charity Water out of
Speaker 1: New York, a guy named Scott Harrison. He put together
Speaker 1: a group of probably fifteen or twenty founders to go
Speaker 1: to spend a week and a half in Ethiopia and
Speaker 1: UM and basically you build UM wells and different villages
Speaker 1: through throughout Ethiopia. And Daniel was on that trip. And
Speaker 1: when you when you're in uh and and suv for
Speaker 1: four hours with somebody going through villages and you know
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing you know some you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's incredible. It is very emotional, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: visiting these different places like just in but like if
Speaker 1: not even in a sad way, it's like the people
Speaker 1: they are fantastic. But he and I didn't meet. Sitting
Speaker 1: across the desk from each other. And I think that
Speaker 1: connected us in a way where we got to know
Speaker 1: each other personally before we did any sort of business together.
Speaker 1: And so when Spotify was, you know, had come to America,
Speaker 1: I would, you know, he and I would talk strategy,
Speaker 1: whether it was people who were holding back albums from
Speaker 1: you know, from the from the service, you know, some
Speaker 1: communication strategy, you know, some introductions to managers and things
Speaker 1: like that. But every time he would come to l A,
Speaker 1: he and I would spend a bunch of time together.
Speaker 1: And he had just become one of my favorite, my
Speaker 1: favorite people. And then you know, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, I was, I was so burned out from
Speaker 1: being a manager. And I've done it. I've done it
Speaker 1: for seventeen years and um and like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: Megan Trainer, Charlie Pooth and a few other clients you
Speaker 1: know where like my my the last clients on the roster.
Speaker 1: And I saw, you know, I get I get signs
Speaker 1: in my life. It's almost like gott to pull the
Speaker 1: rug up from under me sometimes, like you know, but
Speaker 1: you know, if if I don't want to make the
Speaker 1: decision myself, and I saw I started to see some
Speaker 1: of the cracks and Adam Factory's business. UM I started
Speaker 1: to look at the future of like the management business
Speaker 1: for myself. And I I wasn't getting up in the
Speaker 1: morning excited. Um and you know, to to the amount
Speaker 1: of I don't I don't phone it in, Like I
Speaker 1: just don't have the thing where I can phone it in.
Speaker 1: And if I'm working for a client, I'm putting my
Speaker 1: soul into it. And when you put your soul into something,
Speaker 1: and you know, you get punched in the gut and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, you're not appreciated, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you know sometimes you know some clients, you
Speaker 1: know you you you got to drag them across the
Speaker 1: finish line and you gotta explain to him why should
Speaker 1: you shouldn't cancel a show, or you should you should
Speaker 1: show up one time, or you should do that. I
Speaker 1: just was ready to do something different. And Daniel and
Speaker 1: I started having these conversations. And I remember I was
Speaker 1: sitting at the Soho house. He and I were working
Speaker 1: on a project together. Um I was. I was testing
Speaker 1: something out for him on on the Spotify platform, and
Speaker 1: we were at the Soho house and we started talking
Speaker 1: about what this sort of creator services thing would look
Speaker 1: would look like, you know, sort of from the outside end.
Speaker 1: And um, and we started having one of those what
Speaker 1: ifs conversations and I remember, you know, I talked to
Speaker 1: my wife about it. I got cold feet. Like I
Speaker 1: had agreed to it, then I got cold feet and
Speaker 1: I told him, you know, I don't think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it. And you know, we went back and forth
Speaker 1: and no exaggeration. Within a six week period, I had
Speaker 1: wound you know, I wound down Atom Factory and was
Speaker 1: in Spotify about six six I've lived with you through
Speaker 1: a lot of challenges is Spotify, but now streaming is one.
Speaker 1: Revenues are up. What you are the major challenges you're
Speaker 1: facing now? Um. You know, I think so you know
Speaker 1: this the streaming business. I think we're still in its
Speaker 1: infancy right now. So you know, I think you have
Speaker 1: some markets that are mature, like Sweden's very like a
Speaker 1: very mature market. Um. America to me is still a
Speaker 1: young streaming market. UM. You look at places like India
Speaker 1: that's still you know, young, and what's gonna happen in
Speaker 1: and so to Africa. UM, and you know some of
Speaker 1: the other markets as well. I think it's I think
Speaker 1: in terms, I think what we this is more of
Speaker 1: an industry thing. It's sort of defining as companies what
Speaker 1: our relationship is with the rest of the with with
Speaker 1: the rest of the industry, because I, you know, I
Speaker 1: definitely foresee you know what, what what all of our
Speaker 1: roles are right now are gonna look much much different
Speaker 1: over the next ten years, meaning what it is to
Speaker 1: be a record label, what it is to be a
Speaker 1: talent manager, what it means to be a promoter, you know,
Speaker 1: and what it means to be an artist by the way,
Speaker 1: so all of this is gonna look different. So I
Speaker 1: think just the thing is being able to um get
Speaker 1: who gets to the future, Who gets to the future
Speaker 1: the fastest? Okay, um I got a number of questions.
Speaker 1: Let me think of the one. Let's go to the
Speaker 1: one that everybody is concerned about. Playlists. What are we
Speaker 1: here on the street. We hear the individual playlist or
Speaker 1: is being squeezed out by the major labels. We hear that,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by that when you say that
Speaker 1: they were saying that, you know that it's the major
Speaker 1: label playlists who are major labels playlists and the Spotify
Speaker 1: playlists are getting most of the streams, and that the
Speaker 1: the major labels have power on Spotify akin to their
Speaker 1: power at radio with their promotion teams. I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't agree at all, because you know, I think
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that this is my point. That is
Speaker 1: what people say, yeah, yeah, and which I which I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't agree, And um, you know, and I talked
Speaker 1: to the indie labels all the time, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because you know, the indies like people
Speaker 1: that have this sort of big narrative out there. And
Speaker 1: then you know, and then I asked him a simple question,
Speaker 1: are the indie labels doing better, you know now that
Speaker 1: that Spotify is here? And then they were but four
Speaker 1: and and uh unanimously the answers, yes, you know, because
Speaker 1: the Indians are doing are doing much better now, Um,
Speaker 1: I think. And as as far as playlists are concerned,
Speaker 1: so just we we have forty playlists owned and operated
Speaker 1: by Spotify, all different types of niche like niche playlists
Speaker 1: as well, So we do have the sort of flagships
Speaker 1: to you know, today's top pits, Hot Country, Viva Latino, Rap,
Speaker 1: Caviare R and B like all of those flagships, But
Speaker 1: then you've got a ton of other sort of mid
Speaker 1: tier and feeder playlists that kind of feed up into them.
Speaker 1: For most of the artists that that that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: we're talking about artists who will who would never get
Speaker 1: on radio. By the way, like we know how top
Speaker 1: forty works, You better have a huge budget if you
Speaker 1: want to get if you want to a can record
Speaker 1: all formats, be prepared to have a half a half
Speaker 1: a million dollars to to go all formats to get
Speaker 1: a top ten record at radio UM and so, and
Speaker 1: you need you need a real system to be to
Speaker 1: be able to be able to to to to do that,
Speaker 1: and then you have to have a certain type of
Speaker 1: record with a certain type of sound. And so if
Speaker 1: you're looking at top forties specifically, you figure it's let's
Speaker 1: call it twenty five slots, and then let's call it
Speaker 1: twenty artists that are gonna fulfill those those twenty those
Speaker 1: twenty slots. And you know, because of the artists who
Speaker 1: are gonna have multiple songs and those slots, so you
Speaker 1: got uh uh one tenth of a percent, and then
Speaker 1: you got the one percent, and you know then then
Speaker 1: then it kind of breaks down from there. So I
Speaker 1: think the sort of ecosystem of our playlist gives a
Speaker 1: fair shot to the entire industry at that at that point.
Speaker 1: And what what The one thing I like, what I
Speaker 1: love about you know, Spotify is that people can't figure
Speaker 1: it out. You can't. It's no, it's no hype. So
Speaker 1: it's not you can't come in there and and and
Speaker 1: sort of hype your record to get us to put
Speaker 1: it on on on on a playlist. The data doesn't lie,
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, okay, but if you talk
Speaker 1: to like Daniel Glass, he comes to l A, you'll
Speaker 1: hang out at Apple Music, it'll go to Spotify. To
Speaker 1: what degree is the personal relationship important? Per Personal relationships
Speaker 1: are always going to be important, right, but they're only
Speaker 1: gonna be important to a certain extent because as much
Speaker 1: as I love Daniel, and if Daniel doesn't walk in
Speaker 1: the door with a great record, Daniel's record is gonna
Speaker 1: be treated like everybody else's record essentially lucky enough, you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel walks in with Jade Bird and she becomes one
Speaker 1: of my favorite artists and we're carrying a jay Bird
Speaker 1: flag throughout throughout the building or whatever. But would that
Speaker 1: being said, a lot of the stuff that major labels
Speaker 1: are signing right now aren't coming through any label. They're
Speaker 1: coming through Spotify. So it's we were it's between our editors,
Speaker 1: um sort of looking at blogs, living on SoundCloud, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of digging in the crates, kind of finding new
Speaker 1: stuff because they want to discover things. I get calls
Speaker 1: from our editors basically saying, um, hey, hey, Troy, I
Speaker 1: found this record. Um, we gotta they gotta figure out
Speaker 1: to aggregator to put it through because there's no record label,
Speaker 1: and then this act will end up with fifty million
Speaker 1: streams and they'll end up with a record deal and
Speaker 1: then the labels that you know are are signing them.
Speaker 1: So that's not a lot of the rap caviare stuff
Speaker 1: is with stuff that our editors found. Even on the
Speaker 1: pop side, Mike Mike Baggage finds things and then he
Speaker 1: puts it into the pop playlist and then they end
Speaker 1: up getting signed. So if we what do you see
Speaker 1: the future? Because we can go on Spotify right now,
Speaker 1: we can see the Spotify Top fifty changes every day.
Speaker 1: We can see the number of streams and except for
Speaker 1: the Superstar of Superstars with one single radio is way behind.
Speaker 1: They won't add multiple tracks, they're off the months behind.
Speaker 1: What do you foresee the future there? You know, I
Speaker 1: think I think radio's in trouble, you know readio radio
Speaker 1: as we know, it's in trouble, and I think it's
Speaker 1: inevitable because the only way from radio that you make
Speaker 1: your business better is to build the uh an experience.
Speaker 1: That's worse for the consumer, meaning you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: put more ads into and into into the product. So
Speaker 1: you know, I even know when if I go and
Speaker 1: out and I turn on radio, is a high probability
Speaker 1: that is going to be commercials on so soon as
Speaker 1: soon as I turn it on. So that's one sort
Speaker 1: of friction point, you know, out of the gate. Then
Speaker 1: the second friction point is radio relies so much on
Speaker 1: research because they want to do they need to de
Speaker 1: risk it or whatever. So you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: when uh DJs and programmers could make independent decisions before
Speaker 1: and they felt something and they could put it in,
Speaker 1: they could put it in right away. A lot of
Speaker 1: the radio stations are looking at Spotify data and kind
Speaker 1: of using that to decide which which records they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna put in. So by the time they hear that
Speaker 1: that record is old on Spotify. So you know, So
Speaker 1: for my kids who get in the car and they're
Speaker 1: you know, going on Spotify and YouTube to kind of
Speaker 1: consume their music, if they turn on Top forty radio,
Speaker 1: whatever they're hearing is already months old by that time.
Speaker 1: So I think you lose a consumer at that point,
Speaker 1: or it starts feeling like, um, almost like an adult
Speaker 1: Top forty because you know, you're you're planning old music.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a big I think this is
Speaker 1: a gap. And for us, we can't you know, and
Speaker 1: think this is a big you know sort of gap
Speaker 1: and friction point where you know, Spotify and and and
Speaker 1: frontline record labels, we can't keep your record in while
Speaker 1: you're going for your radio plan because our consumer has
Speaker 1: already moved on to your second or third single by
Speaker 1: the time you know you're getting added at at radio.
Speaker 1: So you know. So I think that's the part that
Speaker 1: from an industry perspective, I think on the label side,
Speaker 1: they have to figure out what's what's gonna be, what's
Speaker 1: important to you, you know, being current with the consumers
Speaker 1: and being able to have you know, songs within the
Speaker 1: within these playlists or you know, getting added at top forty.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how to and if we go on
Speaker 1: the US Top fifty, it is very much urban slash
Speaker 1: hip hop. So the question that's obviously illustrating demand, but
Speaker 1: to what degree does Spotify have a responsibility to give
Speaker 1: attention to other formats? Let me just say for myself,
Speaker 1: let me give an experience. I want to know what's
Speaker 1: going on, So I'll go to the Spotify Top fifty.
Speaker 1: I'll listen. Then if I think of all the other genres, country, electronic,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of work and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of acts today forget that you people don't teem to
Speaker 1: understand that you get paid based on whether people stream
Speaker 1: you or not. But is is are we purely speaking
Speaker 1: to the public's demand or is there any way or
Speaker 1: is there responsibility for Spotify to boost other formats? So so,
Speaker 1: and as a really really really good question, so where
Speaker 1: um so, But so we'll separate it for a second.
Speaker 1: So when you look at the top fifty, that's just demand, right,
Speaker 1: So that is that is the pulse of what people
Speaker 1: on our platform are are actually listening to. Because the
Speaker 1: difference with radio is push, the difference with Spotify is
Speaker 1: poll So that is consumers actually listening to that to
Speaker 1: that music because they can easily skip through it, right,
Speaker 1: So this is what this is. He so urban hip
Speaker 1: hop is really top forty right now in terms is
Speaker 1: pop music in terms of popularity UM if you look
Speaker 1: at you know, we talked last week we announced UM
Speaker 1: the new the new free app on on Spotify, and
Speaker 1: a lot of what we talked about was personalization because
Speaker 1: when the beauty of the beauty of of of data
Speaker 1: is being able to give everybody in this room or
Speaker 1: personalized experience. So and and that's that that was a
Speaker 1: that's a big friction point because if you're a country
Speaker 1: music fan and you show up and the first thing
Speaker 1: you see is is me goes, you know, and in
Speaker 1: the platform, you might churn out at that point, or
Speaker 1: if you can't, or if you feel sort of it's
Speaker 1: almost like you're walking into a room and not feeling welcome,
Speaker 1: you know, So how do you make people feel welcome
Speaker 1: when they walk into that room. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're working on right now is built
Speaker 1: around personalization. So I think what what what people see
Speaker 1: in the in the new free app from the onboarding
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, allow you to tell
Speaker 1: us about yourself and and so when you come to Spotify,
Speaker 1: how do we give you a personalized experience? And then um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's almost like the personalized experience would
Speaker 1: be to a the A story and the B story
Speaker 1: is more to shared experience, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: right now it's a little bit of the opposite where
Speaker 1: it was in the past. It was the opposite where
Speaker 1: it was the shared story was for was out in front,
Speaker 1: and then the personalization was more in to discover weekly
Speaker 1: product and and things like that. We'll plause here for
Speaker 1: a brief moment and get right back to the Director
Speaker 1: of Creative Services and Spotify, Troy Carter. As you probably know,
Speaker 1: I'm mainly a writer and you can read my work
Speaker 1: at left sets dot com. If you sign up for
Speaker 1: the newsletter, not only will you get my commentary on music,
Speaker 1: tech and my life in general, you'll be the first
Speaker 1: to find out when we publish a new conversation. Go
Speaker 1: to left steps dot com and sign up now more
Speaker 1: were the director of Creative Services, that's Spotify, Troy Carter,
Speaker 1: recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna open up the questions now. Two things, One
Speaker 1: wait for a mic, and to please ask a question
Speaker 1: as opposed to giving your opinion. We're certainly interested in
Speaker 1: your opinion, but everybody may not. It's certainly for dinner
Speaker 1: or other times. So I have Troy here, please make
Speaker 1: it a question. Since you're talking about personalization, so you're
Speaker 1: saying that you're getting receiving enough qualitative data to give somebody,
Speaker 1: uh human behavior personalization. That's that's how much data you
Speaker 1: guys are receiving too, to personalize your face for that person,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So just understanding how people listening to, how
Speaker 1: how people listen to music and um, what types of
Speaker 1: people are listening to what types of music allows us
Speaker 1: to give a better listening experience. So in terms and
Speaker 1: in that you know, it's funny because when when you
Speaker 1: talk about data now because of the Facebook thing, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of freaks people out right. Um, but data
Speaker 1: used in the right way can give you an incredible experience.
Speaker 1: So if you look at ten years of understanding the
Speaker 1: way tens and tens of millions, over a hundred million
Speaker 1: people listening listen to music. You really understand how to
Speaker 1: personalize and experience and that's how that's why I discover
Speaker 1: Weekly worked really well, Release Radar worked really well, and
Speaker 1: then um daily Mix worked really well. And now UM,
Speaker 1: I think we're we're we're we're able to dial it
Speaker 1: in even even better. Next question, Jim, we have to Mike,
Speaker 1: So if someone else get a Mike Jake. UM, I
Speaker 1: have a question, if you guys have ever looked at
Speaker 1: the genre of music against the free service versus the
Speaker 1: paid service? Can you? I think what he means is
Speaker 1: do people listen who are paying listen to different stuff
Speaker 1: from the people who are not paying? Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and do you have data on that? So the answer
Speaker 1: would be, I'm a pent sure we have data data
Speaker 1: on that. Um. I wouldn't be able to break down specifically.
Speaker 1: I could say it broadly, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: like sort of premium premium versus free, but um not
Speaker 1: really specifically right right now, okay, general and right here,
Speaker 1: Hey Trow, I'm here from Sweden. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate um back where I'm from about the sort of
Speaker 1: payment models from Spotify little bit a little bit louder
Speaker 1: places the payment models from Spotify to the labels, and
Speaker 1: from the labels to the artists and the sort of
Speaker 1: royalty pool that's being built up. Do you know if
Speaker 1: Spotify is planning to change anything in the model in
Speaker 1: the nearest future or instead of discussion that happens in
Speaker 1: the office. Well, um, and this is is a is
Speaker 1: a good question. You know. The reality is, you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of we I think we've gone through the
Speaker 1: sort of in a very very beginning of Spotify when
Speaker 1: when people said Spotify doesn't pay pay out, they were
Speaker 1: right because it was no scale, right, So it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, it's only a certain amount of paying customers
Speaker 1: on the platform, So the royalty payments were We're smaller
Speaker 1: in the beginning. You fast forward, now we we paid
Speaker 1: out over eight billion euros you know, to to to
Speaker 1: the music industry, and but how that's distributed to artists
Speaker 1: and creators is based off of individual deals. So at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, it's we can't make um, rights
Speaker 1: holders pay out any specific way, you know, is their
Speaker 1: individual deals with individual artists. Um. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: I think quite naturally, UM, just what what I see
Speaker 1: happening generally in the industry the next ten years are
Speaker 1: gonna look a lot different because you have a lot
Speaker 1: of are you got. I'm seeing artists that are um
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna speak very candidly. I'm seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of artists that are opting to stay independent because
Speaker 1: they're seeing how much, you know, you can really make,
Speaker 1: you can really make a living and you get you
Speaker 1: get real cash flow in terms of not having to wait,
Speaker 1: you know, along along if you are independent, how often
Speaker 1: you get paid from Spotify, um you get. It depends
Speaker 1: on your aggregator and how your aggregator works. But let's
Speaker 1: say on average you get a monthly payment that trails. Right,
Speaker 1: So if I didn't mean to interrupt, do you get
Speaker 1: a monthly payment that that trails. But let's just talk
Speaker 1: about the future of the business. Right If we look
Speaker 1: at the future of the business, and we look at
Speaker 1: a cross and this isn't me predicting Spotify, I'm just
Speaker 1: talking specifically for the industry and looking at other types
Speaker 1: of industry, why shouldn't artists get paid If uber drivers
Speaker 1: and lift drivers now can say cash out after their
Speaker 1: drive and that and it goes directly into their bank
Speaker 1: account of PayPal account, my guess is artists in the future,
Speaker 1: are gonna be able to cash out after a day
Speaker 1: of streams, how whenever they meet, whenever they need that money.
Speaker 1: And cash flow is a big problem with artists. We
Speaker 1: know you might need to pay rent, you might need
Speaker 1: to buy gear, you might be going on tour, whatever,
Speaker 1: you might need to buy a car, whatever you need
Speaker 1: to do. Cash flows an issue. So when historically you
Speaker 1: know record labels have taken care of a cash flow problem,
Speaker 1: But in so I think UM, the question, the bigger
Speaker 1: question becomes value proposition. Well, the value proposition UM for
Speaker 1: of giving up eighty five of your of your revenue
Speaker 1: in exchange for marketing, promotion, cash advance, whatever is it
Speaker 1: gonna be worth it? And that's I think that's gonna
Speaker 1: be That's gonna be the biggest trick. But I think
Speaker 1: I don't think deals are gonna stay the same. I
Speaker 1: think that the whole value chain is gonna change. I
Speaker 1: think record labels are gonna um evolve their their value proposition.
Speaker 1: I think managers are gonna evolve their value proposition. I
Speaker 1: think UM those services are gonna start looking like each other.
Speaker 1: Management companies will look like labels, labels will look like
Speaker 1: management companies, and UM and then, But from there, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be about the value that the
Speaker 1: artists feel like they can capture in the end. Does
Speaker 1: that answer? Does that help well? The other the other?
Speaker 1: But the other thing about I think you're addressing is
Speaker 1: at this point in time, is it's sixty seven or
Speaker 1: sixty eight percent of every dollar goes to right soldiers
Speaker 1: um from from Spotify. Yes, some somewhere in the area. Right,
Speaker 1: So what happened if you to deal with an aggregator
Speaker 1: like tune in, you pay, I mean the tune cord
Speaker 1: you paid once a year, all that money will be yours,
Speaker 1: assuming you both write the song and record the song.
Speaker 1: But if there's someone in between, like a label, assuming
Speaker 1: they're paying you at all, your deal maybe fifteen cents
Speaker 1: on the dollar that they get. But the issue this
Speaker 1: is also an interesting issue because they don't really want
Speaker 1: Spotify if they really start talking about this and pointing
Speaker 1: at the labels, their partners. The labels don't like it
Speaker 1: to be talked about. And we don't have to point
Speaker 1: like it, I think, And that's the whole thing, Like
Speaker 1: it's you know where where it's it's we We are
Speaker 1: a very transparent company and you know we don't. We
Speaker 1: don't play hide the ball with with with record labels.
Speaker 1: We talked very openly about the about our business to them. Um.
Speaker 1: We also talked to to to the record labels about
Speaker 1: what the future the business is gonna look like. And
Speaker 1: Daniels a guy who he lives ten years in the
Speaker 1: in in the future, like that's that's how he he thinks.
Speaker 1: And you know, my and you know and I laugh
Speaker 1: because at times I say, hold on you your ten
Speaker 1: years in the future. Sometimes I'm dealing with people who
Speaker 1: are ten years in the past. I gotta client of clothes.
Speaker 1: I gotta close the gap a little because mine very quickly. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: So I think Spotify is great, and I think that
Speaker 1: the okay and the payout is to rear to all distributions.
Speaker 1: So that's all great. I'm what part of my question
Speaker 1: was relating to the sort of pool what happens if
Speaker 1: I pay my I don't know what it's here not so,
Speaker 1: But what you're addressing is if I pay ten dollars
Speaker 1: and only listen to bandex, should be index get all
Speaker 1: of my ten dollars. About five years ago, somebody ran
Speaker 1: the numbers and they found that people were actually going
Speaker 1: to make less under that basis. I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: numbers run recently, but I would just go to the
Speaker 1: bottom line is but it goes to the pool, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: Spotify pays based on the listens, and every at least
Speaker 1: once a week somebody emails being something that's got fifty
Speaker 1: million streams that I have never heard of. It's not
Speaker 1: on a label. So people email me all the time
Speaker 1: that they're getting not even a million streams. Why are
Speaker 1: they not making money? The demand is not that high,
Speaker 1: but interesting topics just want to gainst other people a chance. Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: when Lady back there in a million, a million streams
Speaker 1: isn't a lot on our platform, I'm gonna switch topics
Speaker 1: just very quickly. I've loved this so much. Thank you.
Speaker 1: My background, I'm a Silicon Valley nerd and worked in
Speaker 1: digital audio forever, started off at digit Design and I
Speaker 1: have to hear, uh, what the tip was that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Ivan gave you to make Lady Gagas sound better on tour.
Speaker 1: I've just been dying to know what that was. That
Speaker 1: was what we we fired our front of house guy.
Speaker 1: I worked with a lot of sound engineers, so I
Speaker 1: know Horace, so hopefully it wasn't well. By the way,
Speaker 1: I love Horrors. By the way Hars we were Horrors
Speaker 1: was out with us for a long time. He's great.
Speaker 1: By the way, he did some of our best tours. Okay,
Speaker 1: we probably got hard right over here on the left,
Speaker 1: just to show we have interest over here. While he's standing,
Speaker 1: he can get it. We'll get next. Hi. Try great.
Speaker 1: This was a great discussion, moderation aside. I thought it
Speaker 1: was fantastic. Um. I mean talking ten years down down
Speaker 1: the road, the way Daniel seems to look at things. Um,
Speaker 1: some of us also try to look that way in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, you you mentioned a lot of
Speaker 1: strategic partnerships that you've had in your other business dealings.
Speaker 1: What about in terms of touring. Has Spotify looked towards
Speaker 1: strategic partnerships in that respect? You know, I talked we
Speaker 1: we talked about touring a lot, just because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's an industry that we feel is it's it's broken,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. I was talking to one of our
Speaker 1: engineers about you know, product, and I was telling them
Speaker 1: it was I think it was with Gaga we sold out.
Speaker 1: We would put a tour up and I got a
Speaker 1: call from the promoter and they said, hey, we sold
Speaker 1: out four gardens and X amount of time, and you
Speaker 1: know we had we we had another two or three
Speaker 1: in the queue. I'm thinking, I'm like, that's not good news.
Speaker 1: Somebody should have known that it was you know, enough,
Speaker 1: we could have done three more gardens instead of us
Speaker 1: having to go to fucking Jersey after New York. Because
Speaker 1: to be able to monetize not have to pack up
Speaker 1: and move your show, not have to be hard on
Speaker 1: the artist's physical body by having to move them around
Speaker 1: is so many inefficiencies and in touring, and so the
Speaker 1: way towards around it right now is not through data,
Speaker 1: is basically through guys who have been out on the road,
Speaker 1: through booking agents, um, through hey, uh, this pop act
Speaker 1: did this amount of O two so you should be
Speaker 1: able to do this amount of O twos or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's no data. The merchandise business is the same exact thing.
Speaker 1: It's no it's no data. So we feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's enough data at least that we have where we
Speaker 1: can identify super fans on on the platform and specific markets,
Speaker 1: and if with access to other types of data be
Speaker 1: at venue data pollstar data, you know, the artists, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: their their fan site data, some other things. You can
Speaker 1: really make well informed decisions on touring, but not even
Speaker 1: the getta getta my. But I think even the product
Speaker 1: now though, to me, is remedial in terms of what's available.
Speaker 1: Like to be honest with you, I like routing the
Speaker 1: tour is the easiest part, right, but understanding who is
Speaker 1: I'm doing that now? I'm doing it now. I did
Speaker 1: three hundred of them last year probably, so we you know,
Speaker 1: we probably sold close to a hundred million and tickets
Speaker 1: for people, so we we Well, so it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be clear. I get that email who's playing in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood from Spotify, but not not that okay, so I'm
Speaker 1: aware of that. Tell me about selling the super fans.
Speaker 1: So so basically yes, So basically what happens is UM
Speaker 1: booking agents come to us or managers that come to us,
Speaker 1: and we do two things. So we either can help
Speaker 1: UM a lot of like superstars that come to us,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, we only want our super fans and
Speaker 1: x amount in the first few rows throughout the entire tour.
Speaker 1: So can you market the show with this? With the
Speaker 1: with this ticket allocation to our super fans. So that's
Speaker 1: one one part of it, so where we'll market the
Speaker 1: show to the super fans on our through our platform
Speaker 1: essentially through our data. And then the other piece of
Speaker 1: it is distressed inventory, So for shows that aren't selling,
Speaker 1: being able to identify those super fans and those markets
Speaker 1: who may not know that the show's coming through and
Speaker 1: being able to to sell the distressed inventory as well.
Speaker 1: So what you'll see and by the way, even with
Speaker 1: the amount of tickets that we sold through there, um,
Speaker 1: we still think it's remedial. So the products that you
Speaker 1: know we're working on right now, we feel like it's
Speaker 1: gonna get better and better. So one like one of
Speaker 1: the things Daniel talked about on our investor relations day, um,
Speaker 1: you know a couple of months ago, was this idea
Speaker 1: about a mark building out a marketplace. So essentially spotify
Speaker 1: is is will evolve into a marketplace where artists don't
Speaker 1: need us to do it. They'll be able to come
Speaker 1: on there and reach their fans directly, sell their tickets
Speaker 1: to their fans, directly merchandise message their fans, and to
Speaker 1: kind of build this relationship. Okay, who has the mic
Speaker 1: right now, I got I got one over here. I
Speaker 1: just round it. Thank you, thank you. UM. You brought
Speaker 1: up India verses or artists wanting to stay indy. I
Speaker 1: think one of the biggest points of that is to
Speaker 1: have control. How many artists have recorded records and are
Speaker 1: just sitting there. So I think the biggest factor and
Speaker 1: staying independent is to have that control of of doing
Speaker 1: your career the way you wanted to. UM. I've been
Speaker 1: on both sides of the majors in the Indies. I
Speaker 1: spent my first fifty or sixty decades at a major
Speaker 1: and my last sixty decades on the indie side. UM.
Speaker 1: I think right now, you know the answer is. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's radio or Spotify or TV or festivals
Speaker 1: or it's almost like what you did with Gaga is
Speaker 1: you ran around and did everything. You know. I think
Speaker 1: the future kind of is the past. I was preceded
Speaker 1: by a guy named Juggie Gayles, and Juggie was like
Speaker 1: a song he was. He was a plugger. They called
Speaker 1: him song Fluggers, and they just went everywhere they went,
Speaker 1: you know, and you go everywhere. You have this intuition
Speaker 1: and you navigate it and try to you know fan
Speaker 1: the flames. I I think you know you brought up
Speaker 1: research and radio's research. I don't think the concept of
Speaker 1: research isn't incorrect. Like I look at the research on Spotify,
Speaker 1: you look at what people are really doing. I think
Speaker 1: radio built this archaic, um call out research paradigm where
Speaker 1: they feel they can look in the rear view mirror
Speaker 1: or as those are the people who are listening to
Speaker 1: their stations. And that's that's what the problem is. It's
Speaker 1: it's they're so entrenched in that system and that's what's
Speaker 1: hurting them to, you know, to move to towards the future. Um.
Speaker 1: I was um thinking about Spotify. I was thinking about consumption.
Speaker 1: Everything is about you know you when you look at
Speaker 1: the numbers on wrap or Wrap Cavy or a hip hop,
Speaker 1: there tend to one right oh and yet where you
Speaker 1: may tend to one in terms of like I look
Speaker 1: at the amount of followers, the amount of listeners, the
Speaker 1: amount how how huge hip hop is right now? And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the live business, about about these
Speaker 1: festivals where I'm getting to the question, um, when when
Speaker 1: you're looking at these festivals now Lallapalooza, bonar ruays here
Speaker 1: every day, there's more and more festivals and what's driving them,
Speaker 1: and it's it's um. The irony is that it's a
Speaker 1: time when people can be alone, they can sit in
Speaker 1: their house and be on the internet. They're all going
Speaker 1: out to these festivals and all you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me. And when I look at these
Speaker 1: festivals and I look at again, I'm not in the
Speaker 1: touring side. I'm on the record of music side, but
Speaker 1: that that's being driven a lot by alternative and rock
Speaker 1: more than I think, you know, on the hip hop side.
Speaker 1: And my question to you is, why do you think
Speaker 1: there's such a disparity between you know, the recorded music side,
Speaker 1: the hip hop and the wrap and the live business
Speaker 1: where these people are coming out in droves. Why is
Speaker 1: the recorded music and have such a higher demand, you know,
Speaker 1: on the hip hop side compared to I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a already at all. Like you know, you see
Speaker 1: hip hop acts that are selling you know, arenas out
Speaker 1: every every single night of a week, So I like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's I don't think it's a disparity.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at you know, I think
Speaker 1: they're especially with the younger consumer like a Cachella consumer
Speaker 1: or or lollapalooza. You know, you look at the festival
Speaker 1: lineups and is diverse, you know, and I think the diversity, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the diversity and and um, even with this
Speaker 1: past Catchella is a reflection of the way you know,
Speaker 1: kids are listening to music, so where they are listening
Speaker 1: to all different all different types. Huh it was Mike
Speaker 1: right here. I don't, I don't. It's not that it's
Speaker 1: catching up. I don't think it was ever behind. Actually
Speaker 1: I think it was behind. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the festivals were booked by old white guys. But but
Speaker 1: when you say live, live and festivals are two different things.
Speaker 1: The lot, the lot, the live business has never been,
Speaker 1: never been behind. But like I think festival realized they
Speaker 1: had to wake up and diversify the business if they
Speaker 1: wanted to keep with the with the consumer. Okay, gentlemen here, Okay, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: going back, I think Bob, you're you actually asked a
Speaker 1: question about uh, possibly labels controlling too much of what
Speaker 1: gets to the list. Um, you made a comment about hype.
Speaker 1: Is you know there's no hype, it's the numbers don't lie,
Speaker 1: which list though well, because it's paylists right, right, So
Speaker 1: here's my question is of those how many how many
Speaker 1: editors are there? And then sort of the part two is,
Speaker 1: let's take an act that has no touring base, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna use some old terms, but you can
Speaker 1: never get to call out without having the ad, right,
Speaker 1: So you've got to have that initial ad before you
Speaker 1: can get the call out. So before you can get
Speaker 1: to numbers, there have to be some amount of hype
Speaker 1: or some amount of connection to those editors, right, No,
Speaker 1: not at all, like it's it's just a it's a
Speaker 1: handful like so to answer, I'll answer if you your questions.
Speaker 1: So is is a few hundred editors globally at Spotify,
Speaker 1: across the across the different genres. Our editors especially and
Speaker 1: in certain specific genres, they pride like part of their
Speaker 1: culture is you got to find stuff before everybody else
Speaker 1: finds it. That's like that's part of hip hop culture,
Speaker 1: by the way, and part of Latin culture is as well.
Speaker 1: You want to get there early before anybody gets it.
Speaker 1: So they're looking for and they're competing with other services
Speaker 1: as well trying to find stuff. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that um our editors are finding like record
Speaker 1: companies call me every single day of the week trying
Speaker 1: to sign acts that are independent on on on Spotify.
Speaker 1: They're trying to sign these records that are that that
Speaker 1: are doing well. And then you know, in the reality
Speaker 1: and just when we look at some of the big categories,
Speaker 1: major labels are over index and a hit records you got,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, when we talk about you know,
Speaker 1: certain name like certain categories that people come to me
Speaker 1: sort of complaining about, they can't name me any big
Speaker 1: acts in that in that category in the first place.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, I think major labels do
Speaker 1: an incredible job at making big top forty records, so
Speaker 1: that quite naturally they're gonna control a big portion of
Speaker 1: big top forty playlists. You know. When it comes to
Speaker 1: jazz music, maybe not so much. It comes to some
Speaker 1: of the categories, maybe maybe not so much. But I
Speaker 1: think it's um I think it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that people have started talking about so much that people
Speaker 1: start believing that that that's actually the case. And I
Speaker 1: just come from I come from a school of hit
Speaker 1: records work, hit records work. Doug Morris, I remember going
Speaker 1: into Doug Morris's office after he left Universal and right
Speaker 1: before he went into Sony and UM, and he was
Speaker 1: asking me about, um, what a record that that we
Speaker 1: that that I put out on one of our acts,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I said, you know what, the
Speaker 1: video was too dark? You know, I kind of saw this,
Speaker 1: you know, just change with the consumer. And you know
Speaker 1: it wasn't popping up. He said, no, it wasn't a hit.
Speaker 1: He said, it wasn't a hit. And that's the reality.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to admit when their records aren't hits. So
Speaker 1: most of the complaints I get from people don't they
Speaker 1: don't have hit records over here. You mentioned that streaming
Speaker 1: is in its infancy. What does it look like when
Speaker 1: it's matured? And also based on the data, what emerging
Speaker 1: genres are there that you guys are seeing. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you know when you talk about when when
Speaker 1: it's matured, you know, and this is where I think
Speaker 1: we underestimate, you know, the size of of what the
Speaker 1: global recorded music market is going to be. So everybody
Speaker 1: talks about the sort of heyday of the record business
Speaker 1: at its height, and you know, when we were selling
Speaker 1: selling a lot of C D s more people are
Speaker 1: on on this planet are gonna have mobile phones than
Speaker 1: they had CD players. So and when you look at
Speaker 1: the amount of youth, the youth population that's rising in
Speaker 1: Africa and in India, you look at China that you
Speaker 1: know that's never been a factor. And how and the
Speaker 1: and the paid music market I think is gonna. I
Speaker 1: think the music industry is gonna undergo exponential growth like
Speaker 1: we've never seen before. I think what we have to
Speaker 1: adjust to, you know, we are I think as and
Speaker 1: I'm just saying is just generally speaking the music industry
Speaker 1: we operate as elite like, as elitists. So where we're
Speaker 1: under this impression that everybody is gonna buy a subscription
Speaker 1: and everybody in the world can afford. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the price of gas this week, people can't
Speaker 1: afford to put gas in their tank. People are barely
Speaker 1: making it in this country. People are struggling. And I
Speaker 1: think it's finding ways where Okay, whether it's through uh,
Speaker 1: you know, advertising subsidies or whatever. I think there's ways
Speaker 1: to monetize you know, a billion plus consumer base across
Speaker 1: you know, the the entire music industry. Um, I think
Speaker 1: day the plans you know, and that's one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about last week with the new free
Speaker 1: tier was being able to you know, we built you know,
Speaker 1: lighter data plans because you know, so on on your phone,
Speaker 1: it's not eating up your data plan. So I think
Speaker 1: what's ahead of us is gonna is it's gonna. I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna see something like we we've never seen before.
Speaker 1: But but the market is UM. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say a number, but I think it's way, way bigger
Speaker 1: than what we've ever seen. Young lady right here, you've
Speaker 1: been waiting. I UM. What about the role um of
Speaker 1: curators on the platform and independent curators. Is Spotify developing
Speaker 1: a program even for example radio stations, blogs, um, just
Speaker 1: independent curators. What I don't see anything being done for
Speaker 1: profiles for those entities and people. You you have independent
Speaker 1: curators that um, that are on the platform where you
Speaker 1: know where they and some people do a really good
Speaker 1: job at promo in their playlists and they you know,
Speaker 1: built followers. UM. You know, for us, our priority had
Speaker 1: to be our own and operated playlists, you know, because
Speaker 1: I think we were able to control the integrity of
Speaker 1: those playlists. And what I mean by that is just
Speaker 1: making sure it doesn't turn to a place where people
Speaker 1: can pay people to get on playlist and you know
Speaker 1: so and I think you know, when that ecosystem was
Speaker 1: open in the in the beginning, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: we had to change the terms of services because you
Speaker 1: had a lot of people paying to get on playlists
Speaker 1: or you know, exchanging favors to get on to get
Speaker 1: on playlists. And the only thing that does is makes
Speaker 1: for uh a terrible consumer experience versus best song wins.
Speaker 1: So essentially, if we can program in a way where
Speaker 1: where best song wins is a better experience for the
Speaker 1: for the consumer. But we're not like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of brands and people who are built than their
Speaker 1: their profiles. But our priority is is owned and operated.
Speaker 1: Who has the mic? Now? Yeah, right here, I try
Speaker 1: just going back to the future of streaming, UM, we
Speaker 1: see pricing differentiation for hires players like COB's entitle UM.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's sustainable? And my second question is,
Speaker 1: UM there's new UM streaming platforms like prime Phonic, which
Speaker 1: are focused on classical music. Do you think the future
Speaker 1: will be sort of based on differentiation by genre or
Speaker 1: do you think the hardware ecosystem will dominate. You know,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, just in my my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think UM, having a niche UM a knee service is
Speaker 1: deaf is difficult, right, you know, because when you can
Speaker 1: get and and everything essentially that you pretty much want
Speaker 1: to listen to and in one place, UM, you gotta
Speaker 1: have a compelling value proposition to drive somebody to pay
Speaker 1: specifically for that niche service and in UM this sort
Speaker 1: of financial models to operate as a business around that,
Speaker 1: and my I just think would be and it would
Speaker 1: be challenging, you know, especially as you're competing against you know,
Speaker 1: some some of the some of the larger players UM
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, fidelity you know you got
Speaker 1: I'm one of the the niche consumers that cares about
Speaker 1: you know, sound and and for me, its specifically for
Speaker 1: jazz music, Like when I listen to jazz and UM,
Speaker 1: you know, I got high fidelity speakers. I want to
Speaker 1: listen to it and and and and high fidelity UM.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of the other records, is like
Speaker 1: you don't need to listen to it in high fidelity, right,
Speaker 1: but you got to find a big enough audience that's
Speaker 1: willing to pay for it. Um, I'd love to get
Speaker 1: to a place where everybody cares about how how records
Speaker 1: you know, were intended to sound. But you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if the general population, uh if that if
Speaker 1: that's something that they really genuinely care about, and I
Speaker 1: don't think we've been able to, um how like, so
Speaker 1: when the jump from cassette to c D was so
Speaker 1: exponential in terms of sound, and the jump from VHS too,
Speaker 1: you know, DVD was so was was exponential in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, a visual and sound, we haven't been
Speaker 1: able to kind of give any sort of exponential jump
Speaker 1: yet to make people want to leap from from this
Speaker 1: to that. Ye just talking about Yeah, I don't okay, Jamie, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you have a question. I probably good to see. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I have two questions and I want to I'll cut
Speaker 1: it down to one. And so I'm Lars Maria used
Speaker 1: to be at Pandora. The question that I have that
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's asked you, what is the lowest
Speaker 1: hanging fruit that you think people are not picking off
Speaker 1: of Spotify right now? Used to drive me crazy that
Speaker 1: there were things I couldn't explain or I could explain,
Speaker 1: and people just wouldn't do it, Like, what are they
Speaker 1: not doing? I mean, I think going back to what
Speaker 1: market you say, people, and it's just I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the the industry, you know. Um, you know, Mark was
Speaker 1: talking about how are you selling tickets? And you're like,
Speaker 1: we just sold a hundred million dollars worth of tickets?
Speaker 1: Like what what across the board is the thing that
Speaker 1: people should be thinking about that they're not. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, um, I think I don't know if I
Speaker 1: have an answer for the low hanging fruit, but I
Speaker 1: do think the industry one of the biggest problems that
Speaker 1: I see is this sort of people haven't been able
Speaker 1: to differentiate. People haven't been able to fully move into
Speaker 1: a new model yet because people still think we're a
Speaker 1: retail were not a retailer. Um, people still think we're
Speaker 1: like radio, where we're not radio like. So even down
Speaker 1: to the point where the people still haven't figured out
Speaker 1: who at the company should really interface with us yet.
Speaker 1: Should it be a promo guy? Is that the sales team?
Speaker 1: Is it marketing? Like? So I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: understanding that this is a totally new system. The way
Speaker 1: the old system work doesn't work with with with with this,
Speaker 1: with this new system, and then so so and even
Speaker 1: down to going back to I get so many calls
Speaker 1: from people that say, I'm at a million streams and
Speaker 1: I'm like, a million streams is nothing, Like it's not
Speaker 1: there yet. You gotta get there, like it's um but
Speaker 1: because people in the record business think a million records
Speaker 1: your platinum, a million streams isn't platinum, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's like, so it's this sort of uh chasm you
Speaker 1: got that that hasn't been crossed yet. So if I
Speaker 1: can steal a quick follow up on that, cycles, how
Speaker 1: do you do you have insight to tell everybody about cycles?
Speaker 1: And how I mean cycles are different now in a stream?
Speaker 1: What types of cycles? Song cycles? Uh, career cycles, album cycles,
Speaker 1: all of that. Who's doing it? Right? So? So the
Speaker 1: way so I look at it as perpetual cycles, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not it's no more on on on and off.
Speaker 1: And you know what what we see now is you
Speaker 1: know you look at um you know two good examples
Speaker 1: of like a Bruno Mars or at Sharon where their
Speaker 1: former albums just continue to kind of perform well. And
Speaker 1: chain Smokers there, you know, I think Adam and and
Speaker 1: and those guys are are really brilliant in terms of
Speaker 1: how they they're They're just innovative in their approach to
Speaker 1: to release the music, the hip hop game in general.
Speaker 1: I would just say, you know, they win loose. You know,
Speaker 1: they went gold star in terms of being able to um,
Speaker 1: to cater to new conc to the way consumers consume
Speaker 1: and um. And it's just it bugs me out because
Speaker 1: the record business we used to be so forward and
Speaker 1: how like when we we turned Tuesdays into events right
Speaker 1: where it was, you know, when we put out albums,
Speaker 1: the way we set up set up albums, film studios
Speaker 1: were envied away. You know that that that we did it,
Speaker 1: and but yet Netflix is kicking our ass and innovation
Speaker 1: of releases. You know, so when you released you know,
Speaker 1: I was telling I was at one of the record
Speaker 1: labels and they were talking about all of their new
Speaker 1: acts that broke on you know, because I I was
Speaker 1: complaining about artists development, and I'm like, you gotta build stars,
Speaker 1: Like just because they're getting streams don't mean that their stars.
Speaker 1: And they're telling me what we broke this act this year,
Speaker 1: this act, this year, this act this year, and this
Speaker 1: act this year. I said I'll tell you what if
Speaker 1: you took those four artists right now and they got
Speaker 1: out of their car in front of the school that's
Speaker 1: across the street, and you took the kids from Stranger
Speaker 1: Things and they got out of the car, every kid's
Speaker 1: gonna run to the kids from Stranger Things. Like that's
Speaker 1: this year's one direction. We don't have a one direction
Speaker 1: right now. That's one direction right now. You look at
Speaker 1: how we're still releasing single single, single album. You're releasing
Speaker 1: three singles before album, and Netflix is dropping the whole
Speaker 1: season on you day day one because everybody wants it there.
Speaker 1: And I asked the record I asked the record label,
Speaker 1: I said, why are you still doing it like that?
Speaker 1: But as a radio you want to build up a
Speaker 1: certain audience first, because the first week, first week means zero,
Speaker 1: first week means nothing anymore. So, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: just getting people to cross over to the new world.
Speaker 1: And and and I'm seeing some younger labels and some
Speaker 1: younger artists right now, and that has no historical baggage.
Speaker 1: That are, you know, plowing their way into into into
Speaker 1: the new world very quickly. Single album. If you're a
Speaker 1: new artist, should people even bother to make albums or
Speaker 1: continue to put out a continuous dreament product. If if
Speaker 1: you can make a great album, make an album. The
Speaker 1: problem is, you know, making a great album. That's a
Speaker 1: big challenge. Jamie, you said something, uh that really kind
Speaker 1: of perked my ears up a bit. Um. You said
Speaker 1: that radio is in trouble, and I absolutely agree. And
Speaker 1: I think that you're that Spotify as integration into automobiles
Speaker 1: is going to even put another nail in that coffin.
Speaker 1: But we aren't there yet. We aren't. Radio is not
Speaker 1: dead yet. So you had said something that you did
Speaker 1: with Gaga where it was um social media and YouTube
Speaker 1: and getting the music out there so that by the
Speaker 1: time it went to radio and they were doing their testing,
Speaker 1: that everybody was already familiar with it, so it tested
Speaker 1: really well. Later you said that labels kind of have
Speaker 1: to pick. Are you going to go the radio route
Speaker 1: where you put a half million dollars behind a track
Speaker 1: or are you going to go the Spotify route? And like,
Speaker 1: I does a label really have to choose or should
Speaker 1: they just be working it back? So let me let
Speaker 1: me clarify it. So so I don't think you have
Speaker 1: to choose between going to Spotify or going to radio.
Speaker 1: Um So, I was talking specifically around if you have
Speaker 1: a single and you start the single off on Spotify,
Speaker 1: by the time you build up that big enough story
Speaker 1: for radio, chances are it is gonna be Oh, that
Speaker 1: single is gonna be over on our platform. Yes, so so,
Speaker 1: but what we get a lot is complaints that we're
Speaker 1: not hanging in there long enough on the single because
Speaker 1: it's not building, it's not uh linking in uh, it's
Speaker 1: not fused with their radio stories essentially, And I think
Speaker 1: for us it's not our that that's just not our
Speaker 1: problem because because only we gotta we gotta do. We
Speaker 1: have to build the great experience for the consumer. That's
Speaker 1: the like, that's our number one thing. It has to
Speaker 1: be a great experience for the consumer. And um so,
Speaker 1: so that's where that's the sort of catch twenty two
Speaker 1: that we're finding, you know, some some of the labels
Speaker 1: in Okay, this gentleman, this is the last question for now,
Speaker 1: my Troy um bit of a tech nerd question, because
Speaker 1: you were saying you're building out a marketplace and then
Speaker 1: Daniel living ten years ahead of us, how much is
Speaker 1: which extent is AI and blockchain part of the discussion. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, UM, some I can comment on, some I
Speaker 1: can't comment on. UM. I think it's just AI in general.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the future, you know. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: machine learning as part of what we already do in
Speaker 1: terms off you look at Discover weekly, Discover weekly as
Speaker 1: machine learning and UM and I think the more data
Speaker 1: that you get, the better than machines get. Right. So
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna play a huge role. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it necessarily has as much to do with
Speaker 1: marketplace as much as it has to do with the
Speaker 1: personalization that that that that we're talking about, and just
Speaker 1: being able to make the experience better for you when
Speaker 1: you when you come up come on the platform. But
Speaker 1: I just don't think, you know, when we kind of
Speaker 1: got a sense of where machine learning is gonna gonna
Speaker 1: take us, the marketplace was more directed towards the block chain.
Speaker 1: I can't calm it. Thank you, But you've been very
Speaker 1: open and honest. We've put you through the rigger for
Speaker 1: two hours. And by the way, I love Bob and
Speaker 1: Aga had these conversations. I got so many questions in
Speaker 1: my head, and I mean, we're off the audience. But
Speaker 1: when I say on some level, we only scratched the surface.
Speaker 1: That's supposed to Howard Stern saying you said everything, You've
Speaker 1: only said a little bit. But it's been so wonderful
Speaker 1: that you've come here and uh endured this for two hours. Troy,
Speaker 1: thanks again, thank you, thank you. Hey. This week we
Speaker 1: have a very special episode my interview with Troy Carter
Speaker 1: at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Yes. Today,
Speaker 1: Troy is director of Creative Services that Spotify really spearheading
Speaker 1: change in the music business. But before that he was
Speaker 1: a manager. He managed Lady Gaga, Broke Lady Gaga what
Speaker 1: John legend Back has done so many things with acts.
Speaker 1: You're gonna hear about his ups and his downs. Troy
Speaker 1: is completely honest. I know you'll love this. So, Troy,
Speaker 1: how'd you get into this crazy business? I started off
Speaker 1: just as a kid in West Philly. Uh grew up
Speaker 1: loving hip hop music and hip hop culture. Um. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a rapper. I wanted to write graffiti.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a breakdancer. So anything that was
Speaker 1: immersive and hip hop culture, you know, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be around it. So you're not a woman, I
Speaker 1: can ask this question, how old are you today? Forty five?
Speaker 1: So when you get into it, MTV ruled, okay, but
Speaker 1: Philadelphia always had a heavy soul culture. So how did
Speaker 1: you first get infected by music? We didn't we didn't
Speaker 1: have cable. We only had the five channels and um
Speaker 1: and we have Friday Night videos and the USA Networkers
Speaker 1: on NBC. It was I forget which network it was.
Speaker 1: It might have been NBC. David Benjamin ran that I remember,
Speaker 1: but it was like, um, you know, it would come
Speaker 1: on late at night, and it was before music was segregated,
Speaker 1: so you would watch Rundy m C. You would watch Blondie,
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, Prince, you know, so it was all types
Speaker 1: of music there. So it kind of exposed me to
Speaker 1: pop music, rock music. But and you know, and and
Speaker 1: like I said, and I love hip hop. So but
Speaker 1: it made me well round it from from a music
Speaker 1: was there music in your house growing up? It's a
Speaker 1: ton of music in my house growing up. So um.
Speaker 1: It was a station in Philly called w d A
Speaker 1: S and UM, which it was a local station. A
Speaker 1: guy named butter Ball ran the station and um, but
Speaker 1: it was a lot of the Philly International records, Um
Speaker 1: a lot, everything from Uh, Marvin Gaye was big in
Speaker 1: our house. Earth Wind and Fire was big. Um she
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder. So I grew up on a lot of souls.
Speaker 1: Did you play an instrument growing up? Nope, didn't play
Speaker 1: an didn't play an instrument. Okay, so you're listening to
Speaker 1: music and you're watching Friday Night videos. At what point
Speaker 1: do you say I can do that? You know what?
Speaker 1: My my, my brother and my cousin they used to
Speaker 1: DJ and UM. So I tried DJ and and I
Speaker 1: was terrible. And then I said, um, well, maybe you
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna try to be a rapper. So I
Speaker 1: so I started rapping. And in ninth grade, me and
Speaker 1: my best friend had this idea. We met in English
Speaker 1: class and we said, you know, if if we ever
Speaker 1: meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, they're gonna give us
Speaker 1: a record deal. So we used to go and and
Speaker 1: try to hang out at Jazzy Jeff's studio, go down
Speaker 1: there almost every single day. Um, Jeff never would let
Speaker 1: us into the studio. How many other people are hanging
Speaker 1: out other than the two of you? It just it
Speaker 1: was three. It was three of us. The group was
Speaker 1: called too too many, and um we called ourselves to
Speaker 1: too many because we only used to have enough money
Speaker 1: for one of us. So so it was three of
Speaker 1: us that used to hang out in front of it.
Speaker 1: But when you were hanging out, uh where there are
Speaker 1: also a lot of other people want to be hanging
Speaker 1: out at the studio. No, so they were all inside
Speaker 1: the studio, So we were trying to get in, and
Speaker 1: so we would only want to bees and um so so,
Speaker 1: and we sincerely had this idea like we were that
Speaker 1: naive that we were gonna meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh
Speaker 1: Prince and they were going to give us a record deal.
Speaker 1: And my best friend he used to always he say,
Speaker 1: thoughts become things. You gotta think positive, you gotta think positive.
Speaker 1: And one day they let us in and we auditioned
Speaker 1: for him, and what happened. They gave us a record
Speaker 1: deal with a lot of experience under your belt. This
Speaker 1: is not the way the story usually goes. Do you
Speaker 1: think you were deserving of a record deal? Yes? But
Speaker 1: you know what what we found out though that we sucked,
Speaker 1: you know, so I think you know will what will
Speaker 1: we met will uh DJ Jazzy Jeff and his manager
Speaker 1: James Lasseter. It was like a whole crew of guys
Speaker 1: hanging out in the studio and we popped in our
Speaker 1: demo and you know, um and Will said, how are
Speaker 1: you guys getting home? And we said we don't know.
Speaker 1: So he said, okay, I'll give you guys a ride
Speaker 1: home and he drove drove us home that night, and
Speaker 1: he told our families, you know, dropped us off, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I got them and um, but
Speaker 1: we I think more than anything else, more than even
Speaker 1: the music. He respected our hustle and you know, we
Speaker 1: were silly kids and you know, so I think he
Speaker 1: liked us. So what happened? Maybe you gave you a
Speaker 1: record deal? Yes, and we signed. We signed the Jive
Speaker 1: Records through Will's production company, and we put out a
Speaker 1: record and got dropped. It was like all within, like
Speaker 1: all within like a year and a half is like
Speaker 1: the super this kind of whirl and uh, oh my god,
Speaker 1: our dreams came true to oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: the biggest disaster. My life is over. Did you get
Speaker 1: an advance? Did you get any money? Got in advance?
Speaker 1: I think we we got in advance of about I
Speaker 1: think it was like thirty five thousand dollars, which might
Speaker 1: have been thirty five million dollars. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: because we had never gotten any money like you know before,
Speaker 1: and um, and we divided it up amongst the three
Speaker 1: of us. And what did you do with your twelve
Speaker 1: grand I went straight to the car dealership like every
Speaker 1: rapper and uh and I bought a used Autie five
Speaker 1: thousand that was a stick ship if and I had
Speaker 1: never driven a stick shift before, but I wanted that car.
Speaker 1: And I think I burned out the clutch by the
Speaker 1: time I got home. So I burned through the money
Speaker 1: in the clutch within like weeks, just because you told
Speaker 1: me the story, and I don't want to forget it.
Speaker 1: You do tell a story of buying a Lexus use
Speaker 1: Lexus and getting stopped for driving while black. How long
Speaker 1: after this was? That? That was? That was after? That was?
Speaker 1: That was years later? And Um, I started promoting shows
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, so I would promote these concerts. Um so
Speaker 1: like Notorious b I, G. Jay Z, Foxy Brown, a
Speaker 1: bunch of the New Woutang clan, a bunch of the
Speaker 1: New York rappers, and um and I bought a car
Speaker 1: off of Foxy Brown's manager, a guy named Don Poo,
Speaker 1: and um, and you know I drove the car back
Speaker 1: to Philly and that next week, no, with no exaggeration,
Speaker 1: within one week, I had gotten pulled over by the
Speaker 1: police six times within one week. But you know it
Speaker 1: was one time. You know, it was a Saturday afternoon
Speaker 1: and um, I had bags like luggage and the trunk
Speaker 1: and I pull up and up and up at Derby
Speaker 1: and I get pulled over by the police and they
Speaker 1: make me get out of the car sit on the
Speaker 1: side of the curb while they throw all of my
Speaker 1: stuff out on the street. And so where I was
Speaker 1: at it was like a shopping district. So it's a
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon in front of the movie theater, hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: You know, it was it was the most it was
Speaker 1: probably one of the most belittling things. And then once
Speaker 1: everything checked out, you know, the cops said, you know,
Speaker 1: put your ship back in the car, and just you know,
Speaker 1: they they pull off and I'm left putting my underwear
Speaker 1: and everything else back into the you know, into into
Speaker 1: the into into my car. So you know, it's so
Speaker 1: you have an experience like that, where does that many
Speaker 1: experiences like And that's where I was going. But that
Speaker 1: was a peak experience before I was gonna ask you
Speaker 1: about previous growing up. How does that what where does
Speaker 1: that leave your viewpoint in terms of race relations? Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's complicated, right because I think you know,
Speaker 1: I think you got so it was more police relations
Speaker 1: than race relations where where where I grew up, because
Speaker 1: it was only black people where where I grew up,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't really any real racial issues. But there
Speaker 1: were the cops black or white both, so blue is
Speaker 1: what they were, right and um and and so we
Speaker 1: were harassed and and and profiled and we didn't have
Speaker 1: It wasn't a thing where when things happened in your
Speaker 1: neighborhood you called the police, you know. So, um and
Speaker 1: that and that was the that was the relationship and
Speaker 1: um so So I didn't really learn about race relations
Speaker 1: until I really started traveling to a lot of places,
Speaker 1: you know, through throughout throughout the country. And um and
Speaker 1: then that's when I really started, you know, seeing Philly
Speaker 1: is very segregated, but it was very segregated, gated by
Speaker 1: the way. So Italians lived in a certain area, Blacks
Speaker 1: lived in a certain area. Of Puerto Ricans lived in
Speaker 1: a certain area Jews lived in a certain area and
Speaker 1: it wasn't a thing where it was any real I
Speaker 1: never felt that sort of tension because everybody stayed in
Speaker 1: their own pockets for the most part, almost kind of
Speaker 1: like l a Alas racially segregated too. But when you
Speaker 1: were making the deal with DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith,
Speaker 1: are you still in high school? Yeah? I dropped out
Speaker 1: of high school and then um, I dropped out in
Speaker 1: eleventh grade and my mom she put me in a
Speaker 1: program called job Corps, which is like jail meets college
Speaker 1: and um and it's and it was Import Deposit Maryland.
Speaker 1: So basically she said, if you want to do this
Speaker 1: music thing, you better come home with a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: And you know, because I just wanted to pursue music.
Speaker 1: And at eleventh grade, I quit school. Just stopping there
Speaker 1: for a second. You quit school because you were that
Speaker 1: excited about music, or you're also a poor student or
Speaker 1: an attentive student. It was I just was bored. Like
Speaker 1: I would I would go to school, check in with
Speaker 1: my advisor, hang out with my friends, and then we
Speaker 1: would go on these adventures, you know, sometimes like for
Speaker 1: me is crazy. I would end up I would end
Speaker 1: up at a library some days and just studying subjects
Speaker 1: that I wanted to study. We would have or we
Speaker 1: would have hooky parties, you know, until my mom got
Speaker 1: home from work and then we would clear the house
Speaker 1: out and um, but we every day was this sort
Speaker 1: of adventure. But school, I just I was curious about learning,
Speaker 1: but not what they would teach me in school. So
Speaker 1: how long did the job Corps program last? I stayed
Speaker 1: in job Corps for a little. I got my I
Speaker 1: got my g D and record time. It was like
Speaker 1: I was trying to get out of this place as
Speaker 1: fast as you could. How fast did you get the
Speaker 1: probably I think a little under a year maybe, And
Speaker 1: it was like, because it's the worst. This is where
Speaker 1: the courts appoint juvenile delinquents, so Virginia, New York, d C.
Speaker 1: You know, so they just put you all in one
Speaker 1: place essentially, and um, and you want to get out
Speaker 1: as fast as you can. But isn't that the place
Speaker 1: that would tend you know? Their theory on jail is
Speaker 1: you got to jail, you learn how to become a criminal.
Speaker 1: When you were in this program, did you learn how
Speaker 1: to act bad? Yes? So so job Corps it was Um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was definitely a place where you had
Speaker 1: it was many sort of many criminal imprise enterprises and
Speaker 1: clicks built around and you know, you had gang members
Speaker 1: on campus from different gangs, you know, through throughout you know,
Speaker 1: the Northeast corridor. And I think because I was always small,
Speaker 1: you know, and and you know, and I didn't get
Speaker 1: caught up and being just with the guys from Philly.
Speaker 1: So I would hang out with the New York guys,
Speaker 1: the Virginia guys and kind of stay away from any
Speaker 1: sort of the the the warring factions with with within
Speaker 1: within within job Corps. And so how long were you
Speaker 1: in job Corps overall? For for almost a year? Okay,
Speaker 1: So when you got your g D you were out.
Speaker 1: I was out. And the deal, the record deal was
Speaker 1: after you. That was after okay. So the act fails,
Speaker 1: you've blown the money, then what? Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: remember being at my grandmother's house when I got the
Speaker 1: call that they were dropping us from from the record label.
Speaker 1: And um, and I and I was in her in
Speaker 1: my grandmother's room and because I was on the phone,
Speaker 1: I got the call and it broke my heart because
Speaker 1: you know, it was something I felt like we worked
Speaker 1: really hard for UM. I really we didn't have a
Speaker 1: plan B of what I was gonna do. I was
Speaker 1: embarrassed that, you know, we had gotten this far and
Speaker 1: and and now you know, how do we tell people this? UM?
Speaker 1: And from there, I just I started. I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about the business from that. From that experience and
Speaker 1: UM and I asked James Lasseter, who was Will Smith's manager,
Speaker 1: UM could I start working with him? And I started
Speaker 1: working at the recording studio and I was his assistant.
Speaker 1: Was it pretty much just that fast? It was probably over,
Speaker 1: if I had to guess, maybe over a six month
Speaker 1: time period where I sort of transitioned into more of
Speaker 1: the business, because we ever have a straight job working
Speaker 1: at the supermarket? Any of that? Did I while I
Speaker 1: was a kid? No, While in this interim between UH
Speaker 1: getting dropped from the label and going to work for
Speaker 1: the management, I had one period where I couldn't find
Speaker 1: It was as sort of and I don't know if
Speaker 1: I even if I ever told this this story before,
Speaker 1: but UM, I remember I couldn't find a job, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have any money. I had kind of given
Speaker 1: up on on the on the record business. And at
Speaker 1: one point I've I've filed for uh for for welfare
Speaker 1: and I got I had gotten one check, and I
Speaker 1: remember giving the money from my check to my aunt
Speaker 1: because my younger cousin had just gotten killed and you know,
Speaker 1: they were doing this funeral or whatever. And then I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's just, uh that was it was just like a
Speaker 1: low point and I'm like, this isn't what I want
Speaker 1: my my life to be. And um, but as a kid,
Speaker 1: I worked at McDonald's, I worked at Burger King. I
Speaker 1: worked at um uh Olga's Kitchen, which was like a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and so I had all types of ide jobs here
Speaker 1: here and there. And so you go to work in
Speaker 1: the recording studio and for your the manager lasseter or
Speaker 1: what do you do, Um everything car getting car wash,
Speaker 1: booking sessions for DJ Jazz Jeff, carrying records for Jazz Jeff. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, with James, when I was James's assistant,
Speaker 1: the best part of it was I used to have
Speaker 1: to run his phone calls, So I had to listen
Speaker 1: in on every phone call that he did by rolling
Speaker 1: his calls. So it kind of taught me the sort
Speaker 1: of vernacular and and sort of cadence how people talk
Speaker 1: to each other on on the phone, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest things was, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought everything was all business with people, but you know,
Speaker 1: just hearing them talk about people's families and kids and
Speaker 1: you know, people they would talk for ten fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: about everything else before they kind of got into this.
Speaker 1: I know, people, you're so hungry when you get into
Speaker 1: the business. You have meetings, immediately started the sales pitch.
Speaker 1: They don't really people want to know who are you,
Speaker 1: what's going on? You are a reasonable person. So so
Speaker 1: that that was good for me to learn very early
Speaker 1: because um and and James and he and I are
Speaker 1: still really really close to this day. But he he
Speaker 1: was a guy who we grew up eight blocks away
Speaker 1: from each other, like and what we didn't know My
Speaker 1: mom and his mom used to catch the bus together.
Speaker 1: And you know, he had become Jazzy Jeff and Fresh
Speaker 1: Prince's manager because he was the only guy in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood with a car, like you know, because back back
Speaker 1: then you used to have to put you know, turntables
Speaker 1: and everything and load the cars up or whatever. He
Speaker 1: was the only guy with a car, so um so
Speaker 1: seeing a guy who grew up, you know, right in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. It kind of showed me like, okay, if
Speaker 1: James can do it and talk to like studio executives
Speaker 1: and record company heads, and it just made it less
Speaker 1: than a little less in timidity and for me. And
Speaker 1: so what was your breakthrough from being consistent gopher to
Speaker 1: the next level? Um, James? Uh So, So like in
Speaker 1: between that time, you know, I was promoting these shows
Speaker 1: and Philly and okay, just a little bit slow. You're
Speaker 1: promoting him yourself or with James. So so James h
Speaker 1: ended up moving to l A and he was doing
Speaker 1: he started during Fresh Prince of bel Air. I had
Speaker 1: come out to l A for a little bit. I
Speaker 1: went back to Philly and I was from promoting. I
Speaker 1: started off promoting like clubs, and then I would get
Speaker 1: acts to perform in the in the clubs and um,
Speaker 1: and I would collect money from guys in my neighborhood essentially,
Speaker 1: so it would be guys who have money. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, at that time, I didn't know it was
Speaker 1: called money laundering, because guys would give me money like hey,
Speaker 1: this is great. And so in reality you were money laundering.
Speaker 1: You were just unaware. I just was unaware. Now, no
Speaker 1: statue and all those guys are probably in jail. Um.
Speaker 1: But I would do these do these shows with all
Speaker 1: of the rappers. And this is before it was Live
Speaker 1: Nation and all of the big conglomerates. And it was
Speaker 1: a local guy in Philly named Larry Maggott. We used
Speaker 1: to promote the concerts in Philly if the Spectrum where
Speaker 1: the roof blew exactly and um, but they didn't do
Speaker 1: hip hop because hip hop shows, you know, and then
Speaker 1: fights and shootings and couldn't get insured. And and I
Speaker 1: was one of the crazy guys who would do it.
Speaker 1: And I've started meeting all of these people through these relationships.
Speaker 1: And I met Puffy through promoteing a notorious b I
Speaker 1: bit slower. Being a promoter is a license to go
Speaker 1: out of business, Okay, people usually like even Lior, he
Speaker 1: had one successful gig and then he lost all that
Speaker 1: money and more on the next gig. So in your
Speaker 1: a particular case, every gig I didn't think would be
Speaker 1: in the black. No, it's you know, you had really
Speaker 1: really really great nights and you had some really really
Speaker 1: really bad nights, and you know it was it was
Speaker 1: I remember It was a rap group on Jive called
Speaker 1: Foosh Nickens and Um and I used to love their music,
Speaker 1: and I think I might have been the only person
Speaker 1: that loved the music because literally, no exaggeration, I had
Speaker 1: five people show up, but I still paid him a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the money built the relationship. It was
Speaker 1: bad shows where we were down, but every single act
Speaker 1: got paid. So but wasn't it the money of the
Speaker 1: so called criminals that was paying them? Yeah, and what
Speaker 1: of the criminals? What are the criminals say when they
Speaker 1: were losing money? They were happy to be there. It's
Speaker 1: like you're hanging out with Biggie, Okay, So it's like
Speaker 1: hanging your hanging out. So so everybody everybody and and
Speaker 1: was funny about hip hop as the streets and music.
Speaker 1: We were all contemporaries, So J and Dame and their
Speaker 1: whole crew. They were street guys from New York coming
Speaker 1: to hang out with us Big and Don Poo and
Speaker 1: Mark Pitts and all of those guys. They were street
Speaker 1: guys coming out the with us Wu Tang from Staten Island.
Speaker 1: So it was it was a thing where everybody felt
Speaker 1: it was. Everybody was really respectful of of of each
Speaker 1: other in that way because we knew what it took
Speaker 1: to get there, and and it was almost a thing
Speaker 1: where you couldn't go out the back door. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, just from a street code perspective, you can't
Speaker 1: leave out of the back door. So you got these
Speaker 1: guys to come, and this is before it was like
Speaker 1: bank wiring and all of that stuff. So you would
Speaker 1: pay them that money up front, the first pent up front,
Speaker 1: but when they showed up, you better have you know,
Speaker 1: you had to have the rest of that. You're talking
Speaker 1: about the street you know, cred and the similarity, but
Speaker 1: getting people from different communities was there also friction. Never
Speaker 1: mind the money, you know what, most of the most
Speaker 1: of the friction sort of came from just the nature
Speaker 1: of the beast of doing these type of shows and
Speaker 1: the these type of neighborhoods. Right, so it's you got
Speaker 1: rival factions that are gonna are gonna show up, and um,
Speaker 1: it could be a bad night when somebody steps on
Speaker 1: somebody's shoe and they don't say, you know, excuse me
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, and that could end up in something
Speaker 1: or it might have been something that happened weeks before that.
Speaker 1: You know, people just happened to to to see each other.
Speaker 1: So you and um, it's par for the course. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we didn't know, to be honest though, we didn't
Speaker 1: know any different. So it wasn't you know, sort of
Speaker 1: and it wasn't strange. It wasn't like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like that movie Hoop Dreams when they celebrate the kids
Speaker 1: sixteenth birthday and they said, we're thrilled he just made
Speaker 1: it to sixty and when when I said, it took
Speaker 1: to me eighteen and twenty one in my mind with
Speaker 1: what were the ages in my mind that that I
Speaker 1: made it to eighteen and that that I made it
Speaker 1: to one And my closest cousin, he and I grew
Speaker 1: up together and we were like this. Um, he got
Speaker 1: killed when he was when he was seventeen years seventeen.
Speaker 1: What was what precipitated his death? He was out at
Speaker 1: the Chinese restaurant, Chinese Takeout, getting chicken wings, and somebody
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to rob the restaurant, drobed
Speaker 1: the guys who were at the restaurant that night, and
Speaker 1: I ended up The guy who killed them was a
Speaker 1: guy who I grew up with, and we went to
Speaker 1: school with and everything else. He didn't even know it
Speaker 1: was my cousin. So um and yeah, ended up killing him.
Speaker 1: Did that guy go to jail? Yeah, they went to jail. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in your pursuits you meet Puffy and how do
Speaker 1: you maximize that relationship? Well, Puff, Um, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a concert that I was throwing with Notorious b
Speaker 1: I g Um and Wootang and a few other acts
Speaker 1: on Penn's campus and um, and I got a call
Speaker 1: that Notorious Notorious b I g was Um, he wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna make it down in time for the show because
Speaker 1: he was shooting the video for Big Papa at that time.
Speaker 1: And I get into an argument with Mark Pitts on
Speaker 1: the phone, that turns into an argument with Puffy on
Speaker 1: the phone and m and but yet they still came down.
Speaker 1: The show was over. You know, we had to refund
Speaker 1: a few people, but he didn't make it. And but
Speaker 1: they told Biggs manager and make sure Troy gets his
Speaker 1: money back. Um, we'll give you another show. And we
Speaker 1: were hanging out that night. I was having an after
Speaker 1: party and Puff was holding court and you know, v
Speaker 1: I p section and you know I'm talking and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what you know, I want to come work
Speaker 1: for you. And he said, all right, well your first
Speaker 1: job is get me that girl from behind the bar
Speaker 1: and um, and I got puffed the girl from behind
Speaker 1: the bar. And then a couple of weeks later I
Speaker 1: was interning that bad Boy. Then he moved to New York. No,
Speaker 1: I would commute three days a week. I would commute
Speaker 1: on p there Pan trailways. Um seven do I think
Speaker 1: it was seven dollars each way Peter Pan trailways from
Speaker 1: Philly to uh to uh To to New York. And
Speaker 1: so you're interning, you're obviously, you know, doing your best
Speaker 1: to do a good job. What's your break a bad boy?
Speaker 1: You know. I didn't get a break at Bad Boy, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, but what I did get was an education,
Speaker 1: you know Puff and even still to this day, you
Speaker 1: get a sort of master class and hustle and just
Speaker 1: seeing this guy operate that company just off of like
Speaker 1: I would see Puff at the club at night, and
Speaker 1: then I would see Puff in the office in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then at he had his recording studio called Daddy's House,
Speaker 1: where he you know, would be where he would make records.
Speaker 1: So you know, it just it was this sort of
Speaker 1: NonStop thing, but this sort of of masterful dance of
Speaker 1: being able to navigate sort of hip hop culture in
Speaker 1: the streets with corporate America and uh so that it
Speaker 1: just was that master class. So I didn't get a
Speaker 1: break in terms of uh, you know, I made it.
Speaker 1: It was you got cursed out, you got um worked
Speaker 1: to death, and you just wanted more of it, like
Speaker 1: you know, I just I couldn't get enough of it?
Speaker 1: And what was your next journey after that? Um? Afterwards,
Speaker 1: I started, UM. I went back to work for James
Speaker 1: Lasseter in in l a And UM, he and Will
Speaker 1: started a movie production company called Overbrook Entertainment, and UM
Speaker 1: so I was James's assistant and I did that and
Speaker 1: UM and James ended up firing me. I think after
Speaker 1: like a year and a half he ended up firing
Speaker 1: me and um sending me back to Philly. And then
Speaker 1: that's when my that was my big break when he
Speaker 1: fired did you because you've done a good job? I
Speaker 1: didn't you do? Or he said I'm colding you back,
Speaker 1: keeping you here. Um I wish I wish he was
Speaker 1: holding me back, keeping me there. I was arrogant as
Speaker 1: you can you could get. UM, I thought I knew everything,
Speaker 1: and James like it was no humility. And I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't have a I didn't have a
Speaker 1: car when I living in l A. And if you
Speaker 1: live in l A, you know how hard it is
Speaker 1: not to have a car. And um, and at one
Speaker 1: point I was dating this girl and um, and I
Speaker 1: would take the car service to go visit this girl.
Speaker 1: But and at the end of the week, I would
Speaker 1: just pay the general manager of the company when I
Speaker 1: got my check, here's the car service, you know, here's
Speaker 1: the money for the car service. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: she told James Troy has been using the car service.
Speaker 1: And he came in the office and aired me out
Speaker 1: and you know, in front of everybody, and told me,
Speaker 1: you know, he kicked me out of California. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, he fired me on the spot, kicked me
Speaker 1: out of California. Me and him get into this huge
Speaker 1: shouting match in his office, and Will and Jada actually
Speaker 1: walked in like right after, and um, and Will said,
Speaker 1: you know what, go back to Philly. You know, we
Speaker 1: we'll give you a severance, but go back to Philly,
Speaker 1: and you know, get get yourself together. And I went
Speaker 1: back to Philly with my tail between my legs and
Speaker 1: what would would you start up in Philly? UM? I
Speaker 1: started up UM. It was it was a company called
Speaker 1: Black Friday that guys from my neighborhood that I knew.
Speaker 1: They basically UM started this management company. It was like
Speaker 1: a management production company. And they asked if I would
Speaker 1: come and basically run the company for him? Can I could?
Speaker 1: I could? I build it and started up for him
Speaker 1: and Eve was even Beanie Seagull where the clients there.
Speaker 1: And it was a hot mess and I ended up.
Speaker 1: You know, after a while, I'm like, I can't do
Speaker 1: this anymore. It was a lot of disorganization. One one
Speaker 1: client UM came into the office. One day, I got
Speaker 1: a call that the client got into an argument with
Speaker 1: one of the guys who owned the company and start
Speaker 1: shooting at him in the office. And that was it
Speaker 1: for me and I and I ended up that and
Speaker 1: I left at that point, and Eve was leaving and
Speaker 1: she had enough and she asked if I would help
Speaker 1: her find the manager. I took her to meet with
Speaker 1: Chris Lighty a few other managers, and then she asked
Speaker 1: if I would do it. Okay, so you do it
Speaker 1: and tell me how you ultimately get to there to
Speaker 1: making your deal with Sanctuary. So I started managing eve UM.
Speaker 1: I ended up signing a few other clients, me and
Speaker 1: up my partner at that time, Jay Irving. We built
Speaker 1: this company called Irving Wonder in Philadelphia, which was like
Speaker 1: you know, utique management company and UM. And we got
Speaker 1: a call from Matthew Knowles one day and Matthew asked
Speaker 1: if we would I want to sell our company to Sanctuary.
Speaker 1: He had just sold this company to Sanctuary. They were
Speaker 1: looking to build their urban music division and and he
Speaker 1: basically told me how much money? And I said, when
Speaker 1: where do I sign? Because I never, like, I had
Speaker 1: never seen that type of money in my life. So
Speaker 1: you know, without asking, I'm like, let's go, let's get
Speaker 1: this done. And how did it end with Sanctuary? Terrible?
Speaker 1: But you kept the money right? Yeah? But you know
Speaker 1: the thing is what I what I learned about Sanctuary.
Speaker 1: Like with the Sanctuary situation, I was so focused on
Speaker 1: the exit and the money that I was that it
Speaker 1: blinded me from all of the red flags that I
Speaker 1: should have noticed as they were doing their diligence on us.
Speaker 1: We should have been doing there our diligence on them,
Speaker 1: on them and um. And it just wasn't that. We
Speaker 1: went from a really cool culture at our company, like
Speaker 1: actually Jay Irvan and and his wife. UM, that's who
Speaker 1: I'm up here in Santa Barbara with this weekend. You know.
Speaker 1: It was me and my best friend. We built this company.
Speaker 1: We hung out every day, We hung out with our employees,
Speaker 1: we hung out with our artists. And then we sold
Speaker 1: this company the Sanctuary and the culture it just with
Speaker 1: the culture was terrible and um and the leadership wasn't great.
Speaker 1: Um and I'm just being honesty. They were terrible people.
Speaker 1: The you know, the guy running the company was a
Speaker 1: terrible person and he ended up we you know, we
Speaker 1: were trying to buy our company back. And because you know, I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I grew up like I love the
Speaker 1: music business. I love what I do. Um, I grew
Speaker 1: up loving this business. I grew up loving the music.
Speaker 1: And then it felt like I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to work in the morning. I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: into the office is and I wanted to buy the
Speaker 1: company back. And so I started this negotiation to buy
Speaker 1: the company back, and we couldn't reach a deal. And
Speaker 1: then somebody told me, who works in finance. They said,
Speaker 1: hold out for a little bit longer, because if you
Speaker 1: hold out, I don't even think they're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to make salary. They're not even gonna make your your
Speaker 1: your uh, your paycheck. So I'm walking into a restaurant
Speaker 1: and I never forget it's on my birthday. I'm walking
Speaker 1: into a restaurant, and my attorney at that time, David Landy,
Speaker 1: calls me up and he said, you know, are you
Speaker 1: by yourself? I said no, but I can walk out.
Speaker 1: I said, what's up? He said, Sanctuary. I just got
Speaker 1: a fact from Sanctuary and they're suing you and Jay
Speaker 1: for calls. I said, what's the calls? He said, they
Speaker 1: don't have a cause. And what we found out was
Speaker 1: the cause was they couldn't make our paychecks and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to pay us out. And and you know,
Speaker 1: our business is very rare when anybody in our business
Speaker 1: gets suit for calls. And to have that on the
Speaker 1: front cover of a variety, you know, magazine or whatever,
Speaker 1: and to know that, like it just was they just
Speaker 1: with terrible people, and we ended up being able to
Speaker 1: you know, they ended up having to pay us out.
Speaker 1: And you know, I, you know, I ended up starting
Speaker 1: a new company, but it was a valuable lesson and
Speaker 1: culture and people and that the new company is atom Factory.
Speaker 1: Was Adom Factory until the audience Why you named it
Speaker 1: atom Factory? Um? The idea what Adom Factory was? You know?
Speaker 1: Thinking about it was something I wanted to do, something
Speaker 1: small but yet powerful, and you know, and and and
Speaker 1: the name Adam just kind of some summarized it for me,
Speaker 1: like you know, um, you know, because I never wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, a talent roster with a hundred people on
Speaker 1: the roster. But how can I build a small company
Speaker 1: but that still has some gravitizing importance? So how do
Speaker 1: you sign Leady Gaga? Um? Got guy I met Gay
Speaker 1: got through a guy named Vincent Herbert and Vincent Um
Speaker 1: I had known since I was coming up in the business.
Speaker 1: And he caught me up one day and he said,
Speaker 1: I got this girl who you have to meet. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm flying her from New York tomorrow and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bring her by. And you know, he showed up and
Speaker 1: she walked in with you know, these big sunglasses on
Speaker 1: and you know, no pants and fishnet stockings and played
Speaker 1: hit after hit. Um, it was what what I loved.
Speaker 1: What I loved was it looked like she landed from
Speaker 1: another planet. But she owned it. And I told Vince,
Speaker 1: I said, you gotta bring her back, like just promised
Speaker 1: me you'll you'll bring her back. And a few months
Speaker 1: later he he actually he lived up to that promise
Speaker 1: and he bought her back. Now, when you signed or
Speaker 1: did anybody else want her? No, she had she had
Speaker 1: just gotten dropped from deaf Jam. Um, probably a few
Speaker 1: months prioritized meeting, she had gotten dropped from deaf Jam
Speaker 1: and um, you know she kind of I went to
Speaker 1: West Virginia for a while and like spent some time
Speaker 1: with a grandmother and um, and so she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was one of those things with where
Speaker 1: you had nothing to lose, like you know I had.
Speaker 1: I was going through a terrible time financially. You know,
Speaker 1: this was like two thousand and seven when we met,
Speaker 1: going like so right, you know, I had invested everything
Speaker 1: into this new company, even fired me right before that,
Speaker 1: and um, and you know my wife and I, you know,
Speaker 1: we were losing our house. You know, her and my
Speaker 1: mother in law literally pawned their wedding rings that to
Speaker 1: save our house. They you know, our kids were getting kicked.
Speaker 1: You know, we couldn't pay school tuition or anything like that,
Speaker 1: so financially I was completely wiped. Um and when Gaga came,
Speaker 1: that was like the only thing I had to work
Speaker 1: on essentially, and she had just gotten dropped. And I
Speaker 1: think it was one of those things where is you
Speaker 1: have nothing to lose, and like you gotta make it work.
Speaker 1: And we both really really had to make it work.
Speaker 1: And what did you tell her to get her to
Speaker 1: sign with you? You know, I took her to a
Speaker 1: fancy restaurant called Spaghetti Warehouse. We went to Spaghetti Warehouse,
Speaker 1: I swear to you, and um and uh, and we
Speaker 1: just talked. I think we spent like a couple of
Speaker 1: hours together. And then I remember I think it was
Speaker 1: I think it was. Wasn't it Layla's birthday? Baby? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and because I remember it was my daughter's birthday and um,
Speaker 1: and it's and I had to stop for cupcakes on
Speaker 1: the way home. So it's literally me and Gaga standing
Speaker 1: on um little Santa monicat like sprinkles cupcakes. Remember it
Speaker 1: used to be like a line outside the door, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's you know, looking like Gaga on like
Speaker 1: in front at Sprinkles and we're but we hit it
Speaker 1: off right away, like we like it was. We got
Speaker 1: each other right away. And um, I believed in in
Speaker 1: her vision and she trusted me with everything, and we
Speaker 1: we you know, and and but a few things like
Speaker 1: this is what's interesting, Like like a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, you you you hear, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of romantic stories about you know, how every thing happened
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you know, Vincent Herbert had just walked
Speaker 1: away from his record label, UM that he had with
Speaker 1: a guy Barry Hankerson. So Vincent kind of left his
Speaker 1: record label behind. So this was his new thing and
Speaker 1: Goga was the only thing he had. Jimmy was in
Speaker 1: the middle of his divorce at that time, UM, and
Speaker 1: you know, Interscope was probably this was probably one of
Speaker 1: Interscope's tough as years, you know, during during that time
Speaker 1: period or whatever. And so Jimmy was kind of doing
Speaker 1: his thing and left us alone on the guy got projects,
Speaker 1: so basically kind of gave us carte blanche. So we
Speaker 1: were kind of running doing our own thing. So she
Speaker 1: was making these records and he was focused on Pussycat Dolls.
Speaker 1: So every record that she would make Jimmy was taking
Speaker 1: the records like you know, and she would give records
Speaker 1: to Pussycat Dolls or Rodney jerk And I remember one
Speaker 1: record that you know, uh, she had written with Rodney
Speaker 1: Jerkins and she wanted it for herself and Rodney's like, no,
Speaker 1: she's a new artist. I'm not giving her this record.
Speaker 1: I need to get this record to Britney Spears. Brittany
Speaker 1: is you know, she's a superstar. We're giving this record
Speaker 1: the Britney Spears and Goga was pissed. Um. The record
Speaker 1: was called Telephone, so of course, you know, Gaga becomes
Speaker 1: gay guy. And Brittany had recorded the record as a
Speaker 1: demo and she's like, nope, get that record back. And
Speaker 1: she put Beyonce on that record, and that record became,
Speaker 1: you know, a number one hit. But she couldn't keep
Speaker 1: a record because everybody would take it because she wasn't
Speaker 1: a big star. But I started keeping making sure we
Speaker 1: could keep those records. So just Dance we kept, which
Speaker 1: became a number one record. Um, Love Game we kept
Speaker 1: became a number one run record. Poker Face we kept
Speaker 1: that one became a number one record, and um so
Speaker 1: it just was really fighting and and sort of a
Speaker 1: blocking and tackling. We'll take a quick break and come
Speaker 1: back with more of my conversation with director of Creative
Speaker 1: Services that Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music
Speaker 1: Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. This week, I'm speaking
Speaker 1: with Troy Carter. Recently I interviewed Brian Fogel, who created
Speaker 1: Oscar winning documentary LUs. Be the first to hear next
Speaker 1: week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm tuned in
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast or your podcast Apple Troys. While you're there,
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review the podcast. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: get back to my conversation with Troy Carter. Now. The
Speaker 1: story is she was making dance music at a time
Speaker 1: dance music was not on the chart or on the radio,
Speaker 1: and the interscope went to the wall for you. Is
Speaker 1: that true? Yeah, it was. We were getting a lot
Speaker 1: of pushback from Top forty radio because they thought that
Speaker 1: it was to electronic because it was sort of four
Speaker 1: on the floor and read one who was the music
Speaker 1: producer was just um, you know, he came out of Sweden,
Speaker 1: so it was you know, sort of Swedish sound at
Speaker 1: that time, and we didn't take no fin answer, but
Speaker 1: neither did Brenda Romano, who was working Top forty radio
Speaker 1: at that time, and so she just kept knocking on
Speaker 1: those doors. And but the Internet and being able to
Speaker 1: kind of build that story and come back to radio
Speaker 1: was really important. So we were building audiences um on
Speaker 1: YouTube and you know, and building this sort of international
Speaker 1: following on YouTube. We were doing the same thing on Twitter,
Speaker 1: We were doing the same thing um on a couple
Speaker 1: other platforms. And then NAT started translating into call out
Speaker 1: at radio so they would put the record on and
Speaker 1: kids already knew the record. You know, the radio was
Speaker 1: late at that time because kids were already familiar with
Speaker 1: the record. Sort of what's happening with Spotify now, but
Speaker 1: saving that for a little bit later. Okay, Gaga blows up.
Speaker 1: It must be an amazing learning experience for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's It's what I realized was, you know,
Speaker 1: it's levels you know, and the business and its levels
Speaker 1: in life, you know, um, because with Eve, Eve had
Speaker 1: a wildly successful career for hip hop artists, you know,
Speaker 1: and and even you know, we did her TV show
Speaker 1: and it lasted for you know a few years, but
Speaker 1: you know, that was primarily you know, it was African
Speaker 1: American audiences that was consuming you know, the the TV show,
Speaker 1: So we weren't We didn't have that level of pop
Speaker 1: exposure at at at that time. So and I had
Speaker 1: glimpses of it through Sanctuary because Destiny's Child was you know,
Speaker 1: managed by Sanctuary and a few other pop acts, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't personally exposed to it. So with Gaga, only
Speaker 1: had experience as a hip hop manager, so I kind
Speaker 1: of managed her like a hip hop act. So we
Speaker 1: were doing three shows a night. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: sound was terrible half the time. You know, you know rappers,
Speaker 1: you know they're holding the micro like this or whatever,
Speaker 1: and um, so we didn't know sound. And um, you
Speaker 1: know Jimmy Iveen. She was opening for New Kids on
Speaker 1: the Block. And I remember Jimmy pulling me to the
Speaker 1: side after the first show at Staples Center and he said,
Speaker 1: the show was great, sound was terrible. This is what
Speaker 1: you need to do to fix the sound. You know,
Speaker 1: this is the guy you need to call to fix
Speaker 1: the sound. And he taught me, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: sonically with pop acts as supposed to sound like. And
Speaker 1: then I met Arthur Fogel and Michael Rapino, and they
Speaker 1: taught me what pop acts as supposed to tour like,
Speaker 1: you know, So it was it was I was I
Speaker 1: felt like I was in school learning a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff. So where I knew this sort of basic
Speaker 1: um fundamentals of protect your client with everything you have.
Speaker 1: And so my instincts were worked, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of of protecting a client, but in terms of global
Speaker 1: touring and making and building a global superstar. I've gone
Speaker 1: to countries I had never gone to, and you know,
Speaker 1: it just was a whole new experience. And at any
Speaker 1: time in the height of her career did another manager
Speaker 1: try to steal your act all the time? You know.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember getting a call from UM just
Speaker 1: this is as she was really this is as the
Speaker 1: first single was taken off, and her lawyer, Um, her
Speaker 1: first lawyer called up and and said, um, uh, I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna mention him. Uh big, big, big manager
Speaker 1: calls calls up and he wants to take a meeting
Speaker 1: uh with with with uh And this is why I
Speaker 1: love her. By the way, big manager called up the
Speaker 1: lawyer tried to set the meeting up and and like
Speaker 1: around me and she called me, Wow, she called me,
Speaker 1: and um, she said fire him the lawyer. Yeah, that's great,
Speaker 1: But eventually it does end with Stephanie. Now we've talked
Speaker 1: about that. But for the people who don't know the
Speaker 1: story in retrospect, I know there was an issue she
Speaker 1: had to do boyfriend, etcetera. Did you see it coming? No,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you ever see that ce
Speaker 1: C C that type of thing coming. And um, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and of course you know I can't
Speaker 1: get into any of the specifics or anything like that,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, but and I and I don't want
Speaker 1: to sit here and bullsit you and and and you know,
Speaker 1: say any sort of fake story. But you know, the
Speaker 1: reality is, you know, she and I had a credible relationship,
Speaker 1: like and even to this day, I still I still
Speaker 1: love her despite anything that's happened with her. H No,
Speaker 1: we don't we know contact with her right now. And um,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think it's hard to go through
Speaker 1: that sort of period of time and and where you're
Speaker 1: pretty much living on a bus together. You know, you're
Speaker 1: traveling the world together. You know, UM, just down to
Speaker 1: like you know, birth of kids and you know everything,
Speaker 1: so where and and it's not like I had a
Speaker 1: big roster, you know, for the first when I was
Speaker 1: managing GOG. I think for the at least for the
Speaker 1: first couple of years, she was really the only client
Speaker 1: that I was that I was focused on, So she
Speaker 1: and I were really tight. So I wouldn't yet So
Speaker 1: when when it when it comes, I don't think you've
Speaker 1: ever prepared for it, you know, so and and it's emotional.
Speaker 1: You go through the sort of the motions of hurt
Speaker 1: and anger, and and and and everything else or whatever.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: give it back for the world because I think it
Speaker 1: was an incredible experience. She helped my career just as
Speaker 1: much as I helped her career. We both came up
Speaker 1: and in the business together, and um, and life happens,
Speaker 1: man like you know, life, life happened. Now, since you've
Speaker 1: managed her, stop manager, she has not had a hit.
Speaker 1: She's had very successful road business. First with Tony Bennet,
Speaker 1: she's brought If you were to manager again, what do
Speaker 1: you think she should do to sustain and build her career.
Speaker 1: The good thing is, you know we're talking about and
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying this. She's probably one of the most.
Speaker 1: And when I say one of the most, I'm not
Speaker 1: even saying broadly. I'm talking, you know, top five most
Speaker 1: talented artists and in the business. And it's very hard.
Speaker 1: You know, probably you know when you look at her
Speaker 1: live show, it's probably only a couple of artists you
Speaker 1: know that that is up on that level in terms
Speaker 1: of live live concert performances, playing like piano is you know,
Speaker 1: it's vocalists, like you know, performance artists, top top top, top,
Speaker 1: top level. Find it's just getting the records. That's all
Speaker 1: it boils down to. It's like you know, if if, who,
Speaker 1: who are you collaborating with? And and the reality is
Speaker 1: finding making making great records with superstars is hard and
Speaker 1: it's a village because you got have to have incredibly
Speaker 1: strong producers in the room who can push back. You
Speaker 1: have to have an incredibly strong person at the top
Speaker 1: of that record label because Jimmy, basically Jimmy was tough.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you bring records in. Jimmy's a record producer,
Speaker 1: so Jimmy's gonna tell you how that record sounds or whatever.
Speaker 1: Vincent was a record producer and a songwriter, so Vince
Speaker 1: is going to tell you how to how that record
Speaker 1: sounds or whatever. And so it's a filter that it
Speaker 1: goes through, so it's not just the people in the
Speaker 1: room that are that are collaborating. And you put the
Speaker 1: record out, you gotta beat you gotta beat that record up,
Speaker 1: and you gotta be tough on tough on that record.
Speaker 1: But I think she I'm not worried about her, to
Speaker 1: be honest with you. It's like, you know, artists like she,
Speaker 1: She's just one of those artists. She's gonna be around
Speaker 1: for fifty years. It certainly seems like that. So while
Speaker 1: she's at the peak of her success, you meet a
Speaker 1: guy who guide you into the investment tech world. Can
Speaker 1: you tell the simple multitude about that? Yeah, it was um.
Speaker 1: You know, we were doing we were doing a lot
Speaker 1: of experimenting, UM with social media and I and I've
Speaker 1: always been curious around other businesses, you know, so that's
Speaker 1: been a thing where I just want to learn everything
Speaker 1: I can about what you do. Like so if I'm curious,
Speaker 1: I'm going down the rabbit hole. And UM, and we started.
Speaker 1: I remember I got invited to do a day trip
Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley and I never gone to the valley
Speaker 1: before and never gone to Palo altoo before and UM
Speaker 1: and I flew in in the morning and my first
Speaker 1: meeting was with I think it was David simmon off
Speaker 1: from Yahoo, like at a coffee shop at like eight
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning and you know, and just he's
Speaker 1: telling me about the valley and you know, and just
Speaker 1: his history and everything and very very interesting. And then
Speaker 1: my second meeting was at Palentteer and UM and if
Speaker 1: you if if Palentteer is probably the most sophisticated technology
Speaker 1: company in Silicon Valley. And it was founded by a
Speaker 1: guy named Joe Lonsdale who was Peter Tiel's like you know, protege,
Speaker 1: you know, as Peter was coming out of PayPal, and
Speaker 1: you know, I go into their offices and it's like
Speaker 1: the TV show twenty four And what Palentteer basically does
Speaker 1: is they track um, terroristic algorithms on the Internet. So
Speaker 1: and so when after nine eleven, when the FBI was
Speaker 1: building air thing and CIA was building air thing, the
Speaker 1: d A was building air thing, none of the technology
Speaker 1: talked to each other and you know, and really worked
Speaker 1: in a way to and Palenteer figured it out. So
Speaker 1: I'm seeing this with my own I'm like, am I
Speaker 1: even you know, it's like, you know, some serious stuff.
Speaker 1: And then we went to Facebook and all of these companies,
Speaker 1: and then and that night they threw me a barbecue
Speaker 1: at Joe Linsdale's house and and I'm talking to all
Speaker 1: of these guys and you know, people could barely look
Speaker 1: you in the face. And you know, there's like as
Speaker 1: Berger's Convention. I told my wife, I'm like, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this wrong in l A right now. Like it's like
Speaker 1: everybody's driving I'm driving a Rolls Royce and these billionaires
Speaker 1: are driving prius Is and uh and this is revenge
Speaker 1: in the nerds and the nerds one big and um.
Speaker 1: And then they started inviting me into into deals and said,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to invest here. And I started
Speaker 1: investing here and then invest in there. You're listening to
Speaker 1: my conversation with Director of Creative Services and spot By
Speaker 1: Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, California. I hope you're enjoying listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want
Speaker 1: to listen to sound bites from the interviews and see
Speaker 1: some of my guests, check it out it at tuned
Speaker 1: in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now we're of my
Speaker 1: conversation with the director of Creative Services at Spotify, Troy
Speaker 1: Carter on the Bob Left Sets podcast. You were pretty
Speaker 1: much the first person, certainly in the music business who
Speaker 1: was investing. You know what, because I went in and
Speaker 1: I would probably go to the valley at least twice
Speaker 1: a week, so I would be in l A three
Speaker 1: days a week, and i'd be in San Francisco and
Speaker 1: Palo Alto two days a week, and I would start
Speaker 1: parking myself and people's offices and setting up shop in
Speaker 1: their offices during the day and um. And then when
Speaker 1: I remembered it was one of the guys I met
Speaker 1: was it was a guy named Shervin Pishavar and Shervin
Speaker 1: Um he had just sold his business and he started
Speaker 1: um investing at a firm called Menlo. And he caught
Speaker 1: me up and he said, I want to do this
Speaker 1: thing like this sort of uh, we're gonna be like this,
Speaker 1: this sort of Jedi investment group, and I just want
Speaker 1: you to be one of the Jedis and um, and
Speaker 1: he caught me up about I think Warby Parker was
Speaker 1: one of the was it the first deal that Shervin
Speaker 1: Um asked me about and then um the second deal
Speaker 1: was was Uber. But then he said, well, you know
Speaker 1: I want to do I want to start putting l
Speaker 1: A people into into the deals. Can you help introduce
Speaker 1: me to some people in in l A. And Um,
Speaker 1: so I started introducing them to to some people in
Speaker 1: l A. And we put some l A people into
Speaker 1: the Uber deal and then kind of started building this
Speaker 1: thing that sort of bridge between San Francisco and and
Speaker 1: in l A. Did you get compensated for establishing those relationships? Uh,
Speaker 1: just as an invest or, so so just from my
Speaker 1: my my compensation was Shervan would put me into he
Speaker 1: people would put me into more deals, and then the
Speaker 1: way And this is the other thing I loved about
Speaker 1: the valley that was so different from the music business.
Speaker 1: The music business is zero sum. It's like some in
Speaker 1: order for you to win, somebody has to lose. And
Speaker 1: then when and then the structure of a record label, um,
Speaker 1: whenever there's sort of a windfall, only the people at
Speaker 1: the very very top of the pyramid get get wealthy
Speaker 1: and nobody else gets gets wealthy essentially, and um and
Speaker 1: in technology and an investment. The way it works is
Speaker 1: the opposite, because you you you want the healthiest syndicate
Speaker 1: around the deal so that the entrepreneur and the company
Speaker 1: has the best chance of success. So if I know
Speaker 1: that this person here and this person here and this
Speaker 1: person here could be very helpful, I want them, then
Speaker 1: I want them in the deal because I'm gonna do better.
Speaker 1: And so that's how that's how this sort of is
Speaker 1: a network effect. So like you know, Rocking, I would
Speaker 1: put rock Nation into deals, then they would put me
Speaker 1: into deals. Um you know, Scooter and I start putting
Speaker 1: each other into deals. Gayo, Siri and I started putting
Speaker 1: each other into deals. Um you know, I remember it
Speaker 1: is funny enough. One of our companies, one of the
Speaker 1: first companies I invested in um it was a company
Speaker 1: called zim Ride that came to my office and we
Speaker 1: invested and they would calm work out of our offices
Speaker 1: in l A and then um after Uber launch, the
Speaker 1: founder caught me up and he's and he said, I
Speaker 1: want to see can you connect me with Live Nation
Speaker 1: because they have these festivals and we have this our
Speaker 1: car pooling business. I want to see if we can
Speaker 1: car pool people back and forth so I called up
Speaker 1: micro Rapino UM. Michael was great, he did the deal
Speaker 1: and Michael put you know, put some money into the company.
Speaker 1: And fast forward, that company went from zim Ride to
Speaker 1: become in Lift. So you know, and this is eight
Speaker 1: years ago. So in terms of that that sort of
Speaker 1: value at that particular time seven or eight years ago
Speaker 1: and when it becomes now, that's how you That's so
Speaker 1: when you say the compensation, is that sort of flow
Speaker 1: that that that that happens. But I'm not asking anybody
Speaker 1: for money or anything in return. In your office, you
Speaker 1: have a whole wall of the companies you've invested in
Speaker 1: at this point in time. How many companies do you
Speaker 1: think you've invested in? UM is probably about a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty. And if a hundred and twenty, how many
Speaker 1: went completely bust? Uh, completely bust? Probably thirty or forty?
Speaker 1: Probably third about thirty I would say, are completely bust,
Speaker 1: probably forty. I would put him in in and a
Speaker 1: third a third and a third. You got you got winner,
Speaker 1: you got winners, neutral and and dogs. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: doing this, You're done with Gaga, and then you'd like
Speaker 1: record label. I might just have a record label, right,
Speaker 1: and then you have Making Trainer. Okay, the interesting thing
Speaker 1: from the outside observer, when you're involved with Making Trainer,
Speaker 1: she's everywhere and successful, and since you've been gone, she
Speaker 1: has not achieved that level of success, showing that your ability.
Speaker 1: But at what point do you you were an investor
Speaker 1: in Spotify, at what point do you wake up and say,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cross the street from being a manager to
Speaker 1: working for Spotify. So I invested in Spotify, and I
Speaker 1: think it was like two thousand and eleven, two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and UM and Daniel and I we we ended up.
Speaker 1: We we didn't initially meet when I'm used it and
Speaker 1: then I think it had to be about six or
Speaker 1: seven months later. UM as a group called called Charity
Speaker 1: Water out of New York, a guy named Scott Harrison.
Speaker 1: He put together a group of probably fifteen or twenty
Speaker 1: founders to go to spend a week and a half
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia and UM and basically you you build um
Speaker 1: wells and different villages through throughout Ethiopia. And Daniel was
Speaker 1: on that trip. And when you when you're in uh
Speaker 1: and and suv for four hours with somebody going through
Speaker 1: villages and you know, you're you're seeing you know some
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's incredible. It is very emotional,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of visiting these different places like just
Speaker 1: in but like if not even in a sad way,
Speaker 1: but it's like the people they are fa tastic. But
Speaker 1: he and I didn't meet sitting across the desk from
Speaker 1: each other, and I think that connected us in a
Speaker 1: way where we got to know each other personally before
Speaker 1: we did any sort of business together. And so when
Speaker 1: Spotify was, you know, had come to America, I would,
Speaker 1: you know, he and I would talk strategy, whether it
Speaker 1: was people who were holding back albums from you know,
Speaker 1: from the from the service, you know, some communication strategy,
Speaker 1: you know, some introductions to managers and things like that.
Speaker 1: But every time he would come to l A, he
Speaker 1: and I would spend a bunch of time together. And
Speaker 1: he had just become one of my favorite, my favorite people.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, a couple of years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: I was, I was so burned out from being a manager.
Speaker 1: And I've done it. I've done it for seventeen years
Speaker 1: and um and like you said, you know, Megan Trainer,
Speaker 1: Charlie Pooth and a few other clients you know where
Speaker 1: like my my the last clients on the roster or
Speaker 1: and I saw, you know, I get I get signs
Speaker 1: in my life. It's almost like gott to pull the
Speaker 1: rug up from under me sometimes, like you know, but
Speaker 1: you know, if if I don't want to make the
Speaker 1: decision myself, and I saw I started to see some
Speaker 1: of the cracks and Adam Factory's business. Um, I started
Speaker 1: to look at the future of like the management business
Speaker 1: for myself. And I I wasn't getting up in the
Speaker 1: morning excited. Um and you know, to to the amount
Speaker 1: of I don't I don't phone it in, Like I
Speaker 1: just don't have the thing where I can phone it in.
Speaker 1: And if I'm working for a client, I'm putting my
Speaker 1: soul into it. And when you put your soul into something,
Speaker 1: and you know, you get punched in the gut and
Speaker 1: it's like you know, you're not appreciated, and you know
Speaker 1: it's like you know, sometimes you know, some clients to
Speaker 1: you know, you you you got to drag them across
Speaker 1: the finish line and you gotta explain to him why
Speaker 1: should you shouldn't cancel a show, or you should you
Speaker 1: should show up one time, or you should do that
Speaker 1: I just was ready to do something different. And Daniel
Speaker 1: and I started having these conversations. And I remember I
Speaker 1: was sitting at the Soho house. He and I were
Speaker 1: working on a project together. Um I was. I was
Speaker 1: testing something out for him on on the Spotify platform.
Speaker 1: And we were at the Soho house and we started
Speaker 1: talking about what this sort of creator services thing would
Speaker 1: look would look like, you know, sort of from the
Speaker 1: outside end, and um, and we started having one of
Speaker 1: those what ifs conversations, and I remember, you know, I
Speaker 1: talked to my wife about it. I got cold feet.
Speaker 1: Like I had agreed to it, then I got cold
Speaker 1: feet and I told him, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it, And you know, we went back
Speaker 1: and forth and no saggeration. Within a six week period,
Speaker 1: I had wound you know, I had wound down Atom
Speaker 1: Factory and was in Spotify about six six I've lived
Speaker 1: with you through a lot of challenges of Spotify, but
Speaker 1: now streaming is one. Revenues are up. What you are
Speaker 1: the major challenges you're facing now. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think so you know this the streaming business. I think
Speaker 1: we're still in its infancy right now. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think you have some markets that are mature, like
Speaker 1: Sweden's very like a very mature market. Um. America to
Speaker 1: me is still a young streaming market. Um. You look
Speaker 1: at places like India that's still you know, young, and
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen in and sort of Africa, um, and
Speaker 1: you know some of the other markets as well. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think in terms, I think what we
Speaker 1: had this is more of an industry thing. It's so
Speaker 1: out of defining as companies what our relationship is with
Speaker 1: the rest of the with with the rest of the industry,
Speaker 1: because you know, I definitely foresee you know what, what
Speaker 1: what all of our roles are right now are gonna
Speaker 1: look much much different over the next ten years, meaning
Speaker 1: what it is to be a record label, what it
Speaker 1: is to be a talent manager, what it means to
Speaker 1: be a promoter, you know, and what it means to
Speaker 1: be an artist by the way, so all of this
Speaker 1: is gonna look different. So I think just the thing
Speaker 1: is being able to um get who gets to the future,
Speaker 1: Who gets to the future the fastest? Okay, um, I
Speaker 1: got a number of questions. Let me think of the one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the one that everybody is concerned about playlists.
Speaker 1: What are we here in the street. We hear the
Speaker 1: individual playlist or is being squeezed out by the major labels.
Speaker 1: We hear that what do you mean by that when
Speaker 1: you say that? They were saying that, you know that
Speaker 1: it's the major label playlists who are major labels playlists,
Speaker 1: and the Spotify playlists are getting most of the streams,
Speaker 1: and that the the major labels have power on Spotify
Speaker 1: akin to their power at radio with their promotion teams.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I don't agree at all, because
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm not saying that. This is
Speaker 1: my point. That was what people say, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: which I which I don't, I don't agree, And um,
Speaker 1: you know, and I talked to the indie labels all
Speaker 1: the time, and you know, it's it's funny because you know,
Speaker 1: the indies like people that have this sort of big
Speaker 1: narrative out there. And then you know, and then I
Speaker 1: asked him a simple question, are the indie labels doing
Speaker 1: better you know now that that Spotify is here than
Speaker 1: than they were before? And and uh, unanimously to answers,
Speaker 1: s you know, because the indies are doing are doing
Speaker 1: much better now. Um, I think, and as as far
Speaker 1: as playlists are concerned, So just we we have forty
Speaker 1: playlists owned and operated by Spotify, all different types of
Speaker 1: niche like niche playlists as well. So we do have
Speaker 1: the sort of flagships to you know, Today's top Pits,
Speaker 1: Hot Country, Viva Latino, Rap, Caviare, R and B like
Speaker 1: all of those flagships, but then you've got a ton
Speaker 1: of other sort of mid tier and feeder playlists that
Speaker 1: kind of feed up into them for most of the
Speaker 1: artists that that that we're talking about, we're talking about
Speaker 1: artists who will who would never get on radio. By
Speaker 1: the way, like we know how Top forty works, you
Speaker 1: better have a huge budget if you want to get
Speaker 1: if you want to take a record all formats, be
Speaker 1: prepared to have a half a million dollars to to
Speaker 1: go all formats to get a top ten record at
Speaker 1: radio um and so, and you need you need a
Speaker 1: real system to be to be able to be able
Speaker 1: to to to to do that. And then you have
Speaker 1: to have a certain type of record with a certain
Speaker 1: type of sound. And so if you're looking at Top
Speaker 1: forties specifically, you figure it's let's call it twenty five
Speaker 1: slots and then let's call it twenty artists that are
Speaker 1: gonna fulfill those those twenty those twenty slots, and you know,
Speaker 1: because of the artists who are gonna have multiple songs
Speaker 1: and in those slots. So you got uh one tenth
Speaker 1: of a percent, and then you got the one percent,
Speaker 1: and you know, then then then it kind of breaks
Speaker 1: down from there. So I think the sort of ecosystem
Speaker 1: of our playlist gives a fair shot to the entire
Speaker 1: industry at that at that point. And what what I
Speaker 1: the the one thing I like what I love about
Speaker 1: you know, spot if I is that people can't figure
Speaker 1: it out. You can't. There's no it's no hype. So
Speaker 1: it's not you can't come in there and and and
Speaker 1: sort of hype your record to get us to put
Speaker 1: it on on on on a playlist. The data doesn't lie.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, okay, but if you talk
Speaker 1: to like Daniel Glass, he comes to l A, you'll
Speaker 1: hang out at Apple Music, will go to Spotify. To
Speaker 1: what degree is the personal relationship important? Per Personal relationships
Speaker 1: are always going to be important, right, but they're only
Speaker 1: gonna be important to a certain extent. Because as much
Speaker 1: as I love Daniel and if Daniel doesn't walk in
Speaker 1: the door with a great record, Daniel's record is gonna
Speaker 1: be treated like everybody else's record. Essentially lucky enough, you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel walks in with Jade Bird and she becomes one
Speaker 1: of my favorite artists and we're carrying a jay Bird
Speaker 1: flag throughout throughout the building or whatever. But with that
Speaker 1: being said, a lot of the stuff that major labels
Speaker 1: are signing right now aren't coming through any label. They're
Speaker 1: coming through Spotify. So it's we were it's between our editors,
Speaker 1: um sort of looking at blogs, living on SoundCloud, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of digging in the crates, kind of finding new
Speaker 1: stuff because they want to discover things. I get calls
Speaker 1: from our editors basically saying, um, hey hey, Troy, I
Speaker 1: found this record. Um, we gotta they gotta figure out
Speaker 1: to aggregator to put it through because there's no record label,
Speaker 1: and then this act will end up with fifty million
Speaker 1: streams and they'll end up with a record deal and
Speaker 1: then the labels you know, are are signing them. So
Speaker 1: that's not a lot of the rap caviare stuff is
Speaker 1: with stuff that our editors found. Even on the pop side.
Speaker 1: Mike Mike baggage finds things and then he puts it
Speaker 1: into the pop playlist and then they end up getting signed.
Speaker 1: So if we what do you see the future, Because
Speaker 1: we can go on Spotify right now, we can see
Speaker 1: the Spotify Top fifty changes every day. We can see
Speaker 1: the number of streams and except for the Superstar of
Speaker 1: superstars with one single, radio is way behind. They won't
Speaker 1: add multiple tracks, they're off the months. Find what do
Speaker 1: you foresee the future? There? You know, I think I
Speaker 1: think radio's in trouble, you know readio radio as we know,
Speaker 1: it's in trouble, and I think it's inevitable because the
Speaker 1: only way from radio that you make your business better
Speaker 1: is to build the uh an experience that's worse for
Speaker 1: the consumer, meaning you know, you gotta put more ads
Speaker 1: into and into into the product. So you know, I
Speaker 1: even know when if I go and out and I
Speaker 1: turn on radio, is a high probability that is going
Speaker 1: to be commercials on so soon as soon as I
Speaker 1: turn it on. So that's one sort of friction point,
Speaker 1: you know, out of the gate. Then the second friction
Speaker 1: point is radio relies so much on research because they
Speaker 1: want to do they need to de risk it or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's not like when uh DJs and
Speaker 1: programmers could make independent decisions before, and they felt something
Speaker 1: and they could put it in, they could put it
Speaker 1: in right away. A lot of the radio stations are
Speaker 1: looking at Spotify data and kind of using that to
Speaker 1: decide which which records they're they're gonna put in, So
Speaker 1: by the time they hear that, that record is old
Speaker 1: on Spotify. So, you know, so for my kids who
Speaker 1: get in the car and they're you know, going on
Speaker 1: Spotify and YouTube to kind of consume their music, if
Speaker 1: they turn on Top forty radio, whatever they're hearing is
Speaker 1: already months old by that time. So I think you
Speaker 1: lose a consumer at that point or it starts feeling like, um,
Speaker 1: almost like an adult Top forty because you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're playing old music. So I think that's a big
Speaker 1: I think this is a gap and for us, we
Speaker 1: can't you know, and I think this is a big,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of gap and friction point it you know,
Speaker 1: Spotify and and and frontline record labels, we can't keep
Speaker 1: your record in while you're going for your radio plan
Speaker 1: because our consumer has already moved on to your second
Speaker 1: or third single. By the time you know, you're getting
Speaker 1: added at at radio, so you know, so I think
Speaker 1: that's the part that from an industry perspective, I think
Speaker 1: on the label side, they have to figure out what's
Speaker 1: gonna be what's important to you, you know, being current
Speaker 1: with the consumers and being able to have you know,
Speaker 1: songs within the within these playlists, or you know, getting
Speaker 1: added at top forty. So we'll see how to and
Speaker 1: if we go on the US Top fifty, it is
Speaker 1: very much urban slash hip hop. So the question that's
Speaker 1: obviously illustrating demand, but to what degree does Spotify have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to give attention to other formats? Let me
Speaker 1: just say for myself, let me give an experience. I
Speaker 1: want to know what's going on, So I'll go to
Speaker 1: Spotify Top fifty. I'll listen. Then if I think of
Speaker 1: all the other genres, country, electronic, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: work and there are a lot of acts today forget that.
Speaker 1: You know, people don't seem to understand that you get
Speaker 1: paid based on whether people stream you or not. But
Speaker 1: is is are we purely speaking to the public's demand,
Speaker 1: or is there any way or is there responsibility for
Speaker 1: Spotify to boost other formats. So so and as a
Speaker 1: really really really good question, so where um so, But
Speaker 1: so we'll separate it for a second. So when you
Speaker 1: look at the top fifty, that's just demand, right, So
Speaker 1: that is that is the pulse of what people on
Speaker 1: our platform are are actually listening to. Because the difference
Speaker 1: with radio is push, the difference with Spotify is pull.
Speaker 1: So that is consumers actually listening to that to that
Speaker 1: music because they can easily skip through it. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is what this is urban. So urban hip hop
Speaker 1: is lead top forty right now in terms is pop
Speaker 1: music in terms of popularity UM if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, we talked last week we announced UM the
Speaker 1: new the new free app on on Spotify, and a
Speaker 1: lot of what we talked about was personalization because when
Speaker 1: the beauty of the beauty of of of data is
Speaker 1: being able to give everybody in this room a personalized experience.
Speaker 1: So and and that's that that was a that's a
Speaker 1: big friction point because if you're a country music fan
Speaker 1: and you show up and the first thing you see
Speaker 1: is is me goes you know in the platform, you
Speaker 1: might churn out at that point, or if you can't,
Speaker 1: or if you feel sort of it's almost like you're
Speaker 1: walking into a room and not feeling welcome, you know,
Speaker 1: So how do you make people feel welcome when they
Speaker 1: walk into that room. So a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we're working on right now is built around personalization.
Speaker 1: So I think, what you what what people see in
Speaker 1: the in the new free app from the onboarding, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, you know, allow you to tell us about
Speaker 1: yourself and and so when you come to Spotify, how
Speaker 1: do we give you a personalized experience? And then um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's almost like the personalized experience would
Speaker 1: be to a the A story and the B story
Speaker 1: is more to shared experience, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: right now it's a little bit of the opposite where
Speaker 1: it was in the past. It was the opposite where
Speaker 1: it was the shared story was for was out in front,
Speaker 1: and then the personalization was more in to discover weekly
Speaker 1: product and and things like that. We'll pause here for
Speaker 1: a brief moment and get right back to the director
Speaker 1: of Creative Services and Spotify, Troy Carter. As you probably know,
Speaker 1: I'm mainly a writer and you can read my work
Speaker 1: at left sets dot com if you sign up for
Speaker 1: the newsletter not only will you get my commentary, i'm music,
Speaker 1: tech and my life in general. You'll be the first
Speaker 1: to find out when we publish a new conversation. Go
Speaker 1: to left steps dot com and sign up now more.
Speaker 1: Were the director of creative services that Spotify. Troy Carter
Speaker 1: recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna open up to questions. Now. Two things, One
Speaker 1: wait for a mic, and to please ask a question
Speaker 1: as opposed to giving your opinion. We're certainly interested in
Speaker 1: your opinion, but everybody may not. It's certainly for dinner
Speaker 1: or other times. So I have Troy here, please make
Speaker 1: it a question. Since you're talking about personalization, so you're
Speaker 1: saying that you're getting receiving enough qualitative data to give somebody,
Speaker 1: uh human behavior personalization. That's that's how much data you
Speaker 1: guys are receiving too, to personalize get your face for
Speaker 1: that person exactly, exactly. So just understanding how people listening to,
Speaker 1: how how people listen to music, and um, what types
Speaker 1: of people are listening to, what types of music allows
Speaker 1: us to give a better listening experience. So in terms
Speaker 1: and in that you know it's funny because when when
Speaker 1: you talk about data now because of the Facebook thing,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of freaks people out right. Um,
Speaker 1: but data used in the right way can give you
Speaker 1: an incredible experience. So if you look at ten years
Speaker 1: of understanding the way tens and tens of millions over
Speaker 1: a hundred million people listening listen to music, you really
Speaker 1: understand how to personalize and experience. And that's how That's
Speaker 1: why I discover Weekly worked really well, release Radar worked
Speaker 1: really well, and then um daily Mix worked really well.
Speaker 1: And now know, UM, I think we're we're we're we're
Speaker 1: able to dial it in even even better. Next question, Jim,
Speaker 1: we have to Mike, So if someone else get a
Speaker 1: Mike Jake. UM, I have a question, if you guys
Speaker 1: have ever looked at the genre of music against the
Speaker 1: free service versus the paid service? Can you I think
Speaker 1: what he means is do people listen who are paying
Speaker 1: listen to different stuff from the people who are not paying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and do you have data on that? So
Speaker 1: the answer would be I'm add percent sure we have
Speaker 1: data data on that. UM. I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: break down specifically, I could say it broadly, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of like sort of premium premium versus free,
Speaker 1: but um, not really specifically right right now, okay, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: right here, hey Troy, I'm here from Sweden. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of debate eight um back where I'm from about
Speaker 1: the sort of payment models from Spotify little bit a
Speaker 1: little bit louder place, the payment models from Spotify to
Speaker 1: the labels and from the labels to the artists, and
Speaker 1: the sort of royalty pool that's being built up. Do
Speaker 1: you know if Spotify is planning to change anything in
Speaker 1: the model in the nearest future or instead of discussion
Speaker 1: that happens in the office. Well, well, um, and this
Speaker 1: is is a is a good question. You know. The
Speaker 1: reality is, you know you kind of we I think
Speaker 1: we've gone through this sort of in a very very
Speaker 1: beginning of Spotify, when when people said Spotify doesn't pay
Speaker 1: pay out, they were right because it was no scale, right,
Speaker 1: So it's just you know, it's only a certain amount
Speaker 1: of paying customers on the platform, So the royalty payments
Speaker 1: were smaller in the beginning. You fast forward and out
Speaker 1: we paid out over eight billion euros, you know, to
Speaker 1: to to the music industry. And but how that's distributed
Speaker 1: to artists and creators is based off of individual deals.
Speaker 1: So at that point, you know, it's we can't make
Speaker 1: UM rights holders pay out any specific way you know
Speaker 1: is their individual deals with individual artists. UM. But the
Speaker 1: reality is, I think quite naturally, UM, just what what
Speaker 1: I see happening generally in the industry. The next ten
Speaker 1: years are gonna look a lot different because you have
Speaker 1: a lot of are you got I'm seeing artists that
Speaker 1: are UM and I'm just gonna speak very candidly, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of artists that are opting to stay
Speaker 1: independent because they're seeing how much, you know, you can
Speaker 1: really make, you can really make a living and you
Speaker 1: get you get real hash flow in terms of not
Speaker 1: having to wait you know, along along if you are independent,
Speaker 1: how often you get paid from Spotify um you get
Speaker 1: It depends on your aggregator and how your aggregator works.
Speaker 1: But let's say on average you get a monthly payment
Speaker 1: that trails. Right, So if I didn't interrupt, do you
Speaker 1: get a monthly payment that that trails. But let's just
Speaker 1: talk about the future of the business. Right, If we
Speaker 1: look at the future of the business, and we look
Speaker 1: at a cross and this isn't me predicting Spotify. I'm
Speaker 1: just talking specifically for the industry and looking at other
Speaker 1: types of industry. Why shouldn't artists get paid If uber
Speaker 1: drivers and lift drivers now can say cash out after
Speaker 1: their drive and that and it goes directly into their
Speaker 1: bank account of PayPal account, my guess is artists in
Speaker 1: the future are gonna be able to cash out after
Speaker 1: a day of streams how whenever they need, whenever they
Speaker 1: need that money. And cash flow is a big problem
Speaker 1: with artists. We know you might need to pay rent,
Speaker 1: you might need to buy gear, you might be going
Speaker 1: on tour, whatever, you might need to buy a car,
Speaker 1: whatever you need to do. Cash flows an issue. So
Speaker 1: when historically you know, record labels have taken care of
Speaker 1: a cash flow problem. But in so I think, um,
Speaker 1: the question, the bigger question becomes value proposition. Well, the
Speaker 1: value proposition um for of giving up eighty five of
Speaker 1: your of your revenue and exchange for marketing promotion, cash advanced,
Speaker 1: whatever is it gonna be worth it? And that's I
Speaker 1: think that's gonna be That's gonna be the biggest trick.
Speaker 1: But I think I don't think deals are gonna stay
Speaker 1: the same I think that the whole value chain is
Speaker 1: gonna change. I think record labels are gonna um evolve
Speaker 1: their their value proposition. I think managers are gonna evolve
Speaker 1: their value proposition. I think UM those services are gonna
Speaker 1: start looking very like each other. Management companies will look
Speaker 1: like labels, labels will look like management companies and UM
Speaker 1: and then but from there, I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be about the value that the artists feel like they
Speaker 1: can capture. In the end, does that answer? Does that help? Well?
Speaker 1: The other? The other? But the other thing about I
Speaker 1: think you're addressing is at this point in time, is
Speaker 1: it's sixty seven or sixty eight percent of every dollar
Speaker 1: goes to right soldiers, UM from from Spotify, Yes, some
Speaker 1: somewhere in the area. Right, So what happened If you've
Speaker 1: had to deal with an aggregator like tune in you pay,
Speaker 1: I mean the tune corret you paid once a year.
Speaker 1: All that money will be yours, assuming you both write
Speaker 1: the song and record the song. But if there's someone
Speaker 1: in between, like a label, assuming they're paying you at all,
Speaker 1: your deal maybe fifteen cents on the dollar that they get.
Speaker 1: But the issue this is also an interesting issue because
Speaker 1: they don't really want Spotify if they really start talking
Speaker 1: about this and pointing at the labels their partners, the
Speaker 1: labels don't like it to be talked about. And we
Speaker 1: don't have to point like it, I think. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing, like it's you know where we're it's it's
Speaker 1: we We are a very transparent company and you know
Speaker 1: we don't we don't play hide the ball with with
Speaker 1: with record labels. We talked very openly about the about
Speaker 1: our business to them. Um. We also talked to to
Speaker 1: to the record labels about what the future the business
Speaker 1: is gonna look like. And Daniels a guy who he
Speaker 1: lives ten years in the in in the future, like
Speaker 1: that's that's how he he thinks. And you know, my
Speaker 1: and you know and I laugh because at times I say,
Speaker 1: hold on you your ten years in the future. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with people who are ten years in the past.
Speaker 1: I gotta client of clothes. I gotta close the gap
Speaker 1: a little because mine very quickly. Okay, No, So I
Speaker 1: think Spotify is great, and I think that the okay
Speaker 1: and the payout is similar to own distributions. So that's
Speaker 1: all great. I'm what part of my question was relating
Speaker 1: to the sort of pool. What happens if I pay
Speaker 1: my I don't know what it's here not. So what
Speaker 1: you're addressing is if I pay ten dollars and only
Speaker 1: listen to bandex, should be index get all of my
Speaker 1: ten dollars. About five years ago somebody ran the numbers
Speaker 1: and they found that people were actually going to make
Speaker 1: less under that basis. I haven't seen the numbers run recently,
Speaker 1: but I would just go to the bottom line is
Speaker 1: but it goes to the pool, right Yeah. Spotify pays
Speaker 1: based on the listens, and every at least once a
Speaker 1: week somebody emails being something that's got fifty million streams
Speaker 1: that I've never heard of. It's not on a label.
Speaker 1: So people email me all the time that they're getting
Speaker 1: not even a million streams. Why are they not making money?
Speaker 1: The demand is not that high, but interesting topics just
Speaker 1: want to gainst other people a chance. Gentlemen, lady back
Speaker 1: there in a million. A million streams isn't a lot
Speaker 1: on our platform. I'm gonna switch topics just very quickly.
Speaker 1: I've loved to this so much. Thank you. My background
Speaker 1: I'm a Silicon Valley nerd and worked in digital audio
Speaker 1: forever started off at digit Design, and I have to hear,
Speaker 1: uh what the tip was that Jimmy Ivan gave you
Speaker 1: to make Lady Gagas sound better on tour. I've just
Speaker 1: been dying to know what that was. That was what
Speaker 1: we fired. We fired our front of house guy. I've
Speaker 1: worked with a lot of sound engineers, so I know Horace.
Speaker 1: So hopefully it wasn't well. By the way, I love Horrors.
Speaker 1: By the way Harors we were. Horrors was out with
Speaker 1: us for a long time. He's great. By the way,
Speaker 1: he did some of our best tours. Okay, we probably
Speaker 1: got hard right over here on the left, just to
Speaker 1: show we have interest over here while he's standing, he
Speaker 1: can get it. We'll get next. Hi. Try great. This
Speaker 1: was a great discussion, moderation aside. I thought it was fantastic. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean talking ten years down down the road, the
Speaker 1: way Daniel seems to look at things. Um, some of
Speaker 1: us also try to look that way. In terms of
Speaker 1: you know you, you mentioned a lot of strategic partnerships
Speaker 1: that you've had in your other business dealings. What about
Speaker 1: in terms of touring. Has Spotify looked towards strategic partnerships
Speaker 1: in that respect? You know, I talked, we we talked
Speaker 1: about touring a lot just because you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: an industry that we feel is it's it's broken, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: I was talking to one of our engineers about you know, product,
Speaker 1: and I was telling them it was I think it
Speaker 1: was with Gaga, we sold out we would put a
Speaker 1: tour up. And I got a call from the promoter
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, we sold out for gardens and
Speaker 1: X amount of time and you know we had we
Speaker 1: we had another two or three in the queue. Said
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I'm like, that's not good news. Somebody should
Speaker 1: have known that it was you know enough, we could
Speaker 1: have done three more gardens instead of us having to
Speaker 1: go to fucking Jersey after New York. Because to be
Speaker 1: able to monetize not have to pack up and move
Speaker 1: your show, not have to be hard on the artist's
Speaker 1: physical body by having to move them around is so
Speaker 1: many inefficiencies and in touring, and so the way towards
Speaker 1: around it right now is not through data. Is basically
Speaker 1: through guys who have been out on the road, through
Speaker 1: booking agents. UM, through hey, uh this pop act did
Speaker 1: this amount of O two so you should be able
Speaker 1: to do this amount of O twos or whatever. There's
Speaker 1: no data. The merchandise business is the same exact thing.
Speaker 1: It's no, it's no data. So we feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's enough data at least that we have where we
Speaker 1: can identify super fans on on the platform and specific markets.
Speaker 1: And if with access to other types of data be
Speaker 1: at venue data, poll Star data, you know, the artists
Speaker 1: you know, um, their their fan site data some other things,
Speaker 1: you can really make well informed decisions on touring. But
Speaker 1: not even the Getta Getta. But I think even the
Speaker 1: product now though to me, is remedial in terms of
Speaker 1: what's available. Like, to be honest with you, I like
Speaker 1: routing the tour is the easiest part, right, but understanding
Speaker 1: who is I'm doing that now? I'm doing it now.
Speaker 1: I did three hundred of them last year probably, so
Speaker 1: we you know, we probably sold close to a hundred
Speaker 1: million and tickets for people, so we we Well, so
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be clear. I get that email who's
Speaker 1: playing in my neighborhood from Spotify, but not not that okay,
Speaker 1: so but I'm aware of that, tell me about the
Speaker 1: super fans. So so basically, yes, so basically what happens
Speaker 1: is UM booking agents come to us or managers that
Speaker 1: come to us, and we do two things. So we
Speaker 1: either can help UM a lot of like superstars that
Speaker 1: come to us and they'll say, we only want our
Speaker 1: super fans and x amount in the first few rows
Speaker 1: throughout the entire tour, So can you market the show
Speaker 1: with this with the with this ticket allocation to our
Speaker 1: super fans. So that's one one part of it, so
Speaker 1: where we'll market the show to the super fans on
Speaker 1: our through our platform essentially through our data. And then
Speaker 1: the other piece of it is distressed inventory, So for
Speaker 1: shows that aren't selling, being able to identify those super
Speaker 1: fans and those markets who may not know that the
Speaker 1: show's coming through and being able to to sell the
Speaker 1: distressed inventory as well. So what you'll see and by
Speaker 1: the way, even with the amount of tickets that we
Speaker 1: sold through their UM, we still think it's remedial. So
Speaker 1: the products that you know we're working on right now,
Speaker 1: we feel like it's gonna get better and better. So
Speaker 1: one like one of the things Daniel talked about on
Speaker 1: our investor relations day UM you know a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago, was this idea about a building out a marketplace.
Speaker 1: So essentially Spotify is is will evolve into a marketplace
Speaker 1: where artists don't need us to do it. They'll be
Speaker 1: able to come on there and reach their fans directly,
Speaker 1: sell their tickets to their fans, directly, merchandise, message their fans,
Speaker 1: and to kind of build this relationship. Okay, who has
Speaker 1: the mic right now? I got I got one over here.
Speaker 1: I just found it. Thank you, thank you. UM. You
Speaker 1: brought up India verses or artists wanting to stay Indy.
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest points of that is
Speaker 1: to have control. How many artists have recorded records and
Speaker 1: they're just sitting there. So I think the biggest factor
Speaker 1: and staying independent is to have that control of of
Speaker 1: doing your career the way you wanted to. UM. I've
Speaker 1: been on both sides of the majors in the Indies.
Speaker 1: I spent my first fifty or sixty decades at a
Speaker 1: major and my last sixty decades on the indie side. UM.
Speaker 1: I think right now you know the answer is. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's radio or Spotify or TV or festivals
Speaker 1: or it's almost like what you did with Gaga is
Speaker 1: you ran around and did everything you know, I think
Speaker 1: the future kind of is the past. I was preceded
Speaker 1: by a guy named Juggie Gayles, and Juggie was like
Speaker 1: a song he was he was a plugger. They called
Speaker 1: him song Fluggers and they just went everywhere they went,
Speaker 1: you know, and you go everywhere. You have this intuition
Speaker 1: and you navigate it and try to you know, fan
Speaker 1: the aims. I I think, you know, you brought up
Speaker 1: research and radio's research. I don't think the concept of
Speaker 1: research isn't incorrect. Like I look at the research on Spotify.
Speaker 1: You're looking at what people are really doing. I think
Speaker 1: radio buildings archaic um call out research paradigm where they
Speaker 1: feel they can look in the rear view mirror or
Speaker 1: as those are the people who are listening to their stations.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what the problem is. It's it's they're
Speaker 1: so entrenched in that system and that's what's hurting them to,
Speaker 1: you know, to move to towards the future. Um. I
Speaker 1: was um thinking about Spotify. I was thinking about consumption.
Speaker 1: Everything is about you know, you when you look at
Speaker 1: the numbers on wrap or Wrap Cavy or a hip hop,
Speaker 1: there tend to one right. Oh and yet where you
Speaker 1: may tend to one in terms of like I look
Speaker 1: at the amount of followers, the amount of listeners, the amount,
Speaker 1: how how huge hip hop is right now, And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the live business, about about these festivals.
Speaker 1: I'm getting to the question, um, when when you're looking
Speaker 1: at these festivals now, Lallapalooza, bonar Ruaisia. Every day there's
Speaker 1: more and more festivals and what's driving them and it's it's, Um,
Speaker 1: the irony is that it's a time when people can
Speaker 1: be alone, they can sit in their house and be
Speaker 1: on the internet. They're all going out to these festivals
Speaker 1: and all you know, it's it's it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And when I look at these festivals and I look
Speaker 1: at again, I'm not in the touring side. I'm on
Speaker 1: the recorded music side, but that that's being driven a
Speaker 1: lot by alternative and rock more than I think, you know,
Speaker 1: on the hip hop side. And my question to you is,
Speaker 1: why do you think there's such a disparity between you know,
Speaker 1: the recorded music side, the hip hop and the wrap
Speaker 1: and the live business where these people are coming out
Speaker 1: in droves. Why is the recorded music and have such
Speaker 1: a higher demand, you know, on the hip hop side
Speaker 1: compared to I don't think it's a disparity at all. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, you see hip hop acts that are selling
Speaker 1: you know, arenas out every every single night of the week.
Speaker 1: So I like, I don't think it's I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a disparity. And then when you look at you know,
Speaker 1: I think they're especially with the younger consumer like a
Speaker 1: Cachella consumer or or Lollapalooza. You know, you look at
Speaker 1: the festival lineups and its diverse, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think the diversity, yeah, I think the diversity and and um,
Speaker 1: even with this past Catchella is a reflection of the
Speaker 1: way you know, kids are listening to music, so where
Speaker 1: they are listening to all different all different types. Huh,
Speaker 1: it was Mike right here. I don't, I don't. It's
Speaker 1: not that it's catching up. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: ever behind. Actually I think it was behind. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the festivals were booked by old white guys.
Speaker 1: But but when you say live, live and festivals are
Speaker 1: two different things. The lot, the lot, the live business
Speaker 1: has never been, never been behind. But like I think
Speaker 1: festivals realized they had to wake up and diversify the business.
Speaker 1: If they wanted to keep with the with the consumer. Okay,
Speaker 1: gentlemen here, Okay, yeah, um, going back, I think Bob,
Speaker 1: you're you actually asked a question about uh, possibly labels
Speaker 1: controlling too much of what gets to the list. Um
Speaker 1: you made a comment about the hype. Is you know
Speaker 1: there's no hype, it's the numbers don't lie? Um which
Speaker 1: list though? Well, because it's fortylists right, right, So here's
Speaker 1: my question is of those how many? How many editors
Speaker 1: are there? And then sort of the part two is,
Speaker 1: let's take an act that has no touring base, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna use some old terms, but you can
Speaker 1: never get to call out without having the ad, right,
Speaker 1: So you've got to have that initial ad before you
Speaker 1: can get to call out. So before you can get
Speaker 1: the numbers, there has to be some amount of hype
Speaker 1: or some amount of connection to those editors, right, No,
Speaker 1: not at all, Like it's it's just a it's a
Speaker 1: handful like So to answer, I'll answer if you your questions.
Speaker 1: So is is a few hundred editors globally at Spotify,
Speaker 1: across the across the different genres. Our editors especially and
Speaker 1: in certain specific genres, they pride like part of their
Speaker 1: culture is you got to find stuff before everybody else
Speaker 1: finds it. That's like that's part of hip hop culture,
Speaker 1: by the way, and part of Latin culture is as well.
Speaker 1: You want to get there early before anybody gets it.
Speaker 1: So they're looking for and they're competing with other services
Speaker 1: as well trying to find stuff. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that um Our editors are finding, like record
Speaker 1: companies call me every single day of the week trying
Speaker 1: to sign acts that are independent on on on Spotify.
Speaker 1: They're trying to nine these records that are that that
Speaker 1: are doing well. And then you know, in the reality
Speaker 1: and just when we look at some of the big categories,
Speaker 1: major labels are over index and all hit records you got,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, when we talk about you know,
Speaker 1: certain name like certain categories that people come to me
Speaker 1: sort of complaining about, they can't name me any big
Speaker 1: acts in that in that category in the first place.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, I think major labels do
Speaker 1: an incredible job at making big top forty records, so
Speaker 1: that quite naturally they're gonna control a big portion of
Speaker 1: big top forty playlists. You know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: jazz music, maybe not so much. It comes to some
Speaker 1: other categories maybe maybe not so much, but I think
Speaker 1: it's um. I think it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: people have started talking about so much that people start
Speaker 1: believing that that that's actually the case. And I just
Speaker 1: come from I come from a school of hit records work,
Speaker 1: hit records work, Doug Morris. I remember going into Doug
Speaker 1: Morris's office after he left Universal and right before he
Speaker 1: went into Sony and UM, and he was asking me about, UM,
Speaker 1: what a record that that we that that I put
Speaker 1: out on one of our acts, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, the video was too dark?
Speaker 1: You know, I kind of saw this, you know, just
Speaker 1: change with the consumer, and you know it wasn't popping up.
Speaker 1: He said, no, it wasn't a hit. He said, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a hit. And that's the reality. Nobody wants to
Speaker 1: admit when their records aren't hits. So most of the
Speaker 1: complaints I get from people they don't have hit records.
Speaker 1: Over here. You mentioned that streaming is in its infancy.
Speaker 1: What does it look like when it's matured? And also
Speaker 1: based on the data, what emerging genres are there that
Speaker 1: you guys are seeing, Well, you know, I think you know,
Speaker 1: when you talk about when when it's mature, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is where I think we underestimate, you know,
Speaker 1: the size of of what the global recorded music market
Speaker 1: is going to be. So everybody talks about the sort
Speaker 1: of heyday of the record business at its height. And
Speaker 1: you know when we were selling selling a lot of CDs.
Speaker 1: More people are on on this planet are gonna have
Speaker 1: mobile phones than they had CD players. So and when
Speaker 1: you look at the amount of youth, the youth population
Speaker 1: that's rising in Africa and in India, you look at
Speaker 1: China that you know that's never been a factor, and
Speaker 1: how and the and the paid music market, I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna I think the music industry is gonna to
Speaker 1: go exponential growth like we've never seen before. I think
Speaker 1: what we have to adjust to, you know, we are
Speaker 1: I think as and I'm just saying is and just
Speaker 1: generally speaking the music industry we operate as elite like
Speaker 1: as elitists. So where we're under this impression that everybody
Speaker 1: is gonna buy a subscription, and everybody in the world
Speaker 1: in a ford. And if you look at the price
Speaker 1: of gas this week, people can't afford to put gas
Speaker 1: in their tank. People are barely making it in this country.
Speaker 1: People are struggling, and I think it's finding ways where Okay,
Speaker 1: whether it's through uh, you know, advertising subsidies or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think there's ways to monetize you know, a billion
Speaker 1: plus consumer base across you know, the the entire music industry. UM.
Speaker 1: I think data plans, you know, And that's one of
Speaker 1: the things we talked about last week with the new
Speaker 1: free tier was being able to you know, we built
Speaker 1: you know, lighter data plans because you know, so on
Speaker 1: on your phone, it's not eating up your data plan.
Speaker 1: So I think what's ahead of us is gonna is
Speaker 1: it's gonna. I think we're gonna see something like we
Speaker 1: we've never seen before. But but the market is um.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say a number, but I think
Speaker 1: it's way, way bigger than what we've ever seen. Young lady,
Speaker 1: right here, have you been waiting? I? UM? What about
Speaker 1: the role um of curators on the platform and independent curators.
Speaker 1: Is Spotify developing a program even for example radio stations, blogs, um,
Speaker 1: just independent curators. What I don't see anything being done
Speaker 1: for profiles for those entities and people. You you have
Speaker 1: independent curators that um, that are on the platform where
Speaker 1: you know where they and some people do a really
Speaker 1: good job at promoting their playlists and they you know,
Speaker 1: built followers. Uh um. You know, for us, our priority
Speaker 1: had to be our own and operated playlists, you know,
Speaker 1: because I think we were able to control the integrity
Speaker 1: of those playlists. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: just making sure it doesn't turn to a place where
Speaker 1: people can pay people to get on playlist and you
Speaker 1: know so and I think you know, when that ecosystem
Speaker 1: was open in the in the beginning, a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, we had to change the terms of services
Speaker 1: because you had a lot of people paying to get
Speaker 1: on playlists or you know, exchanging favors to get on
Speaker 1: to get on playlists. And the only thing that does
Speaker 1: is makes for uh a terrible consumer experience versus best
Speaker 1: song wins. So essentially, if we can program in a
Speaker 1: way where where best song wins is a better experience
Speaker 1: for the for the consumer. But we're not like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of brands and people who are building
Speaker 1: their their profiles. But our priority is is is owned
Speaker 1: and operated. Who has the mic? Now? Ye right here?
Speaker 1: I try just going back to the future of streaming UM,
Speaker 1: we see pricing differentiation for hires players like COB's entitle.
Speaker 1: UM do you think that's sustainable? And my second question is, UM,
Speaker 1: there's new UM streaming platforms like Prime Phonic, which are
Speaker 1: focused on classical music. Do you think the future will
Speaker 1: be sort of based on differentiation by genre or do
Speaker 1: you think the hardware ecosystem will dominate? You know, I
Speaker 1: think you know, just in my my opinion, I think UM,
Speaker 1: having a niche UM a knee service is deaf is difficult, right,
Speaker 1: you know, because when you can get and and everything
Speaker 1: essentially that you pretty much want to listen to him
Speaker 1: in one place, UM, you gotta have a compelling value
Speaker 1: proposition to drive somebody to pay specifically for that niche
Speaker 1: service and then UM this sort of financial models to
Speaker 1: operate as a business around that. And my I just
Speaker 1: think would be and it would be challenging, you know,
Speaker 1: especially as you're competing against you know, some some of
Speaker 1: the some of the larger players UM in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, fidelity you know you got I'm one of
Speaker 1: the the niche consumers that cares about you know, sound
Speaker 1: and and for me it's specifically for jazz music. Like
Speaker 1: when I listen to jazz and um, you know, I
Speaker 1: got high fidelity speakers. I want to listen to it
Speaker 1: and and and high fidelity. Um. But for a lot
Speaker 1: of the other records, is like, you don't need to
Speaker 1: listen to it in high fidelity, right, but you got
Speaker 1: to find a big enough audience that's willing to pay
Speaker 1: for it. Um. I'd love to get to a place
Speaker 1: where everybody cares about how how records you know, were
Speaker 1: intended to sound. But you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: the general population, uh if that if that's something that
Speaker 1: they really genuinely care about. And I don't think you've
Speaker 1: been able to, um, how like, so when the jump
Speaker 1: from cassette to CD was so exponential in terms of sound,
Speaker 1: and the jump from vhs too, you know, DVD was
Speaker 1: so was was exponential in terms of you know, a
Speaker 1: visual and sound, we haven't been able to kind of
Speaker 1: give any sort of exponential jump yet to make people
Speaker 1: want to leap from from this to that. Ye just
Speaker 1: talk Yeah, I don't okay, Jamie, Jamie, you have a question.
Speaker 1: I probably good to see. Yeah, Um, I have two
Speaker 1: questions and I want to I'll cut it down to one.
Speaker 1: And so I'm large. Maria used to be at Pandora.
Speaker 1: The question that I have that I don't think anybody's
Speaker 1: asked you, what is the lowest hanging fruit that you
Speaker 1: think people are not picking off of Spotify right now?
Speaker 1: Used to drive me crazy that there were things I
Speaker 1: couldn't explain or I could explain, and people just wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it, Like what are they not doing? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think going back to what you say, People and
Speaker 1: lois just I'm talking about the the industry, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Mark was talking about how are you selling tickets?
Speaker 1: You're like, we just sold a hundred million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of tickets? Like what what across the board is the
Speaker 1: thing that people should be thinking about that they're not.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, Um, I think I don't
Speaker 1: know if I have an answer for the low hanging fruit,
Speaker 1: but I do think the industry one of the biggest
Speaker 1: problems that I see is this sort of people haven't
Speaker 1: been able to differentiate. People haven't been able to fully
Speaker 1: move into a new model yet because people still think
Speaker 1: we're a retailer. We're not a retailer. Um. People's to
Speaker 1: think we're like radio, where we're not radio like so
Speaker 1: even down to the point where the people still haven't
Speaker 1: figured out who at the company should really interface with
Speaker 1: us yet. Should it be a promo guy, is that
Speaker 1: the sales team? Is it marketing? Like? So, I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of understanding that this is a totally new system.
Speaker 1: The way the old system work doesn't work with with
Speaker 1: with with this, with this new system. And then so
Speaker 1: so and even down to going back to I get
Speaker 1: so many calls from people that say, I'm at a
Speaker 1: million streams and I'm like, a million streams is nothing, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not there yet. You gotta get there, like it's
Speaker 1: um but because people in the record business think a
Speaker 1: million records your platinum, a million streams isn't platinum, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like, so it's this sort of uh chasm
Speaker 1: you got that that hasn't been crossed yet. So if
Speaker 1: I can steal a quick follow up on that. Cycles,
Speaker 1: how do you do you have insight to tell everybody
Speaker 1: about cycles? And how I mean cycles are different now
Speaker 1: in a streaming with types of cycles, song cycles, uh,
Speaker 1: career cycles, album cycles, all of that, who's doing it? Right? So?
Speaker 1: So the way so I look at it as perpetual cycles, right,
Speaker 1: so it's not there's no more on on on and off.
Speaker 1: And you know what what we see now is, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at Um you know, two good examples of
Speaker 1: like a Bruno Mars or at Sharon where their former
Speaker 1: albums just continue to kind of perform well. And Chain
Speaker 1: Smokers there. You know, I think Adam and And and
Speaker 1: those guys are are really brilliant in terms of how
Speaker 1: they they're They're just innovative in their approach to to
Speaker 1: release the music, the hip hop game in general. I
Speaker 1: would just say, you know, they win blue you know,
Speaker 1: they win gold Star in terms of being able to um,
Speaker 1: to cater to new concert to the way consumers consume
Speaker 1: and um. And it's just it bugs me out because
Speaker 1: the record business we used to be so forward and
Speaker 1: how like when we we turned Tuesdays into events right
Speaker 1: where it was, you know, when we put out albums,
Speaker 1: the way we set up set up albums, film studios
Speaker 1: were envied away. You know that that that we did it.
Speaker 1: And but yet Netflix is kicking our ass and innovation
Speaker 1: of releases. You know, so when you released you know,
Speaker 1: I was telling I was at one of the record
Speaker 1: labels and they were talking about all of their new
Speaker 1: acts that broke on, you know, because I was complaining
Speaker 1: about artists development, and I'm like, you gotta build stars,
Speaker 1: Like just because they're getting streams don't mean that their stars.
Speaker 1: And they're telling me what we broke this act this year,
Speaker 1: this act, this year, this act this year, and this
Speaker 1: act this year. I said, I'll tell you what if
Speaker 1: you took those four artists right now and they got
Speaker 1: out of their car in front of the school that's
Speaker 1: across the street, and you took the kids from Stranger
Speaker 1: Things and they got out of the car, every kid's
Speaker 1: gonna run to the kids from Stranger things. Like that's
Speaker 1: this year's one direction. We don't have a one direction
Speaker 1: right now. That's one direction right now. You look at
Speaker 1: how we're still releasing single single, single album. You're releasing
Speaker 1: three singles before album, and Netflix is dropping the whole
Speaker 1: season on you day day one because everybody wants it there.
Speaker 1: And I asked the record I asked the record label,
Speaker 1: I said, why are you still doing it like that?
Speaker 1: Because the radio, you want to build up a an
Speaker 1: audience first, because the first week, first week means zero,
Speaker 1: first week means nothing anymore. So, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: just getting people to cross over to the new world.
Speaker 1: And and and I'm seeing some younger labels and some
Speaker 1: younger artists right now and that has no historical baggage.
Speaker 1: That are you know, plowing their way into into into
Speaker 1: the new world very quickly. Single album? If you're a
Speaker 1: new artist, should people even bother to make albums or
Speaker 1: continue to put out a continuous dreament product? If if
Speaker 1: you can make a great album, make an album. The
Speaker 1: problem is, you know, making a great album. That's a
Speaker 1: big challenge. Jamie. You said something, uh that really kind
Speaker 1: of perked my ears up a bit. Um. You said
Speaker 1: that radio is in trouble, and I absolutely agree. And
Speaker 1: I think that you're that Spotify's integration into automobiles is
Speaker 1: going to even put another nail in that coffin. But
Speaker 1: we aren't there yet. We aren't. Radio is not dead yet.
Speaker 1: So you had said something that you did with Gaga
Speaker 1: where it was um social media and YouTube and getting
Speaker 1: the music out there so that by the time it
Speaker 1: went to radio and they were doing their testing, that
Speaker 1: everybody was already familiar with it, so it tested really well.
Speaker 1: Later you said that labels kind of have to pick.
Speaker 1: Are you going to go the radio route where you
Speaker 1: put a half million dollars behind a track, or are
Speaker 1: you going to go the Spotify route? And like, I
Speaker 1: does a label really have to choose or should they
Speaker 1: just be working it back? So let me let me
Speaker 1: clarify it. So so I don't think you have to
Speaker 1: choose between going to Spotify or going to radio. So
Speaker 1: I was talking specifically around if you have a single
Speaker 1: and you start the single off and Spotify, by the
Speaker 1: time you build up that big enough story for radio,
Speaker 1: chances are it's gonna be old. That single is gonna
Speaker 1: be over on our platform. Yes, so so, but what
Speaker 1: we get a lot is complaints that we're not hanging
Speaker 1: in there long enough on the single because it's not building,
Speaker 1: it's not uh linking in uh, it's not fused with
Speaker 1: their radio stories essentially. And I think for us, it's
Speaker 1: not our that that's just not our problem because because
Speaker 1: only we gotta we gotta do we have to build
Speaker 1: the great experience for the consumer. That's the like, that's
Speaker 1: our number one thing. It has to be a great
Speaker 1: experience for the consumer. And um so so that's where
Speaker 1: that's the sort of catch twenty two that we're finding.
Speaker 1: You know, some some of the labels in Okay, this gentleman,
Speaker 1: this is the last question for now, my Troy. UM
Speaker 1: a bit of a tech nerd question because you were
Speaker 1: saying you've building out a marketplace and then Daniel living
Speaker 1: ten years ahead of us. How much is which extent
Speaker 1: is AI and blockchain part of the discussion? UM? You know, UM,
Speaker 1: some I can comment on, some I can't comment on. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it's just AI in general. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the future, you know, I think, you know, machine learning
Speaker 1: as part of what we already do in terms if
Speaker 1: you look at Discover weekly, Discover weekly as machine learning
Speaker 1: and UM, and I think the more data that you
Speaker 1: get the better than machines get. Right, So I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna play a huge role. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it necessarily has as much to do with marketplace as
Speaker 1: much as it has to do with the personalization that
Speaker 1: that that that we're talking about and just being able
Speaker 1: to make the experience better for you when you when
Speaker 1: you up come on the platform. But I just don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, we we kind of got a sense that
Speaker 1: where machine learning is gonna gonna take us, the marketplace
Speaker 1: was more directed towards the block chain. I can't comment,
Speaker 1: thank you, but you've been very open and honest. We've
Speaker 1: put you through the rigger for two hours. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I love Bob and Aga Hattie's conversations. I say,
Speaker 1: I got so many questions in my head, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we're off the audience. But when I say, on some level,
Speaker 1: we only scratched the surface. That's supposed to Howard Stern
Speaker 1: saying you said everything, You've only said a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it's been so wonderful that you've come here and
Speaker 1: uh endured this for two hours. Troy, thanks again, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm sure you dug that I loved. Troy
Speaker 1: is such an animated character, whether he's telling stories working
Speaker 1: in Spotify now, are hustling back in the early days
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia and in California. So once again you're listening
Speaker 1: to the Bob left Sex Podcast Troy Carter, recorded live
Speaker 1: at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this conversation. I know you love Troy
Speaker 1: just like me. Until next time, I'm Bob left Sez
Speaker 1: Meta