Rob Stringer: The Sony Music Group Chairman Talks Grammys, Industry Challenges and Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

of more than five thousand employees around the world. A music business life for if ever there was one, Rob has spent his entire professional career working his way up the ranks of the Sony system, seeing the industry evolved through physical products, to downloads, to streams and whatever may lay ahead. A native of the UK, Stringer moved to New York in two thousand and six and has spent the last fifteen years shaping Sony's recorded music business in

the US. As Chief executive of Sony Music Label Group and later Columbia, he helped bring to the world a slew of successful new artists, including Adele, Calvin Harris, Harry Styles Him, J Cole, The Chain Smokers, and Tyler The Creator, and he's also looked after such iconic acts as Beyonce, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisan, A C. D. C. Selene, Dion, Daft, Punk, Shaw Day, and David Bowie, whose final album Black Star Columbia, released in In his current role of Sony Music Group Chairman,

which he assumed in ten after three years as CEO of Sony Music, Rob Stringer has met more than his share of challenges, from making the right hires to see the company's vision through to banking on talent and not just hits, to segue into a subscription driven business, to getting through a global pandemic and responding to the call

for social justice. We talked about these subjects and much more, while also getting a sense of Rob's refreshingly British outlook on things that are uniquely American, all this as borders

ceased to exist in this new global music economy. Afterwards, stick around for a coda to this episode, a talk with Grammy nominated mastering engineer Emily Lazar, who has worked on four thousand albums since she started her career in Emily has no fewer than ten projects and contention for Grammy Awards, including three in the Album of the Year category time Coldplay and Jacob Collier. Welcome back to Strictly Business. I'm joined by Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group,

for the first ever addition of Strictly Music Business. Rob, thanks so much for being here, So so nice to be on the first ever Strictly Music Business podcast. So I wanted to talk a little bit about your background because you started out as a CPS records trainee and then you got to feel your way around the different departments and find the lane that best suited your skill set.

Can you tell me about that? Well, yeah, I can tell you about that actually in context of we've actually talked a lot about how that would work in the new company, and that we need to make sure that our employees move around the company more dramatically so they get more experience of the bigger picture. And actually, I

think what mine was big picture by default. Really, I started as a marketing graduate trainee, and you're talking about this is the mid eighties when human resources was called personnel, so it was like it's a different era and I come off being a university social sectory University of London, which was a very obvious way of going into the music business in that era, and they mapped out this journey for me for three weeks and then they just said, actually,

there you go. There's a three week training. Now, don't set at someone's desk and try and be useful. And I tried to be useful and tried not to be like a sort of student brat. But the fact is that I did go to like probably eight departments in in that first month, which certainly told me as much as what I didn't want to do as much as what I did want to do and what I might be suited to and what I didn't And the conclusion was, which eventually came to pass, was that I would be

in marketing. But I knew straightaway I really want to do A and R. So it took me about four years. Once I had a good experience in marketing, I moved into A and R because I knew that I needed that training to do a different type of journey in

the music business. So the creative was calling you, Yeah, I mean, marketing is obviously creative too, but I knew that I had to dive into a more schizophrenic sort of artistic pool to really be able to understand the psyche of what the art form is we're dealing with. You know, that job, it's quite lonely and odd because

it's quite subjective. And it may not be subjective now with research and stats, which I'm sure you will talk to me about, but the fact is then it wasn't that, and it was gut reaction and you know, some information like you would stand at the back of a club and there would be a lot of people there and you go, well, this must mean something. But it was subjective in many ways. And and actually you are either sort of the hero or the class clown, you know,

not that much in the middle. So that's the difficult thing to deal with because your metrics success a blatantly obvious. You know, it's like diving at the deep end. And I don't think maybe I would have had the same

pathway if I hadn't made that switch. I mean, it seems, you know, now that we've had sixty years of major labels being in existence, it seems that one thing is abundantly clear, and that is that the leadership has to have very strong in our chops is this as important today as it was in the pre Internet era, because you do have a mountain of data available to you at any given moment. How do you sort of balance guts and data Today? Obviously we dig deeper and deeper

the data. That process is now anything to get an edge, anything to get a little bit more information, to to look at something in a slightly more complex, unusual way, to find something that meant something. That's all good, but I'm as interested in once you get the artists or the set of songs in the building, then you better make sure you know what to do with it. There's always been hits. There's always been one off its. There's always been novelty hits. There's always been uh, there's always

been record sort of started somewhere. You've seen explosion. I mean, in the centies and eighties in America, it would have been a small radio station in Kansas playing something. They played the record once and they got phones. This is an incredibly sophisticated version of that. Really, we have to maintain a balance between the data and the realities of

artistic development. As yet, some social media platforms have not broken two records by an artist, for example, So therefore, okay, so you've got to make you've got a platform, it breaks the record when you go back to that platform. Is the structural capability there to break the second song?

Not necessarily. We have young graduates and young people coming into the business who have got great statistical capabilities, are also a massive music fans, and if the balance is on the tech, you want to get them to understand the music as well. It's got to be a balance from well, I think another thing that plays to your advantage in place to my advantage as well, is being just being of a certain age. Is that we do

straddle the pre internet world. We remember LPs. You have actually not only lived through every format you know, physical format, but you've worked every physical format, which I just think you know is a huge advantage to being able to run a global music company. You've seen it all, you know the scenarios, what works, what doesn't, and you can apply those things. I'm wondering, is there a through line that applies to every evolution of physical media for music?

Is there something that has stayed the same from the LP days of your youth in the seventies to today with streaming and the world of music at your fingertips. Wow, that's a fifty year question. I think talent remains the same. I'm running constantly to keep up with the changes. And like you said, I think there's a certain period of time where my upbringing in the business wasn't like a pioneer in the fifties and sixties, but I had an intimate knowledge of that era of music because I grew

up starting in the seventies. You know, I wasn't a pioneer because there was people that boldly went where no one else had gone before, whether it was on the back of Elvis Presley or the Blues or the Beatles or whatever it may be. That I didn't have that, but I had enough to look back twenty thirty years instead now looking back seventy years to get that compendium of knowledge. So I think that it's a bit of a cliche. But what goes around comes around is still

the case. There's still certainly lineage of ideas and talent. The way that talent and way that artistry interprets those ideas that is prevalent across decades and decades, and I see similarities every day with things. And sometimes I will

say to an artist, this is like this. I mean, you wouldn't have heard of that, and you know, quite frankly, the internet sometimes they go, sure, we know that, and and we know that artists because Spotify and Apple and Amazon and all you can eat buffets of all the music for multi generations. But there is a lineage there. I mean, certainly talent, as I said, as a lineage. You know, someone being artistically gifted is a lineage someone being an amazing songwriter. There's a lineage there, and it

cuts through generations. And you're right. I feel like I started to take on board and resorb that knowledge at a crossroads where I could look back, but also I could look forward to. And you know, so far I'm keeping pace with looking forward, you know, I mean, the streaming model is here, and I don't know what next

model is. I've seen plenty of models, and hopefully I can navigate those chapters with an understanding of what the musical art for me is and will need to balance out the tech because of course, at the moment, this

is quite a dramatic chapter of art and tech. And there have been chapters of the recorded music business which have just been about the music, where companies like mine would be okay if you had hits, you know, And it's not that simple now because it's moving so fast, and there would be a debate as whether tech drives are or art drives tech. It would be a debate, and that's a complex debate in the current chapter of

the music business. Absolutely, And I see what you're saying about what goes around comes around again, because even when I think about podcasts and how popular scripted audio is at the time, I mean, Sony has made an investment into podcasts as well. It's like the old radio teleplays.

What's the difference. Yeah, I mean everything's blended. I mean, even in technology, people are taking you know, there may be five components of an idea from a previous technological platform, and someone takes one and expands that idea and ships the emphasis slightly. And that's the case of music too. There's a debate constantly, debate, particularly in America about rock music and is rock music dead? And where the next

rock band and all that kind of stuff. But and I don't look at it like that because I look at it and go, okay, well, actually, in a strand of emo hip hop, there is a blend of rock music and now, and there is a huge component of that music that is that is the angst and reflectiveness of rock music. But it's a blend, and it's a fusion, and it's new because it's a fusion, you know, and

I don't get nostalgic. Was saying, well, the way it should be is that I need to go and stand in a club and see a bass singer, drummer and guitarists, and that's how it is. Because that isn't going to be how it is. It's going to be a component, sure, but it's not going to be the central because things move on. You know. When I was a kid growing up, I knew a lot about music being in the past because you had a radio in your front room and

your parents taught to you about it. But the fact is, when I liked the Talking Heads in nine and seventy seven, I didn't want to listen to Glenn Miller from I knew a Glenmer was, but on listen to that music. And I think people can't understand how that this is a very mature art form music. And so therefore people in two thousand and twenty don't automatically know a rock

band from it doesn't work. It's forty years. If you think about forty years and the medium of film or in the medium of television or other art forms, it's light years difference. And the fact is wise music not thought of as being different to that. These gaps are big and people have got to get used to to understanding that. You know, you didn't like the music from thirty years ago, so don't expect your kids to like

music from forty fifty years ago. But there will always be a component and a trace of other forms of music in that blend, because, as I said, this is a mature art form now, and I see it all the time. I mean, you know, it's like we have young eighteen year old rappers whose musical influences are crazy and they go back seven or eight decades, but the fact is they've turned it into something new. I find that incredible, exciting and I and honestly it sounds, you know,

without trying to sound like pizza pan. I don't look back that often and be over nostalgic about what was, because I'm fortunate enough to see what is and what will be with that blend. We need to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Rob Stringer, And we're back with Rob Stringer, So robbed this might not be the most popular opinion, but I'm doing some

of the math in my head. And the streaming services which are currently driving record revenues ten point one billion dollars in the US and alone, you know, many of them benefited from an early investment by the major labels. Do you feel that record companies maybe haven't gotten enough credit for helping seed those emerging technologies. Yeah, but I also would say that I'm not sure that I'm ever going to come for a place publicly, surely or an

interview saying that we deserve to take credit. You know, it's probably justifiably in many ways, we take a lot of grief and stick for the way we behaved in previous chapters, and I'm sure some of that is accurate. But I think it would be safe to say that we're certainly not tech phobic, and that we are willing to be braver and we're willing to be smarter about how open minded we are. And I understand where because as we just talked about, things didn't change for a

long time. Hits for the definition, and you know, and that caused all sorts of idiosyncrasies in our business. And the fact is that people only have to think about the hits. And we've made plastic and factories and the plastic was viral or the plastic was a CD, and then all of a sudden, tech changed the landscape and we got caught behind. I think we've earned a lot since then. I'm used to people saying we're clueless. That's okay.

I mean we were clueless when downloads came along. But what we did do as a business is we constituted ourselves. We changed the head count, we ditch manufacturing, ditch distribution that way, and we pushed towards a more creative, innovative, entrepreneurial style. And I think we're much better place to day than we would have been twenty years of it. You know, is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. We're not a brand new company. We're not We're not a

two year old startup. We've been at this company in some derivation has been around a thirty years. But I think we're much more open minded about how to change and how to be flexible now, much more. And my challenges every day are based on that as well. As just finding hits. I've heard you say before that you had a headcount of about fifteen thousand at the turn of the millennium and you got it down to five thousand, And I wonder does that make major labels more nimble today?

Are you able to respond faster than in the past. Yeah, And I think it's also about the training of those people. Whether you've got five thousand or fifteen thousand's what people are doing. And by the way, this wasn't a choice. I think we at the era probably did it kicking and screaming. We gave up manufacturing, we gave up distribution. It wasn't like we want to give up manufacturing distribution. It was taken away from us. But the fact is now we're able to gear people much more to what

we need to do. We have way more creative people and way more entrepreneurial people in our company than we did a year ago, never mind five years ago or ten years ago. So there's definitely been a deliberate emphasis on that basis. And as I said, of that fifteen thousand, many of those jobs are just redundant now and they wouldn't be applicable. And no disrespect to any of those people who were did their jobs probably very well. They're

not needed. So we've had to change. And I think that we were able to make that adaptation when we were written off and I was okay because bear in are we misread the turn and millennium and you know, we were going to be non existent and by ten years time and we went below ground and we built systems back up more sensibly. We bought companies, and we

bought stakes and companies. We bought Burttle Spend in two thousand nine for what looks like an incredible bargain now because it's probably the value is fifteen twenty times that amount, and Universal bought E M. I and we bought in My Music publishing. And so maybe we wouldn't have done that in the boom of CDs, but we had to because we had to go back to the drawing board. And that period between probably two thousand and three four and then the early two thousand and tens, the general

perception was we were left behind. So we had to go and get ourselves to be a bit more smart about the way we did things. And I do think we did that. I think that chapter of the Live Business taking over and other areas of the business being more prominent gave us the chance to re evaluate ourselves and reconsider what on earth we were doing to be relevant.

You know, I came here during that chapter. I came here and came to American two thousand and six, which was in the middle of that time period, you know, and it was a bit like starting again, suremy, to be honest, but with fortunately amazing catalog. Obviously, the pandemic has been incredibly difficult from many businesses, but recorded music

is actually thriving to the tune of double digit growth. Well, I mean, I think, you know, tech takes a lot of credit for that, because the tech platforms have put music in people's homes and in their cars and in their phones so directly that we were able to benefit from that, and suddenly a lot of people are a lot more time to listen to music. After the initial shock of COVID for the first couple of months, then people settled into a different routine in their lives and

music became a very important part of that routine. So what has been a bit more strategic is understanding the share volume of music that would be going into those platforms and understanding that we would need a bigger share of that that quantity, and so we do have nets that trall much wider for music than any point in history. We are now looking at constant ways of finding more music to put through our system and understand where it sits.

And certainly at the beginning of COVID, that timing worked very well because we were able to put more music out. Despite the fact you naturally think with what COVID happening that it would be less music, it actually wasn't. We didn't suffer from the fact that everyone stopped. Now I'm not saying there won't be a value gap, because I think there will be. There will be creative synergies that

haven't happened because COVID. There may have been a meeting in a studio, or two people might have met in a school, or there may have been a show that changed the parameters of something. Those connections are very important to what we do and how we build artists careers, and I'm pretty sure not as many connections happened on certain levels. Obviously, people were communicating in a different way, and there was positivity of that communication. Even my own company.

I feel like in the last year I've communicated with my staff in some ways in a better way because I visibly see them more often than I may have done if we just presumed we were going to bump into each other three times a year. It's different now. And you know, I imagine the Long Tale of COVID will probably be playing itself out for a couple of years.

I mean, live music, even though it's coming back in dribs and drabs, it's not going to be what it was anytime soon, right, you know, the live chapter is part of the experience that defines the whole music process, and so therefore to have that missing it may not make a difference for some genres of music, but for

some others it's vital. I know from those moments, because I've been fortunate enough to be in those moments when something is transformed, the moment maybe you know, at the festival or just the club with seven people in it, and we haven't had that experience, and I think we missed that experience, you know, I certainly do you know, I mean, I know that again, There's been a lot of stuff online and artists have done amazing things from

their bedrooms and from and readaptation of certain staging and all that kind of stuff, But the life thing is more important than that. What was the last show you saw before COVID? Oh? God, um, I think it was a Tile of the Creator show. My senting year old daughter badges me to go to as many shows as possible, and so I think that was the last one. I know. It was my wife's birthday. We went to see Harry Styles play a radio show at the Barry Bare Room, and then we went on to the Brooklyn Center to

see Celine Dion. How schizophrenic is that? And honestly, that isn't just made up for showing. I think that. You know, it's interesting you look back at the year and it becomes blurred about COVID and then into how we really had to up our game on social responsibility. Look, we're a genuinely global company. There are a lot of companies that are huge corporations that don't have offices in eighty countries.

We do. So that was very easy to see the effects and the different measurements of those effects in the communities around the world. And so that was to me that was just obvious. You know, the globality of what we do was something that we need to act quickly on. And I do work for a corporation, and there are big brand name corporation, but honestly, in Japan, they are

very philosophically sound. And so therefore, when we realized we needed to do something, it couldn't just be a token gesture, and it couldn't just be something that was like we'll do a one off donation and hopefully everyone want us leave us alone. That that wouldn't work. Because we worked with music, which is so living and breathing and so violent people's lives, that we decided that we need to

do something dramatic and it needed to be continuous. And then the terrible events of the beginning of June with George Floyd, if that wasn't a wake up call to everybody, never mind whether it was a music company or a corporation or a government or a country, we needed to act on that too. Than one of the things we talked about when we put together Social Justice Fund, which which we went to Tokyo to get approval, was that this wasn't a knee jerk reaction and it wasn't something

that that was going to last a month. And then because the issues that we face in the business because black music is the heart of what we do as a company right now, that those issues not something we just turned around and face in a minute and then walk away. We have to make it completely part of the fabric of the company. So since then, what we've done, we've now supported I think over three nine organizations since June globally everywhere. Some of them are tiny and some

of them are very big organizations. And so now part of my legacy is to make that part of everything we do, and hopefully, quite frankly, it makes us a better company and makes us a better destination for art really, which is would be great. That was the case. Okay, So we talked a little bit about Spotify turning fifteen this year, and it was actually Sweden that first return to growth after many years of decline, which we had

talked about at the turn of the century. Is there something to be said for looking at a smaller country like Sweden or like the UK, where you came up as a microcosm of how the music business confunction on a global scale. Did you look towards that and model that when you came to the US. I think, certainly on the art side, yes, because you look at the size of the UK and what it's produced artistically, it's out of parameters a number of people. Whether that goes

back to the Beatles or whatever. I credit the BBC, I think a lot of the time for that, because I think the BBC was mandated to play every type of art form when all of us were growing up, and I think that made pop culture front and center. If someone headlines Glusterbury, first of all, they're on the front cover of the Times newspaper. I'm not sure there's many countries around the world where popular culture would be

so fun instead of so. What we exported out the UK certainly gave me the confidence because I was aware that that that we could export something that's art, that's not steel or or ball bearings or even tech. That's something very dramatic. And I think that what's happened with the tech revolution is that it can be anywhere. And I think Spotify, and I mean this is the most complimentary sense, is uniquely Swedish and if you go to their Stockholm office, you understand the roots of that company.

And maybe it couldn't have been found in anywhere else, but you know, TikTok's from China. China is a huge country with potentially incredible industrial prowess for the next chapter of history, and TikTok is changing the nature of our day to day business as well. But I think anywhere anything can happen. In anywhere, anything can happen. And I'm seeing trends in popular music now globally. I read streaming charts from all around the world at least twice a week.

And we have a young artist in Argentina. I think she's going to be fantastic. We're nurturing, we're taking it very gently because she's young, but she's pretty special and she's in the global charts right now. And I'm not sure that would have happened so dramatically with all the passport controls that physical distribution and broadcast isssubution had twenty years ago. The truth is that the world has become

a smaller place. I just saw some statistics a couple of days ago for Russia, and that market is booming with local language music. And I look at markets where we're expanding and where we're building offices. There's a young Accle Gideon signed to Epic Records. He is in the US streaming charts in the top twenty. But he's also number one randomly in Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia right now,

number one in those two cherrs not boarders. Where it went to Europe first the UK and then through passport control that didn't pass the boundaries that would have been there twenty years ago. It must be so nice to not have that immediate barrier of entry. Like you have BTS they sing in Korean, you have rosaliea she sings in Spanish like the local language thing is no longer such an inhibitor of success. That must be so freeing as someone who works on music, and that is what

hopefully keeps me young same excited. I mean, the other week we had Rosalier and Bad Bunny on Saturday Night Live, and we worked for both artists. And the fact is that who would have said that on S and L twenty years ago there would be a Latin language song

times two on that program. It would have been mind boggling, But you know what, it worked and it was magical and those I believe those two artists are two of the best new artists in the world over the last few years, and the fact is that people have got open ears. I know most of the charts around the world. Now, I'm not sure my predecessors had to because there was checkpoints. I don't think of UK any more or less important

than Mexico. Doesn't all have to be in English, no, And and by the way, there's some artists that we have on our ross st who, despite the fact they have had huge English language pop records, when they're singing their local language, it's way more transcendental. What moves you, what inspires you? How do you find yourself motivated every day? So I have to create a lot of change in this company, and so my remit is very broad and different to running a label as I did for twenty years.

And so it's more broad based and it's not as detailed and maybe on on the individual artists. But the thing that still moves me is the purest art form. Uh Scissor released the track on Christmas Day, and she was quick and her and a company put the record

out quickly. And I listened to this record, I'm going, how does anybody come up with that hybrid and that fusion of music, which, by the way, sounded like nobody else, Despite the fact that she's had hit records before and makes this record that you look at the contributor to that piece of music, that it's completely unique, and then it come out of nowhere and the audience understand it

quickly and it became a huge hit very quickly. Not because of the measurements of hits, it's because it touched people so quickly, that record, and it was out on Christmas Day. You know, it wasn't put out with a huge campaign, but the music absolutely completely got under everyone's skin. Oh man, you're talking about good day spaces that right. You can listen to that record four months later and it's still magical. So those moments moving and now much

more kind of things we're talking about. I just want, you know, our artists to be happy with what we do for them, and I want our staff to be happy with what happens in our company. And that's not easy either. This is a combustible business and it is emotional and it can be dramatic. As I just said, you know, I do really want to achieve that Before I am sit with a and rugs somewhere with a flask of soup and listen to music with without some of the scale of what I have to do at

the moment. Looking at the Grammys, talk about a diverse portfolio between Beyonce, Harry Styles, Travis Scott, dojaquat Her. You know, you've really got it covered. How are you feeling coming into the Grammys this year, Well, it's weird. Every year when the Grammars comes up, it feels like a lot of work and a very busy week. And actually when you don't have you got us a will shame the Grammars. I mean, obviously it's got to be diverse if we the company of our scale, and it would be no

different for our competitors. You know, if you haven't got diversity of the Grammys, then you're not doing something right. Now. There's always this thing where they only go for the hits, and they only go for the things that are happening today and they're not interested in tomorrow. Well that's actually not true. From the diversification of music we have. We have a ton of stuff. We have stuff in our and being folk and we have all the categories covered

within our organization. You know, I think that it's very hard to judge. I know, Drake stood up and did that, said it exactly as it is. It's hard to make a competition of music a competition, but the one thing is that we do need to be represented in a well rounded way because we are a big company and we want that diversification of music. So I feel good about it this year. I mean, you know, I've been

lucky enough to be in those moments. I was lucky when Adele came through and one those sets of Grammys and Best New Artists, and then twenty one and then twenty five, and I was involved in the campaign for random Acxis Memories and that was kind of weird because two French guys dressed as robots beat the Grammy system and one that night, and that was definitely one of the best nights of my career because they are wonderful creators.

I mean, you know, they are the purest form of creators, you know, as is Adele and as is Beyonce and those artists when they were in. It's a great source of pride. And I've had great nights and the Grammy is sureley really you know, I mean, I've been very fortunate. Some of those nights will be you know, those moments I remember when I'm not doing this anymore. And they were truly fantastic, you know, and so I like more of those. But but but I have plenty of memories.

I mean, you know, David Bowie, Black Star five Grammys, he didn't get voted Grammedy Album the Year Out of the Hamley won five Grammars, didn't get many nominations. See, I still remember that five years later. Rob, Thank you so much for talking to us. Best of luck at the Grammys, and we're very much looking forward to seeing what you do well. You'll be kept posting. You'll have an opinion under at Lee Shirley's. So we'll just keep

on trying to surprise you. And we'll keep this stuff going because it is a transformative time for business, and so we're going to we're gonna keep changing with it. And now a word with mastering engineer Emily Lazar, whose work is often the last step the music making process and the one whose magic can make the difference between a song sounding good or great. For the Grammys, Emily has ten projects in contention, including three in the Album

of the Year category. Cole Plays Everyday Life Times, Women in Music Part Three and Jacob Collier's j C. Volume three. Her resume also includes seminal releases by Vampire Weekend, Beck and Sia. Lazar's mixing and mastering mothership is New York's The Lodge, which she founded in where she's worked on some four thousand records. Lazar recently launched a charity initiative called Move the Needle, which aims to close the gender gap in music making Emily welcome. Thank you so much

for joining us. Thanks Charlie, it is great to be here. So I'm gonna ask you a question that I'm sure you've never been asked, or maybe you've been asked at a good jillion times. How does it feel to be a woman in music? My most favorite least favorite question. I hate that question. I behore that question. That question takes you to places that really don't belong in the conversation.

The conversation should be about the art you're making, what brought you into the field, what inspires you, what makes you feel great, what makes you feel bad? Like? Those are the important things that the human side of of what we all do, not what gender you are. I've never really been able to even understand the question right people say, what does it feel like to be a female mastering engineer. My answers was like, I don't know.

I don't identify as a female mastering engineer. I think people are well meaning when they ask it, but to me, it's actually condescending and degrading because it actually makes everything that you've done I feel like it's not being judged equally in the rest of the world. For example, you're the first female master introdeer to do X. I get that stealing breaking moments are really important, but there's this twinge of yeah, but somebody else did it before you.

It doesn't really matter for me. It was really just more important to me to get to do the things I wanted to do, and so those were things that I was able to navigate. Now the younger generation has taken none of it. I'm thrilled for them, like they like the Me too movement when the Me Too movement happened such a long time overdue. Still hasn't really come

fully to fruition as far as I'm concerned. But like we and more kept our head down, did our work, tried to stay out of the fray of elevating this conversation to the fervor that it got to deservedly because for fear that we wouldn't get to work right, that we would be not taken seriously, that we would be pariah's and not be able to do the things that we loved, whether it be a journalist or making records, and and that would have been the shame, because we

would have been removed from the conversation by virtue of the fact that we were kind of in an abusive environment by calling out that abuse. But now that this has changed, the paradigm is totally flipped, and I really love it. I applaud it. I think it's really fabulous progress. I think we need even more. I think we're in a in a time now where hopefully the tides are changing and we're starting to see some equity. Two point six percent of music producers and engineers being female. That

is not equitable, and we're just not there. We have a lot of work to do, and um, I'm really excited to try to help take on that challenge and change that statistic, not just with myself but in helping others. But I do hate that question. I think of mastering as a last step in the ETI process, and maybe the first step in the manufacturing and the distribution process.

I just so curious, how do you step in as that last person in the process and understand the musicality and what that person or the artist is trying to do? How do you even wrap your head around it? That's actually a hugely important part of my process. I make a huge effort to have a dialogue and understand big picture like what are we trying to do here? What is this about? What was going on in your life? Like? How is this different from your last album? What was

there something inspiring you to go in this direction? Is this song or this chorus doing what it's supposed to do? As you start to hone in on all the different things, is this sequence doing the right thing? Is it telling the right story? I'm listening to all your songs and I'm hearing this common thread. Do you think maybe there are some intertextuality here that you didn't see that we should follow and take us down this road that you

maybe even subconsciously wrote. It's similar to like artists writing songs and having a meaning and then a listener making their own meaning and it being incredibly meaningful for the listener, but actually not but the writer was in ending but still kind of hitting the right buttons. It's that kind of thing, and my goal is to always serve the song, tell the story, make that artist feel that we've done

every possible thing we can. We're like that last chance Texico to gas up, like making sure that we have done everything we possibly can to help them give birth to that baby and put it out in the world. And I really do think of songs and albums as giving birth. It's very similar, having done that as well with my own son. It is a it's a you know, labor of love and getting them out, putting them out and having people potentially judge them and comment on them

very nerve wracking experience. I think can be exhilarating and can be devastating um and feel very misunderstood. So helping an artist give birth to that baby and then getting them through that moment where they're like, is my baby ugly? Do you like my baby? Is anybody else gonna like my baby? You know? I enjoy that part of it as well. And working with bands like are you dealing with one person? Do you talk to the band as

a unit. It's different every single time. It really depends on them their schedule, where they are, if they're touring or not, minus things like pandemics, whether the album is being put together in a single driven way, or i e. I'm getting one track every couple of weeks or whatever months and we put it together and they're releasing it one a time because there's a new kind of trend to you know. I've done tons of zoom calls with some people, you know, like have a lot of options

and pick. Sometimes I'll get people three options for something and then they'll pick and might say, Wow, I see what you're doing on one, and then then I see what you're doing on number number two, version two. So I would love the choruses in number two, but I love the verses in number one. Can we edit together the choruses from due the Chriss Wonica? Yes? Sure, great,

awesome idea. So there's things that happened that you wouldn't even imagine, weird, cool edits, and things that make things flow and feel dynamic and tell the story that are done on purpose, that are specific. It's not just a five second decision and here you go. It's not like that at all, not for me anyway. I wanted to talk about just one example from your incredibly long discography, which is insane. You've worked on four thousand albums throughout

your career. Crazy. This is a Grammy nominated song, seas Chandelier. That song is so interesting sonically because there's a part the course where it really sounds like her voice is cracking, which of course gives it that grit and makes the song so unique. Can you tell me about like a decision like that to leave the sort of the rawness, the imperfection of like a guttural vocal. Well, so that was definitely a production and a see a decision, but

I specifically can recall that. Look, I listened to music all day long, and not everything affects me as deeply as another thing, but I try really hard to try to connect to what's happening, and I do have visceral reactions to these things. And that song made me cry and laugh, and I remember being like wow, and I was like laughing because I was like, I'm crying. I

can't believe I'm crying. This song is unbelievable. I remember just listening to it a few times and being like I was speechless, and I was just having an emotional response to it and I remember everything about mastering that song, and I remember doing it a lot of times two get it to the point where I thought it was perfect, and I leaned into that edginess, and I leaned into the wailing of what her vocal which is insane, what she can do with her voice. I kind of leaned

into that. And I had done her earlier albums as well, her indie albums, and so I was familiar with her, and that just literally blew my doors off. I'm just grateful and lucky that I got to hear that song before it was even out. Well, so let's talk a little bit about the three album of the Year contenders that you worked on. Albums by Coldplay, Him and Jacob Collier. Those seem on the surface to be very different sort of artists sonically. How did you approach them? Sonically speaking?

They are really all different but equally beautiful and deep albums. They all have one thing in common. They're telling stories, like real, big stories, and they all communicate in an intimate way, even in their biggest moments and in their biggest songs on the album. There's an intimacy there in the delivery on all three of those albums, and so

I think that's a through line. I don't know if that's a overall sonic tonal mastering through line, but for me, it's a through line because that's a big part of mastering for me. I wanted to ask you. You mentioned part of your job is providing the sort of uniform listening experience across platforms devices. However you hear your music UM title, I feel like, has you know really sort of found its niche with audio files people who appreciate

the high quality of sound. UM, does this change what you deliver the fact that there's that there's more sort of like high fi minded um outlets. No, Yes, And I've been demanding this and I feel like I'm like screaming from the rafters, like that this needs to change. This needed to change a long time ago. And Spotify love them, great platform, super easy, everyone has it, everyone uses it. Sounded awful. Really sound does not sound as

good as it should. It's a disservice to the artists, it's a disservice to the people who are making records and crafting this stuff. And it's a huge disservice to the consumer because I get to hear it at full res resolution. In my studio, I get to hear it on great speakers. I'm not hearing its streaming. I'm hearing the real deal. My concern is that we're just not giving people the quality that they need, or the quality

that the art deserves. And I can boil this down to an example that I've made before, and I'll use it again just because I think it makes it clear.

If I were to go to a museum and pay the museum entrance fee and wander down the halls and end up standing in front of the Mona Lisa, if the Mona Lisa were hanging on the wall and it was a photo copy of a photo copy of a shrunken photocopy of a stamp sized version of a black and white photocopy of the Mona Lisa, I can't imagine that it would give me the same visceral reaction that it would if I actually saw the Mona Lisa smile. And this is to me a very similar experience with

what's happening with music. The representation that the consumer is getting is the equivalent of a photocopy of a reduced size photo a copy. That's a problem. And I appreciate title for standing their ground and offering higher res and actually also addressing the credits issues. Um, and I'm very very grateful that Spotify has made this announcement and that they're gonna work as hard as they can to offer what I think would be a really great start. Streaming

things are convenient, but they don't sound good period. Tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.