Scott Borchetta: “This is the future – we better figure this out.”

You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.

All the major forms of current pop music came out of the South, country, blues, rock, jazz. What happens here travels well, but it always doesn't get the understanding of the depth of how important it is and the true artistic value of the artists involved.

I am Bob Pittman and welcome to Math and Magic. Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Today. We're going to explore some entrepreneurship and specifically about the modern music business and how country has evolved to be the biggest music format. Our guest is the founder, president and CEO of the Big Machine label group and also the founder of Big Machine Distillery. Scott is a Southern California kid of the sixties and seventies bicycle, motocross and skateboarding and empty pools.

Welcome, Thank you, Bob. It's great to do this.

Now, before we jump into the meaty topics, I'd like to do you in sixty seconds. Ready, let's rock. Do you prefer Nashville or La Nashville, Early Riser or night Eye? Both listening to music or playing music? Now it's listening dogs, are cats, Dougs, mountains or beach beach? Vinyl or streaming, streaming, cooking or ordering in country or rock.

Depends on the mood. I'm gonna say both.

Watching car races or racing cars.

For me, racing Okay, it's.

About to get harder. What was your first.

Job working at a bicycle motocross store building bikes?

Favored radio station from.

Your youth k me et Tweedledee.

When do you do your best thinking?

It's shutting the door in my office and getting into my own groove.

What was the first record you ever bought stuck in the middle with you? What was your first concert?

It would be Kiss at the Fabulous Forum in nineteen seventy six.

Final one. If you could be anybody else, who would you be?

Mick Dagger?

Okay, let's jump out big topic, country music. Why does it not get the attention or respect it deserves? Biggest radio music format, huge artists, sold out tours in the middle of the culture of this country. But when I look at what the media covers or what marketing references is in they're advertising, it doesn't even come close to reflecting that. Why is that?

You know, you really touched on it. It's what the culture of the middle of the country is all about. It's not really very often, if ever, the shiny, sparkly thing. It's something that's consistent. It's telling the stories of blue collar predominantly and based in southern culture. We're not on the West coast, we're not on the East coast as

And we're a little bit older.

Demographic for a business that's going to go after a younger demographic. We're predominantly not going to be the first one. But it's always great when my friends from both coasts come to visit, hang out a little bit, do some business with us. They're always blown away at how great the Nashville system is. Everything here in Nashville is connected.

You know, it's interesting the most populated part of the United States is now the South, and I'm not sure people have turned their focus to it. Do you think that this feeling we have about country music is sort of respect issue or do you think it's just lack of knowledge.

All the major forms of current pop music came out of the South, country, blues, rock, jazz. What happens here travels well, but it always doesn't get the understanding of the depth of how important it is and the true artistic value of the artists involved.

You know a lot of people.

Still say this, and I've been hearing this for forty years. It's like, well, I don't really like country music, but I like that. It's like, well, Morgan Wallin is country music. So it's almost a guilty pleasure in some places. In some circles, it's just not cool to like country music.

Of the world.

So what's the biggest barrier to elevating country music to its rightful place?

Continued exposures.

There's always a star that starts to shine, So that gets what my job is, like, Okay, what's on the periphery. Who's that one artist or two artists that are it's going to be so strong and it's going to pull the mainstream to them. We've become arguably the best place in the world for young musicians to come and be able to work playing music. That's what Nashville has become. So what does that mean, Well, that means the next one's coming. It's right under our nose.

So let's jump a little bit. In the mid nineteen eighties, you worked for Mary Tyler Moor's record label. Much of the nineties, you were at MCA Records Nashville. You were by the way at that point, on a mission to make it number one, and you did. MCA was label of the Year every year you were there, even Label of the Decade, and so first question is how did you do that.

I was playing in rock bands when I moved to Nashville, and so rock's a big part of my DNA. So when I came here and discovered Whyland and Willie, that's what brought me into country. And then once I got into the game and doing promotion at Mary Tyler Moore, I was one of just two promotion people and we were slaying the major label dragons, just the two of us working with indies, and so I was able to envision how to win this at a very young age.

Pretty quickly.

I was part of breaking the Kentucky Headhunters and Dwight Yoakum and Carlene Carter, and then I started looking at, Okay, what is my next move? And at that time my two favorite artist rosters were MCA and Warner Brothers, and so I went to MCA in January of nineteen ninety one, and it was one of those things walking in like, Okay. I always joke that when you're an Indy you learn how to turn water into wine. So I walk into MCA, I'm like, I don't have to turn water into wine. You guys have wine.

We could go.

So walking in coming from nothing as far as leverage and tools to George Straight and Reba McIntyre and Vince Gill and Whyonah Judd, It's like, can I this toolbox over in the corner. I don't see you guys going over that. Can I use those tools and like run like hell? And so what I did is very specifically. Aristo was our big competition at that point, and so I was scheduling all the singles, and so I would go, Okay, George Straight for Alan Jackson, Vince Gale for Brooks and Dunn,

You left MCA and then you started DreamWorks Nashville with Randy Travis. As you're first signing, you were hot right out of the box. Now, the ironic twist is in two thousand and four, MCA bought DreamWorks and you were back at MCA, and by then I think they'd gone cold. You brought them back again as the head of promotion and artist development. And what I think is more interesting is you were on fire, but for some reason you had this spark that that was the moment that you

That, Well, it really started at DreamWorks.

At that point, there weren't a lot of new labels in the business, and so at dream Works, you know having the ability, you know, looking at the landscape looking at the assets that we had. We're full entertainment company. So I used every weapon that the movie company had with premieres and all that stuff, and brought that show business to radio like one of my heroes, Bob Pittman does.

We launched like a nuclear bomb.

And so James Stroud, who was the president of the label, he was more of a producer than he really was a label heead And what was great about that is he did the things he wanted to do and really didn't love the day to day of operations, and so I would take a little bit more of that every day. It's like, James, I got that, man, if you're good with this, you keep doing your thing and I'm going

And so that leads to.

January of two thousand and four, they come in and say we're being purchased by Universal and MCA and Universal were ice cold. This is April now, two thousand and four. Riba had not had a number one single since I left in nineteen ninety seven.

It was painful for me to watch.

Not only was she one of my dear friends, but we had achieved incredible success and something that a lot of major labels still do is they take their superstars for granted.

And I'm like, you know what.

It's time for us to return Riba to number one. We put together the plan. To this day, it's historic because we had the biggest ever spin increase in the history of the Billboard chart, and that's when it was done by spins, and we jumped from I think number six to number one and we knocked out Tim Murgrau lived like you were dying which was the biggest song of the two thousands. We turned that place on its head.

A number one.

It's I mean, we had that place just on fire. And I started thinking about, Okay, now's my next move.

Because I was looking what everybody was doing.

I'm like, you know what, I've got no place where I feel I can compete with all of these guys. I don't think any of them are any smarter or any more wise. It's time for me to jump into the driver's seat. And so I started putting together a prospectus, and I started having meetings with investors, and while I was doing it on the QT, I wasn't hiding it because I was in the last year of my deal.

So let's jump to you officially start Big Machine and just put it in perspective for again, for people that don't know the music business. You've sold almost two hundred million albums worldwide, I think, and you've had over one hundred singles at the top of the charts. So let's start with the name big Machine. Where did that come from?

So it comes from two places.

At that time, I was racing in the NASCAR Weekly Series and I was a three time NASCAR Weekly Series champion, and so when the car was really good, we say, hey man, we got a hot ride.

We got a big machine.

And then the other thing that kind of took the scales was that great song by Velvet Revolver Big Machine, just this big, powerful rock anthem. And I'm like, you know what, let's just declare ourselves a big machine, all thirteen of us. I always joked that I never told the staff at that point.

That we weren't a big machine. It's like, we are a big machine, go forth and conquer.

So how did you operate differently from other music companies.

One of the things I think about in that moment in the early two thousands, is just the waste, you know, and waste of physical product of all the junk, and just looking at how the spending wasn't lined aligned properly. And if you look at the leaders of the business in that moment, they didn't see streaming coming. It was a very polar moment for me because every week at DreamWorks we would be on with the entire company and the Napster conversation came up. So I said, hey, have

And so that was.

A big, big cast flag to me. I was just like, Okay, they do not see where it's going, and it has officially passed our current leaders by I can't go down with this ship because physical distribution was turning into not a joke but a joke in certain ways. So it's like, this is the future. We better figure this out.

I was at MTV. When someone brought in some CD players from Japan, we had to actually have a power transformer to play them on our electricity to show us what it was. We all got one and it was interesting. The lawyers at that moment said we have to kill it because this master quality recording will be good enough that the pirates can steal everything. And a couple of people said, it is coming. We can't fight it. We

Going back to those southern California years, we just lived outside, you know, we were on our motocross bikes all the time. And once we got into skateboarding, what happened is we would hear about a pool in the valley somewhere and there was this group of us like, okay, let's meet there at three o'clock, and you know, whether it was an abandoned home and we'd clean the pool out and skate in it, or if there was a pool that was empty or that it was dirty, had been swimming

So you quoted as saying you had good grades but were an angry, rebellious kid who was kind of anti everything. You dropped out of college, by the way, a trait we see often on the Entrepreneurs here on Mathem Magic. You started playing bass in a new way bands, country punk bands. What was the peak of your career as a musician and why did you stop doing that.

The reason I left LA in nineteen eighty one is that I felt like I knew what was going on there, and I just wanted to see what else was going on. And my intent was to come to Nashville for the summer, where my dad had moved in nineteen seventy nine. And so I was here in Nashville for a few weeks and one of the independent artists that my dad was working needed a bass player. And I'm like, it's a country I don't know because they're on tour. I'm like, they're on tour, nineteen years old.

Game on.

So I went in auditioned, got the gig, and bob. It was so great because I had really never been out of southern California for very much, and it was seeing the rest of the country and then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my god, it opened that aperture of my existence exponentially. I really didn't know my place yet, I knew, I was determined. I knew that I was not going to be poor. I hated growing up in southern California not having money, and so I

You know.

We had a couple fun moments where we had some great record company showcases. We opened up for Cheap Trick and a couple other big artists. We made some of our own independent records, but we never got signed. We never got that next break. And it's like, Okay, I'm not going to be a rock star. I see it,

And I wanted to be my own man.

And when I stopped fighting, that is when my record career really just started to take off.

So let's jump to some of your philosophies. Company culture. The first time I visited the Big Machine offices in Nashville, I was probably most struck by what a cohesive and passionate culture there was throughout the building and among everyone I met. How do you build a company culture?

You know, it's a gut feel for me because it's not something for me personally that I can put a list. It's like, Okay, you check all these boxes, You're going to fit perfectly. It's the same way with signing artists. I know most of the time within the first five ten minutes, is this somebody I want to work with? Is this an artist I want to sign? I like people who are very matter of fact and passionate about what we do.

And also, I'm not.

One who's out for credit on any day of any week. I'm truly It's not a cliche when I say it. I'm a team builder, and I am inclusive and I am transparent, and that is really kind of the foundation of the culture because when everybody knows what's going on, when the goals are as clear as can be and you've got the passion to execute, That's how I built all of my companies.

So let's talk about creative artists. You obviously deal with them day in and day out. It's your job. What's the secret for people who don't deal with them but find themselves there? What advice can you give them?

I always say, there's an artist's language, and you can learn it, but because I was around it from such a young age, you know, it came natural. So it's really talking to them about trying to look at things through their eyes, adding in creative thought. And it's never ever putting an artist in the corner saying you have to do this. If you don't do this, then it's never going to happen. It's like, here's the playing field, here are the options. I'm going to tell you right now.

So about fifteen years ago I started Costan Tregonez Tequila with my partner Vitta Gonzalez, and the one thing I learned is it's not for the faint of heart, So tell us why you have big machine distillery.

So the idea to have our own Tennessee whiskey started from an activation we did with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in twenty ten. We had been working with them wanting to do more. They had been back and forth with Crown Royal and they didn't get the deal done with Crown. This was further NASCAR race the Brickyard four hundred, and so we got the call it say, hey, this title sponsorship is open. What do you got I said, why not?

Have you money?

But what if I bring Rascal Flats and the Van Perry and Brandley, Gilbert and Thomas. Let me bring you a festival in exchange. They're like, you can do that, and we did it and it blew everybody away, and so that started the relationship. So Crown comes back the next year, so it's the Crown Royal Brickyard four hundred powered by Big Machine, and so we start this wonderful relationship with Crown and Diagio. So we're a few years in marketing. Medium said, hey, you know what, We're a

I love it. So let's move to racing for just a second. Racing is a huge part of your life. You're actually a serious driver yourself, you have a racing team. What about racing draws you in and what lessons have you learned from racing which you apply to other parts of your life.

There's a certain freedom and liberation when you're it's maning machine and it's just you and the car. And when you're doing that and you're on the edge and you're performing at the highest level, there's no other feeling I've ever had. You know, maybe the biggest artists in the world when they're playing the fifty thousand people and they're all singing, maybe it's that same feeling and being competitive. Everybody wants to win and it's finding out those ways

I rode motorcycles for a lot of years of my life, and I was a pilot for fifty years of planes and helicopters, So I get it. But I know we talk about racing and talk about the great things with racing, but you had a very serious accident. Talk to us a little bit about it and what got you through that.

Yeah.

We were at road Atlanta and it was March twenty sixth, and we're mid race.

I start picking up the pace, my paces.

As fast as the leaders. We're passing cars, We're moving up. So going into turn one at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour, our brake zone because in road racing you break really hard, and so I go to the brakes at the three fifty foot mark, no brake, not a soft break, no break. The right brake caliber had exploded, and so all of a sudden I am in a heap load of trouble. They estimate that I hit the wall at one hundred and nine miles an hour and I.

Was knocked out for a little bit.

It's a longer story, but I was I call it my evil canevil list of injuries.

You know.

I broke both ankles, both.

Tibias, cracked my pelvis in four places, four cracked vertebra, five broken ribs, some internal injury. I ripped my stomach open, and I almost died in the ambulance. Everything hurt. One of my meditations is counting backward from a thousand, and so in that moment, I just said, let go try to get to the next minute and start counting backwards from a thousand.

So that was my mantra.

Just I was counting and then get to the next minute. And so went into emergency.

Well gut.

My wife was there, several friends, several race friends. So from after everything went absolutely wrong, everything started to go right. We had the best lower extremity doctor in the world, and Bob, here I am nine months later, and I'm ninety nine percent yield. I'm so fortunate. I don't have a head injury or a spine injury. I'm walking normally. You wouldn't know it. So I've been really fortunate in

Well, there are two through lines that we talk about here. Is you have one of the most can do positive outlooks in life of anyone I know. And two, you're lucky and thank goodness it continued there. Absolutely we always finish each episode of Math and Magic with a shout out to the great biz folks from both skill sets, the analytical, organized math type person and the charismatic, creative promotional the magic person who gets the shout outs for each from you.

So the Math is my now COO Andrew Katz, who's been with me literally from day one. We're getting ready to touch on nineteen years together. He's always been my guy. I'm like, Andrew, I know we can figure this out, and he has to this day always found a way. And then the great creative marketing person is John Zarling, And ironically he was with me from the startup Big Machine as well, because as I was cleaning out my office at Universal. He came into my office and he goes,

Scott, You've had a magical life. You've pushed a lot of boundaries, still pushing them, You've taken a lot of risks, still taking them, and you have created so much. Thanks for sharing those lessons with us. There are a few things I picked up for my conversation with Scott. One follow the energy. Scott has a true passion for the

That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbluff for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Mathematics producers are Emily Meronov and Jessica Crimechitch. It is mixed and mastered by Baheied Fraser. Our executive producers are Nikki Etoor and Ali Perry, and of course, of big thanks to Gail Raoul, Eric Angel Noel and