Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Back to the main stage,
Speaker 1: our Lucas Shaw up there on the stage, the CEO
Speaker 1: of the American.
Speaker 2: Division of HI. We're talking about Scooter Braun.
Speaker 1: Let's listening. A lot has happened with you in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and that's sort of where I
Speaker 1: want to start.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a little bit, because there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of coverage of Okay, all your clients are firing you.
Speaker 1: We won't touch your personal life, but I know a
Speaker 1: bun just happened there. You sold your company. You haven't
Speaker 1: said a ton about it, and I'm curious, what is
Speaker 1: your take? Did a bunch of your clients fire you
Speaker 1: in the span of a couple of months, or what
Speaker 1: happened with Arity three?
Speaker 2: Fired me in the exact same day? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Now, what happened with Arianna with Justin with listen?
Speaker 2: I actually a year after it happened.
Speaker 3: I for contractual reasons, I wasn't allowed to say certain things,
Speaker 3: but I wrote something called twenty three years I posted
Speaker 3: on social media. It was my words, and I kind
Speaker 3: of explained why I made a decision to not manage
Speaker 3: musicians after twenty three years, and that it actually happened
Speaker 3: about a year earlier, but you know, we're running a
Speaker 3: big company and there's things that we needed to handle,
Speaker 3: so I didn't feel like it was the right time.
Speaker 2: And simply.
Speaker 3: Twenty three years of my life, from nineteen years old
Speaker 3: to into my forties, I only knew being a music manager.
Speaker 3: Twenty four to seven, seven days a week, every vacation,
Speaker 3: every holiday.
Speaker 2: I was on call.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't on call to one big artist. I
Speaker 3: was on call to a lot of big artists. And
Speaker 3: for a large part of my life, I really loved it.
Speaker 3: But then I had three kids and I went through
Speaker 3: a divorce, and anyone who's been through a divorce with
Speaker 3: children knows that.
Speaker 2: It is not an easy situation.
Speaker 3: And I really looked back at my life and realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, you can point fingers in a divorce and say, oh,
Speaker 3: this happened, This happened, but you play a role in it.
Speaker 3: And that's why me and my ex wife are partners.
Speaker 3: With these three children, we put them first, and my
Speaker 3: role was I wasn't present. I was a manager twenty
Speaker 3: four to seven, and even though I was home, I
Speaker 3: wasn't being there the way I should and it led
Speaker 3: to a divorce, and I realized I might have lost
Speaker 3: the marriage. I wasn't going to lose my kids, and
Speaker 3: I decided that I wanted to step away from it
Speaker 3: and focus on other things. And now I have three
Speaker 3: of the best clients in the world and that's my focus.
Speaker 3: But then, yeah, there was a lot of noise because
Speaker 3: no one actually thought you would want to step away
Speaker 3: from that. But how did you communicate that to the
Speaker 3: clients that you were working with. Well, one of them
Speaker 3: I wrote about this. One of them approached me and said, Hey,
Speaker 3: I think I want to try something new. And at
Speaker 3: first I was kind of hurt because we've been through
Speaker 3: so much together. But then I realized I was already
Speaker 3: heading in this direction for the last couple of years anyway,
Speaker 3: and I think you make plans and then the universe
Speaker 3: kind of shows you what you need. And I realized
Speaker 3: it was actually a gift and it wasn't about one client,
Speaker 3: it was about all. So I started picking up the
Speaker 3: phone and having the conversations and some went well, some
Speaker 3: took a couple more conversations. But I'm grateful for all
Speaker 3: those years. I lived a very unique life doing that.
Speaker 3: I was a part of the journeys of the most
Speaker 3: successful and incredibly talented people in the world, and now
Speaker 3: I get to root from them in a different capacity.
Speaker 1: How does how does the relationship like, take someone like Beeber,
Speaker 1: you take him from nothing. You guys are do the
Speaker 1: whole ride up together? Like, how does that relationship work?
Speaker 2: Now root for each other?
Speaker 3: I mean it's you get to a point where you
Speaker 3: just say, we built this legacy alongside each other.
Speaker 2: And now he's a father, he has.
Speaker 3: An opportunity to continue doing you know, the things he
Speaker 3: loves to do, and I'm going to be rooting for
Speaker 3: him for the.
Speaker 2: Rest of his career.
Speaker 1: So, Hi, buy your company. About three years ago we
Speaker 1: had the we had we had Bang here last year.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, I think thought you would have
Speaker 1: left by now, so did our chairman? Why have you
Speaker 1: stuck around? I guess what are you doing now if
Speaker 1: you are not managed artists?
Speaker 2: A couple of things.
Speaker 3: When Chairman Bang and I met, he's the chairman of
Speaker 3: Hive and he's a very unique individual. This is someone
Speaker 3: who was one of the biggest music producers in all
Speaker 3: of Asia, and at the height of his career in Asia,
Speaker 3: he came to the United States to have meetings with
Speaker 3: A and RS and presidents of labels here to discuss
Speaker 3: his ideas. And one of these meetings they had him
Speaker 3: wait in the lobby for three hours and then told him,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, we have another meeting and canceled on him.
Speaker 3: And instead of having an ego or getting upset, he goes,
Speaker 3: you know, and I'm going to go back home and
Speaker 3: I'm going to build this industry myself so that when
Speaker 3: I come back here, I don't need to ask for
Speaker 3: these meetings. And if you look at the groups, including
Speaker 3: BTS that he was able to create and produce and
Speaker 3: develop and continually do so, he's actually brilliant. And I
Speaker 3: had admired his work for some time. He knew about
Speaker 3: the stuff I had done, and he reached out to
Speaker 3: me and said, can we have conversations, And the first
Speaker 3: four conversations that's when the last one happened about the purchase.
Speaker 3: He said that in the East, we have conversations about
Speaker 3: what we're going to do. He goes, too many times
Speaker 3: when I talk to people in the West, they talk
Speaker 3: about just the transaction, just the deal, not what we're
Speaker 3: going to do. He goes, all four conversations we've had
Speaker 3: We've talked about culture, We've talked about philosophy, we've talked
Speaker 3: about meditation, we've talked about music, we've talked about family.
Speaker 3: He goes, I want to do this with you, and
Speaker 3: no matter what we find, we'll go through it together.
Speaker 3: We signed up and we did a five year deal.
Speaker 3: And the reason I'm still here because you're right, and
Speaker 3: those deals usually vest out at a certain point, and
Speaker 3: my deal was pretty much upfront.
Speaker 2: I gave my word, and I really enjoy him.
Speaker 3: I think he's a visionary and I think your words
Speaker 3: should mean more than just the deal that you do
Speaker 3: on paper. And I told him I'd be there for
Speaker 3: five years, and I'm going to do that. And the
Speaker 3: exciting part is we've developed such a relationship that now
Speaker 3: we're talking about extending that and being there longer, and
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: And is that being focused?
Speaker 1: Like, are you because you're the CEO of hYP America, right,
Speaker 1: how much of your time are you spending on taking
Speaker 1: big Korean acts and bringing them here or bringing them
Speaker 1: around the world, And how much of it are you
Speaker 1: spending on developing acts here that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with Korea.
Speaker 2: It's about fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, if you look at our strategy,
Speaker 3: we purchased QC, which is, you know, the biggest independent
Speaker 3: hip hop label in the country. We had big machine
Speaker 3: from Ithaca when we brought it over. So we're going
Speaker 3: to you know, go out and find other companies that
Speaker 3: make sense for us and other assets that make sense.
Speaker 3: We also launched High two point zero, which allows us
Speaker 3: to create a distribution system for independent labels because of
Speaker 3: our distribution deal with Universal, a ten year deal that
Speaker 3: puts us a unique position.
Speaker 2: And then you know, you look at.
Speaker 3: Weavers, which is our large platform for fan engagement for
Speaker 3: super fans, which is the biggest in the world and
Speaker 3: the biggest in Asia. A lot of people don't realize this,
Speaker 3: but thirty percent of our revenue is actually from North America.
Speaker 3: So you know, now we've introduced Ariana Grande to that platform.
Speaker 3: We introduced kid Leroy this week. You know, you're starting
Speaker 3: to see a lot of you know, acts from the
Speaker 3: West joining and it makes sense because you see acts
Speaker 3: from the East coming here and they're selling out arenas
Speaker 3: day one and if everyone's asking why, and it's because
Speaker 3: of that opportunity to talk directly to the fans on weavers.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm curious setting aside reverse Like the last decade plus,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people were finding artists
Speaker 1: on YouTube, then they're finding artists on TikTok. Where do
Speaker 1: you or where do people you work with discover new
Speaker 1: artists right now?
Speaker 3: So I can give the nice answer and you know,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to give the real answer. You know,
Speaker 3: when when we're talking to people, there's still A and rs,
Speaker 3: there's still scouts. They're going out there and they're finding stuff.
Speaker 3: There's still people looking on TikTok and on YouTube and
Speaker 3: you might see something and you know, part of it is,
Speaker 3: you know, true development, like we just did with our
Speaker 3: group Cats Eye, which we developed them, we did a
Speaker 3: show on Netflix and now we've launched them. But the
Speaker 3: thing I'm most excited about is what's to come. And
Speaker 3: the reason I say that is I'm forty three years old.
Speaker 3: When I found Justin, I was twenty four about to
Speaker 3: be twenty five. I was native to technology that was
Speaker 3: around at that time.
Speaker 2: I was a young guy.
Speaker 3: I understood what my peers wanted, I understood what was
Speaker 3: missing in the marketplace, and I understood how to use
Speaker 3: the social media in a way that made sense to
Speaker 3: my peers. So, for example, Twitter at the time was
Speaker 3: just celebrities talking to other celebrities on the suggested user list,
Speaker 3: and I was like, well, this feels very voyeuristic. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to just watch someone talk to someone else.
Speaker 2: I want to engage.
Speaker 3: And Justin was the first person to cross a million
Speaker 3: followers on Twitter that wasn't on the suggested user list
Speaker 3: because we actually engaged with the fans. We created fame
Speaker 3: groups like belieber Babes and bieber Army and all these
Speaker 3: you know things.
Speaker 2: The names are amazing. I know, you guys can giggle,
Speaker 2: It's okay.
Speaker 3: And actually a lot of the people who ran those
Speaker 3: accounts are now executives in the music industry. Jackie Augustus
Speaker 3: is a very big executive and she used to run
Speaker 3: Bieber Army back in the day and when she was
Speaker 3: like sixteen. So what I'm waiting for is that next kid,
Speaker 3: that next kid who's in their twenties or even a
Speaker 3: teenager who understands who's native to the technology and realizes
Speaker 3: how to use that the AI that's coming all the
Speaker 3: different things in a way that myself and Bang and
Speaker 3: my peers just don't because it is a youth driven industry.
Speaker 3: So when I meet people or their young artists, they go, hey,
Speaker 3: what do you think I should do? My response is
Speaker 3: usually stop worrying about getting to people like me. You
Speaker 3: have all the resources to get to the audience directly,
Speaker 3: and your peers develop with them. So when you say
Speaker 3: how do we do it, it's going to be self discovery.
Speaker 3: I just don't know how the next generation is going
Speaker 3: to do it because for my dad it was vinyl,
Speaker 3: you know, for me it was mixtapes for someone else,
Speaker 3: who knows?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you as a result of that, do you feel
Speaker 1: the balance of power in the music industry has shifted
Speaker 1: more to the artists than when you started.
Speaker 3: I think it's shifted to the artists, but there'll always
Speaker 3: need to be those teams or people that give their
Speaker 3: all in their heart alongside the artists to develop talent,
Speaker 3: to understand the marketplace. And you know, that's what's exciting
Speaker 3: because I kind of like where I am in my life.
Speaker 3: I've never been so uncertain about what's gonna happen in
Speaker 3: my life in the next five years. But I've never
Speaker 3: felt so at ease with being uncertain and I think
Speaker 3: the industry is in a very similar place.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, I would imagine a lot of money helps with that.
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm just the best. I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: were starting a a a new company today management whatever,
Speaker 1: I know you don't you don't wanna manage it anymore?
Speaker 1: Is there who is an artist out there? Like if
Speaker 1: you could just pick one and you I'm gonna build
Speaker 1: around you, who would you pick?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: I don't know cause I haven't really been in that
Speaker 3: space of like, you know, finding the next one.
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't have to be the next one. It
Speaker 1: can be it can be a huge star. Now, Like
Speaker 1: who is someone now where you look at them and
Speaker 1: they're already a star and you feel like their earnings
Speaker 1: are over the next twenty thirty years or they're potential
Speaker 1: of where they could go at their career is something that.
Speaker 2: You want to be involved with.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give you the sound but you're looking for
Speaker 3: cause I just can't help myself and the PR team's
Speaker 3: gonna be like what I think the artist that's you know,
Speaker 3: it's one that you should always bet on and is
Speaker 3: already a huge star and you can always bet on
Speaker 3: because they want it all the time, and they they
Speaker 3: do what it takes to be you know, present and
Speaker 3: relative all the time. Is Taylor Swift, I.
Speaker 1: Was actually not thinking you were gonna say that, but
Speaker 1: it's it's an obvious answer, but I you.
Speaker 3: Know, I I also love that what we're doing with
Speaker 3: our group Cat's Eye. I love uh Teddy Swims. I
Speaker 3: love great voices like that. I love like Benson Moone.
Speaker 3: I saw him perform the other day and that was
Speaker 3: really impressive. Zach Brian is doing incredible stuff. So there's
Speaker 3: you know, the fun part about it is everyone you know,
Speaker 3: there's a huge opportunity coming with AI and it's going
Speaker 3: to change the music industry the same way pro tools.
Speaker 2: Did.
Speaker 3: You know when pro tools came along, people said, what
Speaker 3: is this? We need live instruments and you realize it's
Speaker 3: a tool to create more music. And I think AI
Speaker 3: is going to do the same thing. But there's always
Speaker 3: going to be a need for both human emotion and
Speaker 3: human error.
Speaker 2: You know, if we want to watch the Great.
Speaker 1: All right, that of course is our Lucas Shaw with
Speaker 1: Scooter Ball and see you have the American division of HAIG.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that Taylor Swift comment might make a few headlines.
Speaker 1: Look on's Twitter right now, see who's chatting about it,
Speaker 1: because yeah, lots of people following.
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