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The music industry really has to learn a lesson from the tech industry about what scale means at the end of the day and learning how to monetize.
Spotify was one of the first services that actually focuses on the consumer because they don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a year on music.
Technology has long been the driver of growth in the music business from the invention of lacquers, eight-track players, vinyl, cassettes and CDs.
Hustle is simple - it's doing the work. A lot of people like to talk about it, a lot of people have ideas, but it's difficult to actually do the work.
Before I even agreed to work with Hennessy and the Privilege Awards, I wanted to do some research on it, look up past winners, and find out more about it.
People don't buy horses to ride around any more for transportation. I just think the world changes. As a business, we have to make the proper adjustments.
On the artist side, we made a significant investment in very young artists from the very beginning of their careers and helped them become global superstars.
My mom was not able to buy us the expensive Air Jordans, so if I wanted something that was a little bit nicer, my brother and I, we had to go earn money for it.
She was a performance artist calling herself Lady Gaga, who had a European dance-club sound and pop-star aspirations - elements that historically haven't mixed.
To me, as A&R people and as managers, we're in the business of finding talent. It's no different than working with these engineers who just want to make good products.
What I like about Bre.ad is the simplicity of it. When you can explain it to people, like 'five-second billboards in front of a link shortener,' it makes a lot of sense.
The way consumers interact with music is different now. It's not an albums business anymore; it's a singles business again, and the industry has gone through that before.
It's more important to have the one million diehard fans than to have 54 million people who aren't necessarily fans, or they might have liked one thing you said or one video.
When you think about brands and movie studios and everybody who is trying to reach millennials, having a captive audience in the back of Lyft or an Uber is a pretty great place.
I don't think we're out there aggressively looking for deals. Our strategy is that business follows the creative. We're not out there scouring the marketplace for opportunities.
I didn't go to business school. I actually didn't even graduate high school. I ended up with a GED. So everything that I've learned in business, I've learned through experience.
If you wake up in the morning and your favorite artist isn't on the service that you're paying ten dollars a month for, sooner or later you lose faith in the subscription model.
Money doesn't make me tick. This definition of success doesn't make me tick. Managing some of the biggest stars in the world doesn't make me tick. Making my family proud makes me tick.
That's all I ever wanted to do in my life was music. And because I was a failed artist, I was actually able to help somebody accomplish their dream was, you know, definitely fulfilling.
In the future, an artist will be able to perform for the entire world in one date. For the fan, it will be a fully immersive experience - through a pair of glasses or whatever the device.
When you look at how technology companies are funded, it's not a zero-sum game. It could be 20 investors in one company, and everybody has to work together for the benefit of that company.
When you sit down with Zynga and Google, and they talk about billions of impressions, you think, music has way more of an emotional connection than technology, but we haven't cracked the code.
Coming from the music business and seeing the transition from artists to fans, fans to consumers, it's really about understanding the psychology of why people want to associate with your brand.
Music as a whole industry is growing exponentially, but in terms of the actual music file, when you look at the actual value there, to me, 'The Beatles' catalog should be worth more than Spotify.
Technology is going to play a huge part in tomorrow's music business. And the companies that will win are going to be the most equipped to understand how to use data to further an artist's career.
I think, as an industry, we should be supportive of a broad subscription model and not do anything to jeopardize the potential health of the music business - because we're not out of the woods yet.
There was a time when radio stations wouldn't play Gaga's music because it was considered dance. Outside of live performances, the Internet became our primary tool to help people discover her music.
A lot of corporations now have venture arms that are investing in young entrepreneurs or building programs within so you can disrupt yourself internally instead of looking to those external factors.
Spotify favors hits. It's very much a meritocracy: It's not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it's up to consumers to stream the music or not.
The problem with when you look at eBay is that you can put a pair of Jordans next to a frying pan. It's an altogether different experience compared to having some editorial around it and well-curated experience.
Being born in the adolescent years of hip hop helped us learn about flux. And when you're in an industry that is constantly growing, changing, maturing... you get a chance to try different things out and a chance to fail.
If you look at a company like Uber, a company that so anti-establishment that cab companies are trying to find ways to shut it down, one could compare that to how Public Enemy and NWA went after then-modern society in hip hop.
My third hire when I came to Spotify was Tiffany Kumar, who came on as our global head of songwriter relations. The whole idea was to put our heads together and figure out how to build and contribute within the songwriting community.
Actors play different characters, so you have to build a new base around each new movie - with few exceptions, most actors don't have a fan base that just follows them around. With musicians, the fan base just goes everywhere they go.
I'm a very commonsense guy - I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.
With the 'Born This Way' album, generally we said, how do we find strategic partners that can help us with our vision? Part of that is about putting the music in places people wouldn't normally put music, like with Google and with Gilt.
I found a scrap book that my mom had given to me, and inside was a letter that I wrote to myself at age 19. The letter included my goals and dreams for my life, and even then, I was writing about the management company that I built today.
You're basically competing with the same exact product. Coke and Pepsi are at least in different cans. Lyft and Uber drivers are just swapping out the mustache for the U on the dashboard, depending on which one they're getting the call on.
You can't make an artist like Lady Gaga. You can help support, you can help develop the vision - I think you can add to the vision - but you just can't make an artist like that. That's like saying Lebron James' high school coach made Lebron James.
When we're looking at strategic partners, it may be that they're larger partners or big corporations or start-ups. But, when you look at Gilt and places like Amazon and Starbucks, they're all places where it's a lot of foot traffic or digital traffic.
We look to find partners whose values align with that of our artists. We also look for unique platforms that the potential branding partner can provide. Sometimes that's distribution, and sometimes it's an advertising platform. Each situation is unique.
I invest in black-led startups not because of a sense of charity. I make those investments because of the basic principle of supply and demand and the reality that black entrepreneurs typically lack the network to have their deals become bid up and overvalued.
I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.
The more people are listening to music and experiencing it, the more value for both the music companies and the artist, especially when their financial model is built around that . With the music industry, everybody is starting to understand that doesn't begin with a piece of music.
I thought I was going to be a rapper as a kid and used to hop the train down to Jazzy Jeff's studio for, like, six months straight waiting outside of the studio for the big break, and one day we got in the studio and played our demo for Will and Jeff and quickly learned that we weren't that good.
As we look at Hollywood and the controversy around the Oscars, it goes back to the voting block and the lack of people who come from that culture. For example, the NWA movie is a fantastic, fantastic movie. You need people who can look at a piece of art like that and understand the artistry in it.
When we look at transportation in America, there's going to be companies like Magic Bus, where you have these private bus fleets. You're going to have carpooling; you're going to have these different types of transportation. It's going to be a full ecosystem, but it's not going to be a winner-takes-all.
It's always boiled down to the quality of your music and the quality of your deal with whoever's distributing your music: There are artists who sold a lot of records and didn't make money because of their deal, and artists who didn't sell nearly as much who made a great living because they own their masters.
So many black kids aspire to be entertainers or professional athletes because those are the only role models they see that look like them. There are only 300 jobs in the NBA but an endless amount of opportunities as an entrepreneur. With enough hustle, entrepreneurship opens doors to a world of opportunities.
When you have to negotiate for survival, and you have to know how to read rooms, and you have to know who the bad guys in the rooms are - who has the gun in their pocket, who's just going to brandish it, and who's going to actually pull the trigger. So I think that's just a natural instinct that comes with coming from where I come from.