Troy Carter

love this. So, Troy, how did you get into this crazy business? I started off just as a kid in West Billy. Uh grew up loving hip hop music and hip hop culture. Um. I wanted to be a rapper. I wanted to write graffiti. I wanted to be a breakdancer. So anything that was immersive and hip hop culture, you know, I just wanted to be around it. So you're not a woman, I can ask this question. How old are

you today? Forty five? So when you get into it, MTV ruled okay, But Philadelphia always had a heavy soul culture. So how did you first get infected by music? But we didn't we didn't have cable. We only had the five channels and um, and we have Friday Night videos and the USA Networkers on NBC. It was I forget

which network it was. It might have been NBC. David Benjamin ran that I remember, but it was like, um, you know, it would come on late at night, and it was before music was segregated, so you would watch run Dy m C. You would watch Blondie, Michael Jackson, Prince you know. So it was all types of music there. So it kind of exposed me to pop music, rock music. But and you know, and and like I said, and I love hip hop. So but it made me well round it from from a music Was there music in

your house growing up? It's a ton of music in my house growing up. So. Um. It was a station in Philly called w d A S and UM, which it was a local station. A guy named butter Ball ran the station and um, but it was a lot of the Philly International records, UM, a lot everything from Uh, Marvin Gaye was big in our house. Earth Wind and Fire was big. Um she Stevie Wonder. So I grew up on a lot of souls. Did you play an

instrument growing up? Nope, didn't play an didn't play an instrument. Okay, so you're listening to music and you're watching Friday Night videos. At what point do you say I can do that? You know what? My my, my brother and my cousin they used to DJ and. Um, so I tried DJ and I was terrible. And then I said, um, well, maybe you know I'm gonna try to be a rapper. So I so I started rapping. And in ninth grade,

me and my best friend had this idea. We met in English class and we said, you know, if if we ever meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, they're gonna give us a record deal. So we used to go and and try to hang out at Jazzy Jeff's studio, go down there almost every single day. Um, Jeff never would let us into the studio. How many other people were hanging out other than the two of you? It

just it was three. It was three of us. The group was called too too many, and um we called ourselves too too many because we only used to have enough money for one of us. So so it was three of us that used to hang out in front of But when you were hanging out, uh where, there are also a lot of other people want to be

hanging out at the studio. No, so they were all inside the studio, so we were trying to get in, so we would only want to bees and um so so, and we sincerely had this idea like we were that naive that we were gonna meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince and they are going to give us a record deal. And my best friend, he used to always say, thoughts become things. You gotta think positive, you gotta think positive. And one day they let us in and we auditioned

for him, and what happened. They gave us a record deal with a lot of experience under your belt. This is not the way the story usually goes. Do you think you were deserving of a record deal? Yes, but you know what, what we found out though that we sucked, you know, so I think you know Will what Will? We met Will Uh DJ, Jazzy Jeff and his manager James Lasseter. It was like a whole crew of guys hanging out in the studio and we popped in our demo and you know, um and Will said, how are

you guys getting home? And we said we don't know. So he said, okay, I'll give you guys a ride home, and he drove drove us home that night, and he told our families, you know, dropped us off, and he said, you know I got them, and um, but we I think more than anything else, more than even the music. He was expected our hustle and you know, we were silly kids, and you know so I think he liked us. So what happened? Maybe you gave you a record deal? Yes,

and we signed. We signed the Jive Records through Will's production company, and we put out a record and got dropped. It was like all within like all within like a year and a half is like the super this kind of whirl and uh, oh my god, our dreams came true to oh my god, this is the biggest disaster. My life is over. Did you get an advance? Did

you get any money? Got in advance? I think we we got in advance of about I think it was like thirty five thousand dollars, which might have been thirty five million dollars and um, you know, because we had never gotten any money like you know before and um, and we divided it up amongst the three of us. And what did you do with your twelve grand I went straight to the car dealership like every rapper and uh,

and I bought a used OUTI five thousand. That was a stick shift and I had never driven a stick shift before, but I wanted that car. And I think I burned out the clutch by the time I got home. So I burned through the money in the clutch within like weeks, just because you told me the story, and I don't want to forget it. You do tell a story of buying a Lexus use Lexus and getting stopped for driving while black. How long after this was? That?

That was? That was after? That was? That was years later? And um, I started promoting shows in Philadelphia, so I would promote these concerts. Um so like Notorious b I, G. Jay Z, Foxy Brown, a bunch of the New Woutang clan, a bunch of the New York rappers, and um and I bought a car off of Foxy Brown's manager, a guy named Don Poo and UM and you know, I drove the car back to Philly and that next week, No, with no exaggeration, within one week, I had gotten holed

over by the police six times within one week. But you know it was one time. You know, it was a Saturday afternoon, and um, I had bags like luggage and the trunk and I pull up and up, um and up at Derby and I get pulled over by the police and they make me get out of the car sit on the side of the curb while they throw all of my stuff out on the street. And so where I was at it was like a shopping district. So it's a Saturday afternoon in front of the movie theater,

hundreds of people. You know, it was it was the most it was probably one of the most belittling things. And then once everything checked out, you know, the cops said, you know, put your ship back in the car, and just you know, they put they pull off and I'm left putting my underwear and everything else back into the

you know, into into the into into my car. So you know, it's so you have an experience like that where many experiences like and that's right, was going but that was a experienced before I was gonna ask you about previous growing up. How does that what where does

that leave your viewpoint in terms of race relations. Um, you know it's complicated, right, because I think you know, I think you got so it was more police relations than race relations, where where where I grew up because it was only black people who where where I grew up.

So it wasn't really any real racial issues. But we're the cops black or white both, so blue is what they were, right and um and and so we were harassed and and and profiled and we didn't have It wasn't a thing where when things happened in your neighborhood you called the police, you know, so um and that and that was the that was the relationship and um so So I didn't really learn about race relations until I really started traveling to a lot of places, you know,

through through out throughout the country, and um and then that that's when I really started, you know, seeing Philly is very segregated, but it was very segregated, gated by the way. So Italians lived in a certain area, Blacks lived in a certain area, Puerto Ricans lived in a certain area, Jews lived in a certain area, and it wasn't a thing where it was any real I never felt that sort of tension because everybody stayed in their own pockets for the most part, almost kind of like

l a Alas racially segregated too. But when you were making the deal with dj Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith. Are you still in high school? Yeah? I dropped out of high school and then, um, I dropped out in eleventh grade and my mom she put me in a program called job Corps, which is like jail meets college and uh and it's and it was important to posit in Maryland. So basically she said, if you want to do this music thing, you better come home with a piece of paper. And you know, because I just wanted

to pursue music. And at eleventh grade, I quit school. Just stopping there for a second. You quit school because you were that excited about music, or you're also a poor student or an attentive student. It was I just was bored, Like I would I would go to school, check in with my advisor, hang out with my friends, and then we would go on these adventures you know, sometimes like for me is crazy. I would end up. I would end up at a library some days and

just studying subjects that I wanted to study. We would have or we would have hooky parties, you know until my mom got home from work and then we would clear the house out and um, but we every day was this sort of adventure. But school I just I was curious about learning, but not what they would teach me in school. So how long did the job Corps program last? I stayed in AP Corps for a little. I got my I got my g D and record time. It was like I was trying to get out of

this place as fast as you could. How fast did you get the GD? Probably? I think a little under a year maybe, And it was like, because it's the worst, this is where the courts a point juvenile delinquents, so Virginia, New York, d C. You know, so they just put you all in one place essentially, and um, and you want to get out as fast as you can. But isn't that the place that would tend you know, their theory on jail is you got to jail you to

learn how to become a criminal. When you're in this program, did you learn how to act bad? Yes? So so job Corps it was, um, it was. It was definitely a place where you had it was many sort of many criminal imprise enterprises and clicks built around and it. You know, you had gang members on campus from different gangs, you know, through throughout uh, you know, the Northeast corridor and I think because I was always small, you know, and and you know, and I didn't get caught up

and being just with the guys from Philly. So I would hang out with the New York guys, the Virginia guys and kind of stay away from any sort of the the the warring factions with with within within within job corps. And so how long were you in job Corps overall? For for almost a year? Okay, So when you got your g D you were out. I was out. And the deal, the record deal was after you. That was after Okay, So the act fails, you've blown the money,

then what? UM? You know, I remember being at my grandmother's house when I got the call that they were dropping us from from the record label and UM and I and I was in her in my grandmother's room, and because I was on the phone, I got the call and it broke my heart because, you know, it was something I felt like we worked really hard for. UM. I really didn't have a plan B of what I was gonna do. I was embarrassed that, you know, we had gotten this far and and and now you know,

how do we tell people this? UM? And from there, I just I started I learned a lot about the business from that from that experience, and UM, and I asked James Lasseter, who was Will Smith's manager, UM, could I start working with him? And I started working at the recording studio and I was his assistant. Was it

pretty much just that fast? It was probably over, if I had to guess, maybe over a six month time period where I sort of transitioned into more of the business, because we ever have a straight job working at the supermarket?

Any of that? Did I while I was a kid? No, while in this interim between h getting dropped from the label and going to work for the management, I had one period where I couldn't find It was that sort of And I don't know if I even if I ever told this this story before, but UM, I remember I couldn't find a job, and I didn't have any money. I had kind of given up on on the on

the record business. And at one point I've filed for UH for for welfare and I got I had gotten one check, and I remember giving the money from my check to my aunt because my younger cousin had just gotten killed, and you know, they were doing this funeral or whatever. And then I'm like, it's just uh that was It was just like a low point and I'm like, this isn't what I want my my life to be.

And um, but as a kid, I worked at McDonald's, I worked at Burger King, I worked at um uh Olga's kitchen, which was like a restaurant, and so I had all types of odd jobs here, here and there. And so you go to work in the record eating studio and for your the manager lasseter, what are you doing? Um everything car getting car wash, booking sessions for DJ

Jazz Jeff, carrying records for Jazz Jeff. Um. But you know, with James, when I was James's assistant, the best part of it was I used to have to run his phone calls. So I had to listen in on every phone call that he did by rolling his calls. So it kind of taught me the sort of vernacular and and sort of cadence how people talk to each other

on on the phone, you know. And I think one of the biggest things was, you know, I thought everything was all business with people, but you know, just hearing them talk about people's families and kids and you know, people they would talk for ten fifteen minutes about everything else before they kind of got into this. I think people you're so hungry when you get into the business,

you have meetings, immediately started the sales pitch. They don't really people want to know who are you, what's going on? You are reasonable person. So so that that was good for me to learn very lead because um and and James and he and are still really really close to

this day. But he he was a guy who we grew up eight blocks away from each other, like and what we didn't know My mom and his mom used to catch the bus together, and you know, he had become Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince's manager because he was the only guy in the neighborhood with a car, like you know, because because back back then you used to have to put you know, turntables and everything and load the cars up or whatever. He was the only guy

with a car. So um So seeing a guy who grew up, you know, right in our neighborhood, it kind of showed me like, okay, if James can do it and talk to like studio executives and record company heads, and it just made it less than a little less in timidity and for for me, And so what was your breakthrough from being assistent gopher to the next level. Um, James, uh So, so like in between that time, you know, I was promoting these shows and and Philly and okay,

just a little bit slow. You're promoting him yourself or with James. So so James h ended up moving to l A and he was doing he started doing Fresh Prince of bel Air. I had come out to l A for a little bit. I went back to Philly and I was from promoting. I started off promoting like clubs, and then I would get acts to performing in the clubs and um, and I would collect money from guys and my neighborhood essentially, so it would be guys who

have money. I said, you know, at that time, I didn't know it was called money laundering because guys would give me money like hey, this is great. And so in reality you were money laundering. You were just unaware. I just was unaware. Now, no statue and all those guys are probably in jail. Um. But I would do these do these shows with all of the rappers. And this is before it was Live Nation and all of the big conglomerate it's and it was a local guy

in Philly. Named Larry Maggott who used to promote the concerts in Philly if their spectrum where the roof blew exactly, and but they didn't do hip hop because hip hop shows, you know, and then fights and shootings and couldn't get insured and um, and I was one of the crazy guys who would do it. And I've started meeting all of these people through these relationships, and I met Puffy through promoteing a notorious b I bit slower. Being a

promoter is a license to go out of business. Okay, people usually like even Leor, he had one successful gig and then he lost all that money and more on the next gig. So in your a particular case, every gig I didn't think would be in the black. No, it's you know, you had really really really great nights and you had some really really really bad nights, and

you know it was it was. I remember it was a rap group on Jive called foos Chnickens and um and I used to love their music, and I think I might have been the only person that loved the music because literally, no exaggeration, I had five people show up, but I still paid him a hundred percent of the money built the relationship. It was bad shows where we were down, but every single act got paid. So but wasn't it the money of the so called criminals that

was paying them? Yeah, and what of the criminals? What are the criminals say when they were losing money? They were happy to be there. It's like you're hanging out with Biggie, Okay. So it's like hanging you're hanging out. So so everybody, everybody, and and was funny about hip hop as the streets and music. We were all contemporaries, So j and Dame and their whole crew. They were street guys from New York coming to hang out with us Big and Don Poo and Mark Pitts and all

of those guys. They were street guys coming out to hang with us. Wu Tang from Staten Island. So it was it was a thing where everybody felt it was everybody was really respectful of of of each other in that way because we knew what it took to get there. And and it was almost a thing where you couldn't go out the back door. It's just, you know, just from a street code perspective, you can't leave out of the back door. So you got these guys to come. And this is before it was like bank wiring and

all of that stuff. So you would pay them that money up front, the front up front, but when they showed up, you better have you know, you had to have the rest of that. You're talking about the street you know, cred and the similarity. But getting people from different communities, was there also friction? Never mind the money, you know what, most of the most of the friction sort of came from just the nature of the beast

of doing these type of shows and these type of neighborhoods. Right, so it's you got rival factions that are gonna are gonna show up, and um, it could be a bad night when somebody steps on somebody's shoe and they don't say, you know, excuse me or I'm sorry, and that could end up in something or it might have been something that happened weeks before that. You know, people just happened to to to see each other, so you and um, it's par for the course. Okay, So we didn't know,

to be honest though, we didn't know any different. So it wasn't you know, sort of and it wasn't strange. It wasn't like it's kind of like that movie Hoop Dreams when they celebrate the kids sixteenth birthday and they said, we're thrilled he just made it to sixteen. And when when I said, it took to me eighteen and twenty one in my mind with what were the ages in my mind that that I made it to eight teen, and that that I made it the one and my closest cousin. He and I grew up together and we

were like this. Um, he got killed when he was when he was seventeen years seventeen. What was what precipitated his death? He was out at the Chinese restaurant, Chinese Takeout, getting chicken wings, and somebody decided that they were going to rob the restaurant, drobed the guys who were at the restaurant that night, and I ended up The guy who killed them was a guy who I grew up with and we went to school with and everything else. He didn't even know it was my cousin. So um

and yeah, ended up killing him. Did that guy go to jail? Yeah, they went to jail. Okay, So in your pursuits you meet Puffy and how do you maximize that relationship? Well, Puff, um, it was. It was a concert that I was throwing with Notorious b I g Um and Wootang and a few other acts on Penn's campus and um, and I got a call that Notoria, Notorious b I g was Um, he wasn't gonna make it down in time for the show because he was

shooting the video for Big Papa at that time. And I get into an argument with Mark Pitts on the phone that turns into an argument with Puffy on the phone and um, and but yet they still came down. The show was over. You know, we had the refund a few people, but he didn't make it and um, but they told Biggs manager make sure Troy gets his money back. Um, we'll give you another show. And we

were hanging out that night. I was having an after party and Puff was holding court and you know, v I p section and you know, I'm talking and I said, you know what, you know, I want to come work for you, And he said, all right, well your first job is get me that girl from behind the bar. And um, and I got puffed the girl from behind the bar. And then a couple of weeks later, I was interning that bad boy. Then you moved to New York. No,

I commute three days a week. I would commute on peter Pan trailways, um seven I think it was seven dollars each way peter Pan Trailways from Philly to uh to uh To to New York. And so you're interning, you're obviously, you know, doing your best to do a

good job. What's your break a bad Boy? You know, I didn't get a break at Bad Boy, um, you know, but what I did get was an education you know Puff and even still to this day, you get a sort of master class and hustle and just seeing this guy operate that company just off of like I would see Puff at the club at night, and then I would see Puff in the office in the morning, and then at he had his recording studio called Daddy's House where he you know, would be where he would make records.

So you know, it just it was this sort of NonStop thing, but this sort of masterful dance of being able to navigate sort of hip hop culture in the streets with corporate America and uh so that it just was that master class. So I didn't get a break in terms of uh, you know, I made it. It was you got cursed out. You got um worked to death and you just wanted more of it, like you know, I just I couldn't get enough of it? And what was your next journey after that? Um? Afterwards, I started, UM.

I went back to work for James Lasseter in in l A. And UM, he and Will started a movie production company called Overbrook Entertainment and UM, so I was James's assistant and I did that and UM and James ended up firing me. I think after like a year and a half, he ended up firing me and UM sending me back to Philly. And then that's when that was my big break. When he fired you because you've done a good job. I didn't he do or he said,

I'm colding you back, keeping you here. Um, I wish I wish he was holding me back, keeping me here. I was arrogant as you can you could get. UM. I thought I knew everything and James like it was no humility. And I remember, you know, I didn't have a I didn't have a car when I living in l A. And if you live in l A, you know how hard it is not to have a car. And UM, and at one point I was dating this girl and Um and I would take the car service

to go visit this girl. But and at the end of the week, I would just pay the general manager of the company when I got my check, here's the car service, you know, here's the money for the car service. And for some reason she told James Troy's been using the car service. And he came in the office and aired me out and you know, in front of everybody, and told me, you know, he kicked me out of California. And he said, you know, he fired me on the spot,

kicked me out of California. Me and him get into this huge shouting match in his office, and Will and Jada actually walked in like right after and Um and Will said, you know what, go back to Philly. You know, we'll give you a severance, but go back to Philly and you know, get get yourself together. And I went back to Philly with my tail between my legs. And what would would you start up in Philly? UM? I

started up UM. It was. It was a company called Black Friday that guys from my neighborhood that I knew. They basically UM started this management company. It was like a management production company. And they asked if I would come and basically run the company for him. Can I could? I could? I build it and started up for him, and Eve was even Beanie Seagull where the client there. And it was a hot mess, and I ended up, you know, after a while, I'm like, I can't do

this anymore. It was a lot of disorganization. One one client, UM came into the office. One day. I got a call that the client got into an argument with one of the guys who owned the company and start shooting at him in the office. And that was it for me and I and I ended up that and I left at that point, and Eve was leaving and she had enough, and she asked if I would help her find the manager. I took her to meet with Chris Lighty a few other managers, and then she asked if

I would do it. Okay, so you do it and tell me how you ultimately get to there to making your deal with Sanctuary. So I started managing Eve UM. I ended up signing a few other clients. Me m up my partner at that time, Jay Irving. We built company called Irving Wonder in Philadelphia, which was like you know, boutique management company and UM and we got a call from Matthew Knowles one day and Matthew asked if we would I want to sell our company to Sanctuary. He

had just sold this company to Sanctuary. They were looking to build their urban music division and U and he basically told me how much money? And I said, when where do I sign? Because I never, like, I had never seen that type of money in my life. So, you know, without asking, I'm like, let's go, let's get this done. And how did it end with Sanctuary? Terrible?

But you kept on money, right, Yeah? But you know the thing is what I what I learned about Sanctuary, Like with the Sanctuary situation, I was so focused on the exit and the money that I was that it blinded me from all of the red flags that I should have noticed as they were doing their diligence on us. We should have been on our diligence on them, on

them and um and it just wasn't that. We went from a really cool culture at our company, like actually Jay Irvan and and his wife, Um, that's who I'm up here in Santa Barbara with this weekend. You know, it was me and my best friend we built this company. We hung out every day. We hung out with our employees, we hung out with our artists, and then we sold this company the Sanctuary and the culture it just with. The culture was terrible and um, and the leadership wasn't great.

Um and I'm just being honesty. They were terrible people. The you know, the guy running the company was a terrible person, and he ended up we you know, we were trying to buy our company back. And because you know, I, like I said, I grew up like I love the music business. I love what I do. Um, I grew up loving this business. I grew up loving the music. And then it felt like I didn't want to go to work in the morning. I didn't want to go into the office, and I wanted to buy the company back.

And so I started this negotiation to buy the company back, and we couldn't reach a deal. And then somebody told me, who works in finance, They said, hold out for a little bit longer, because if you hold out, I don't even think they're gonna be able to make salary. They're not even gonna make your your your uh your paycheck. So I'm walking into a restaurant and I never forget it's on my birthday. I'm walking into a restaurant and my attorney at that time, David Landy, calls me up

and he said, you know, are you by yourself? I said no, but I can walk out. I said, what's up? He said, Sanctuary. I just got a facts from Sanctuary and they're suing you and Jay for calls. I said, what's the cause? He said, they don't have a cause. And what we found out was the cause was they couldn't make our page checks and they didn't want to pay us out. And and you know, our business is very rare when anybody in our business gets suit for calls.

And to have that on the front cover of a variety, you know, magazine or whatever, and to know that like it just was they just with terrible people, and we ended up being able to you know, they ended up having to pay us out, and you know, I you know, I ended up starting a new company. But it was a valuable lesson and culture and people and that the new company is atom Factory, right, Adom Factory until the audience,

Why you named it atom factory? Um? The idea where Adam Factory was you know thinking about it was something I wanted to do, something small but yet powerful. And you know, and and and the name Adam just kind of some summarized it for me, like you know, um, you know, because I never wanted, you know, talent roster with a hundred people on the roster. But how can I build a small company but that still has some gravitizing importance? So how do you sign leading gaga? UM?

Got guy I met got got through a guy named Vincent Herbert. And Vincent Um I had known since I was coming up in the business. And he caught me up one day and he said, I got this girl who you have to meet. Um, I'm flying her from New York tomorrow and I'm gonna bring aodbye. And you know, he showed up and she walked in with you know, these big sunglasses on and you know, no pants and fishnet stockings and played hit after hit. Um it was

what what I loved. What I loved was it looked like she landed from another planet, but she owned it. And I told Vince, I said, you gotta bring her back, Like, just promise me you'll you'll bring her back. And a few months later he he actually he lived up to that promise and he bought her back. Now, when you signed or did anybody else want her? No, she had she had just gotten dropped from deaf Jam. Um, probably a few months prior toized meeting, she had gotten dropped

from deaf Jam. And UM, you know she kind of I went to West Virginia for a while and like spent some time with a grandmother and um. And so she was like, you know, it was one of those things with where you had nothing to lose, like you know I had. I was going through a terrible time financially. You know, this was like two thousand and seven when we met, going like so right, you know, I had invested everything into this new company, even fired me right

before that. And um, and you know my wife and I, you know, we were losing our house. You know, her and my mother in law literally pawned their wedding rings to save our house. They Um, you know, our kids were getting kicked, you know, like we couldn't pay school tuition or anything like that. So financially I was completely wiped. Um and when Gaga came, that was like the only thing I had to work on essentially, And she had

just gotten dropped. And I think it was one of those things where is you have nothing to lose and like you gotta make it work. And we both really really had to make it work. And what did you tell her to get her to sign with you? You know, I took her to a fancy restaurant called Spaghetti Warehouse. We went to Spaghetti Warehouse, I swear to you, and um and uh, and we just talked. I think we spent like a couple of hours together. And then I remember I think it was I think it was. Wasn't

it Layla's birthday? Baby? Yeah, and because I remember it was my daughter's birthday and um, and it's and I had to stop for cupcakes on the way home. So it's literally me and Gaga standing on um little Santa Monica at like Sprinkles cupcakes. Remember it used to be like a line outside the door, and like you know, she's you know, looking like Gaga on like in front at Sprinkles and we're but we hit it off right away, like we like it was we got each other right away.

And um, I believed in in her vision and she trusted me with everything and we we you know, and and but a few things like this is what's interesting, Like like a lot of times, you know, you you you hear, you know, the sort of romantic stories about you know, how everything happened or whatever. But you know, Vincent Herbert had just walked away from his record label UM that he had with a guy, Barry Hankerson. So

Vincent kind of left his record label behind. So this was his new thing and Goga was the only thing he had. Jimmy was in the middle of his divorce at that time, UM, and you know, Interscope was probably this was probably one of Interscope's tough as years, you know, during during that time period or whatever, and so Jimmy was kind of doing his thing and left us alone on the guy got projects, so basically kind of gave us carte blanche. So we were kind of running doing

our own thing. So she was making these records and he was focused on Pussycat Dolls. So every record that she would make, Jimmy was taking the records, like you know, and she would give records to Pussycat Dolls or Rodney Jerkins. I remember one record that you know, uh, she had written with Rodney Jerkins and she wanted it for herself and Rodney's like, no, she's a new artist, I'm not giving her this record. I need to get this record to Britney Spears. Brittany is you know, she's a superstar.

We're giving this record the Britney Spears and Goga was pissed. Um the record was called Telephone, so of course, you know, Gaga becomes gay gay and Brittney recorded the record as a demo and she's like, nope, get that record back. And she put Beyonce on that record, and that record became, you know, a number one hit. But she couldn't keep a record because everybody would take it because she wasn't a big star. But I started keeping making sure we

could keep those records. So just Dance we kept, which became a number one record. Um, Love Game we kept, became a number one run record. Poker Face we kept that one became a number one record, and um so it just was really fighting and so did a block in and tackling. We'll take a quick break and come back with more of my conversation with Director of Creative Services and Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. This week. I'm speaking

with Troy Carter. Recently, I interviewed Brian Fogel, who created Oscar winning documentary Chous. Be the first to hear next week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm tuned in Apple Podcast or your podcast Apple Troice. While you're there, be sure to rate and review the podcast. Okay, let's get back to my conversation with Troy Carter. Now. The story is she was making dance music at a time dance music was not on the chart or on the radio, and the interscope went to the wall for you. Is

that true? Yeah, it was. We were getting a lot of push back from Top forty radio because they thought that it was too electronic because it was sort of four on the floor and read one who was the music producer was just um, you know, he came out of Sweden, so it was you know, sort of Swedish sound at that time. And we didn't take no for an answer, but neither did Brenda Romano, who was working Top forty radio at that time, and so she just

kept knocking on those doors. And but the Internet and being able to kind of build that story and come back to radio was really important. So we were building audiences um on YouTube and you know, and building this sort of international following on YouTube. We were doing the same thing on Twitter, We were doing the same thing, um on a couple other platforms. And then NAT started translating into call out at radio, so they would put

the record on and kids already knew the record. You know, the radio was late at that time because kids were already familiar with the sort of what's happening with Spotify now. But saving that for a little bit later. Okay, Gaga blows up. It must be an amazing learning experience for you. Yeah, you know, it's It's what I realized was, you know, it's levels you know, and the business and its levels

in life. You know, um, because with Eve, Eve had a wildly successful career for hip hop artists, you know, and and even you know, we did her TV show and it lasted for you know, a few years, but you know that was primarily you know, it was African American audiences that was consuming you know, the the TV show. So we weren't we didn't have that level of pop exposure at at at that time. So and I had glimpses of it through Sanctuary because Destiny's Child was you know,

managed by Sanctuary and a few other pop acts. But I wasn't personally exposed to it. So with Gaga, only had experience as a hip hop manager, so I kind of managed her like a hip hop act. So we were doing three shows a night. Um, you know, the sound was terrible half the time. You know, you know rappers, you know they're holding the micro like this or whatever, and um, so we didn't know sound, and um, you know, Jimmy Iveen. She was opening for New Kids on the Block.

And I remember Jimmy pulling me to the side after the first show at Staples Center and he said, the show was great, sound was terrible. This is what you need to do to fix the sound. You know, this is the guy you need to call to fix the sound. And he taught me, you know, sort of sonically with pop acts as supposed to sound like. And then I met Arthur Fogel and Michael Rapino and they taught me

what pop acts as supposed to tour like. You know, So it was it was I was I felt like I was in school learning a lot of this stuff. So where I knew this sort of basic um fundamentals of protect your client with everything you have, and so my instincts were worked, you know, in terms of of protecting a client, but in terms of global touring and making and building a global superstar. I've gone to countries I had never gone to, and you know, it just

was a whole new experience. And at any time in the height of her career did another manager try to steal your act all the time? You know, I remember I remember getting a call from um just this is as she was really this is as the first single was taken off, and her lawyer, Um, her first lawyer, called up and and said, um, uh, I'm not even gonna mention him. Uh. Big, big, big manager calls calls up and he wants to take a meeting uh with

with with Uh. This is why I love her. By the way, big manager called up the lawyer tried to set the meeting up and and like around me and she called me. She called me and she said fire him the lawyer. Yeah, that's great. But eventually it does end with Stephanie. Now we've talked about that. But for people who don't know the story in retrospect, I know there was an issue she had to do boyfriend, etcetera.

Did you see it coming? No, you know, I don't think you ever see that ce ce ce that type of thing coming and um and you know, and and of course you know I can't get into any of the specifics or anything like that, you know, Um, but and I and I don't want to sit here and bullsit you and and and you know, say any sort of fake story. But you know the reality is, you know, she and I had an incredible relationship, like and even to this day, I still I still love her despite

anything that's happened with her. Uh No, we don't we know contact with her right now. And um, but you know, I think it's hard to go through that sort of period of time and and where you're pretty much living on a bus together. You know, you're traveling the world together, you know, um, just down to like you know, birth

of kids and you know everything. So where and and it's not like I had a big roster, you know, for the first when I was managing Goga, I think for the at least for the first couple of years, she was really the only client that I was that I was focused on. So she and I were really tight, So I wouldn't so when when it when it comes, I don't think you ever prepared for word, you know, so and and it's emotional. You go through the sort of the emotions of hurt and anger, and and and

and everything else or whatever. But the reality is, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't give it back for the world because I think it was an incredible experience. She helped my career just as much as I helped her career. We both came up in and and and the business together and m and life happens, man like you know, life life happening. Now since you've managed her, stop manager, she has not had a hit. She's had very successful

road business. First with Tony Bennet, she's brought If you were to manage her again, what do you think she should do to sustain and build her career. The The good thing is, you know we're talking about and I'm not just saying this, she's probably one of the most and when I say one of the most, I'm not even saying broadly. I'm talking, you know, top five most

talented artists and in the business. And it's very hard, you know, probably you know, when you look at her live show, it's probably only a couple of artists you know that that is up on that level in terms of live live concert performances, playing like piano is you know, it's vocalists like you know, performance artists, top top top, top, top level find it's just getting the records. That's all

it boils down to. It's like you know, if, if, who who are you collaborating with and and the reality is finding making making great records with superstars is hard and it's a villain because you have to have incredibly strong producers in the room who can push back. You have to have an incredibly strong person at the top of that record label because Jimmy, basically Jimmy was tough,

Like you know, you bring records in. Jimmy's a record producer, so Jimmy's gonna tell you how that record sounds or whatever. Vincent was a record producer and a songwriter, so Vince is gonna tell you how to how that record sounds or whatever. And so it's a filter that it goes through. So it's not just the people in the room that are that are collaborating and you put the record out, you gotta beat you gotta beat that record up, and you gotta be tough on tough on that record. But

I think she I'm not worried about her. To be honest with you, it's like, you know, artists like she She's just one of those artists. She's gonna be around for fifty years. Certainly. See was like that. So while she's at the peak of her success, you meet a guy who guides you into the investment tech world. Can you tell the simple multitude about that? Yeah, it was um.

You know, we were doing we were doing a lot of experimenting, um with social media and I and I've always been curious around other businesses, you know, so that's been a thing where I just want to learn everything I can about what you do. Like so if I'm curious, I'm going down the rabbit hole. And um, and we started. I remember I got invited to do a day trip to Silicon Valley and I never gone to the valley before,

and never gone to Palo Altoo before. And um, and I flew in in the morning and my first meeting was with I think it was David simmon off from Yahoo, a like at a coffee shop at like eight o'clock in the morning, and you know, and just he's telling me about the valley and you know, and just his

history and everything and very very interesting. And then my second meeting was at Palentteer and UM and if you if if Palanteer is probably the most sophisticated technology company in Silicon Valley and it was founded by a guy named Joe Lonsdale who was Peter Tiels like you know protege, you know, as Peter was coming out of PayPal, and you know, I go into their offices and it's like the TV show twenty four And what Palentteer basically does

is they track um, terroristic algorithms on the internet. So and so when after nine eleven, when the FBI was building air thing and c i A was building an air thing, the d A was building air thing, none of the technology talked to each other and you know, and really worked in a way, and Palatiner figured it out. So I'm seeing this with my own I'm like, am I even you know, it's like, you know, some serious stuff.

And then we went to Facebook and all of these companies and then and that night they threw me a barbecue at Joe Linsdale's house and UM, and I'm talking to all of these guys and you know, people could barely look you in the face and you know, there's

like as Berger's Convention. I told my wife, I'm like, I'm doing this wrong in l A right now, and like it's like everybody's driving I'm driving a Rolls Royce and these billionaires are driving prius Is and uh and this is revenge in the nerds and the nerds one big and um. And then they started inviting me into into deals and said, you know, you want to invest here,

And I started investing here and then investing there. Look it into my conversation with director of Creative Services at Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to listen to sound bites from the interviews and see some of my guests, check it out. It at tuned

in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now we're of my conversation with the director of Creative Services at Spotify, Troy Carter, on The Bob Left Sets Podcast. You were pretty much the first person, certainly in the music business who was investing you know what, because I went in and I would probably go to the valley at least twice a week.

So I would be in l A three days a week, and I'd be in San Francisco and Palo Alto two days a week, and I would start parking myself and people's offices and setting up shop in their offices during the day. And um, and then when I remembered it was um. One of the guys I met was it was a guy named Shervin Pishevar and Shervin Um. He had just sold his business and he started um investing

at a firm called Menlo. And he caught me up and he said, I want to do this thing like this sort of uh, we're gonna be like this, this sort of Jedi investment group, and I just want you to be one of the Jedies. And um, and he caught me up about I think Warby Parker was one of the Was it the first deal that Shervin Um asked me about? And then um the second deal was was uber. But then he said, well, you know I want to do. I want to start putting l A

people into into the deals. Can you help introduce me to some people in in l A? And UM, so I started introducing them to to some people in l A. And we put some l A people into the Uber deal and then kind of started building this thing that sort of bridge between San Francisco and and in l A. Did you get compensated were establishing those relationships? Uh, just as an investor. So so just for my my my compensation was Shervan would put me into people would put

me into more deals, and then the way. And this is the other thing I loved about the valley that was so different from the music business. The music business is zero sum. It's like some in order for you

to win, somebody has to lose. And then when and then the structure of a record label, um, whenever there's sort of a windfall, only the people at the very very top of the pyramid get get wealthy and nobody else gets gets wealthy essentially, and um and in technology and an investment, the way it works is the opposite, because you you you want the healthiest syndicate around the deal so that the entrepreneur and the company has the

best chance of success. So if I know that this person here and this person here and this person here could be very helpful, I want them, then I want them in the deal because I'm gonna do better. And so that's how that's how this sort of is a network effect. So like you know, Rocking, I would put rock Nation into deals, then they would put me into deals. Um, you know, Scooter and I start putting each other into deals. Gayo, Siri and I started putting each other into deals. Um,

you know. I remember is funny enough one of our companies, one of the first companies I invested in UM. It was a company called zim Ride that came to my office and we invested and they would calm work out of our offices in l A and then UM after Uber launch, the founder caught me up and he's and he said, I want to see can you connect me with Live Nation because they have these festivals and we have this our car pooling business. I want to see if we can car pool people back and forth. So

I called up microL Rapino. UM, Michael was great. He did the deal, and Michael put you know, put some money into the company. And fast forward, that company went from zim Ride to become in Lift. So you know, and this is eight years ago. So in terms of that that sort of value at that particular time, seven or eight years ago and when it becomes now that's how you That's so when you say the compensation, is

that sort of flow that that that that happens. But I'm not asking anybody for money or anything in return. In your office, you have a whole wall of the companies you've invested in at this point in time. How many companies do you think you've invested in? Um is probably about a hundred and twenty. And of a hundred and twenty, how many went completely bust? Uh, completely bust? Probably thirty or forty? Probably third about thirty I would say,

are completely bust? How many winners? Probably forty? I would put him in in and a third, a third and a third. You got you got winner, you got winners, neutral and and dogs. Okay, so you're doing this. You're done with Gaga and then he's like record label. I might just have a record label, right, and then you

have Making Trainer. Okay. The interesting thing from the outside observer, when you're involved with Making Trainer, she's everywhere and successful, and since you've been gone, she has not achieved that level of success, showing that your ability. But at what point do you you were an investor in Spotify, At what point do you wake up and say I'm gonna cross the street from being a manager to working for Spotify.

So I invested in Spotify, and I think it was like two thousand and eleven, two thousand eleven, and UM and Daniel and I we we ended up. We we didn't initially meet when I invested, and then I think it had to be about six or seven months later. UM as a group called called Charity Water out of

New York, a guy named Scott Harrison. He put together a group of probably fifteen or twenty founders to go to spend a week and a half in Ethiopia and UM and basically you build UM wells and different villages through throughout Ethiopia. And Daniel was on that trip. And when you when you're in uh and and suv for four hours with somebody going through villages and you know you're you're seeing you know some you know, it's it's

it's incredible. It is very emotional, you know, kind of visiting these different places like just in but like if not even in a sad way, it's like the people they are fantastic. But he and I didn't meet. Sitting across the desk from each other. And I think that connected us in a way where we got to know each other personally before we did any sort of business together.

And so when Spotify was, you know, had come to America, I would, you know, he and I would talk strategy, whether it was people who were holding back albums from you know, from the from the service, you know, some communication strategy, you know, some introductions to managers and things like that. But every time he would come to l A, he and I would spend a bunch of time together. And he had just become one of my favorite, my

favorite people. And then you know, a couple of years ago, you know, I was, I was so burned out from being a manager. And I've done it. I've done it for seventeen years and um and like you said, you know, Megan Trainer, Charlie Pooth and a few other clients you know where like my my the last clients on the roster. And I saw, you know, I get I get signs

in my life. It's almost like gott to pull the rug up from under me sometimes, like you know, but you know, if if I don't want to make the decision myself, and I saw I started to see some of the cracks and Adam Factory's business. UM I started to look at the future of like the management business for myself. And I I wasn't getting up in the morning excited. Um and you know, to to the amount of I don't I don't phone it in, Like I just don't have the thing where I can phone it in.

And if I'm working for a client, I'm putting my soul into it. And when you put your soul into something, and you know, you get punched in the gut and it's like, you know, you're not appreciated, and you know, it's like you know sometimes you know some clients, you know you you you got to drag them across the finish line and you gotta explain to him why should you shouldn't cancel a show, or you should you should show up one time, or you should do that. I

just was ready to do something different. And Daniel and I started having these conversations. And I remember I was sitting at the Soho house. He and I were working on a project together. Um I was. I was testing something out for him on on the Spotify platform, and we were at the Soho house and we started talking about what this sort of creator services thing would look would look like, you know, sort of from the outside end.

And um, and we started having one of those what ifs conversations and I remember, you know, I talked to my wife about it. I got cold feet. Like I had agreed to it, then I got cold feet and I told him, you know, I don't think I'm gonna do it. And you know, we went back and forth and no exaggeration. Within a six week period, I had wound you know, I wound down Atom Factory and was in Spotify about six six I've lived with you through a lot of challenges is Spotify, but now streaming is one.

Revenues are up. What you are the major challenges you're facing now? Um. You know, I think so you know this the streaming business. I think we're still in its infancy right now. So you know, I think you have some markets that are mature, like Sweden's very like a very mature market. Um. America to me is still a young streaming market. UM. You look at places like India that's still you know, young, and what's gonna happen in and so to Africa. UM, and you know some of

the other markets as well. I think it's I think in terms, I think what we this is more of

an industry thing. It's sort of defining as companies what our relationship is with the rest of the with with the rest of the industry, because I, you know, I definitely foresee you know what, what what all of our roles are right now are gonna look much much different over the next ten years, meaning what it is to be a record label, what it is to be a talent manager, what it means to be a promoter, you know, and what it means to be an artist by the way,

so all of this is gonna look different. So I think just the thing is being able to um get who gets to the future, Who gets to the future the fastest? Okay, um I got a number of questions. Let me think of the one. Let's go to the one that everybody is concerned about. Playlists. What are we here on the street. We hear the individual playlist or

is being squeezed out by the major labels. We hear that, what do you mean by that when you say that they were saying that, you know that it's the major label playlists who are major labels playlists and the Spotify playlists are getting most of the streams, and that the the major labels have power on Spotify akin to their power at radio with their promotion teams. I don't, I don't. I don't agree at all, because you know, I think

I'm not saying that this is my point. That is what people say, yeah, yeah, and which I which I don't, I don't agree, And um, you know, and I talked to the indie labels all the time, and you know, it's it's funny because you know, the indies like people that have this sort of big narrative out there. And then you know, and then I asked him a simple question, are the indie labels doing better, you know now that

that Spotify is here? And then they were but four and and uh unanimously the answers, yes, you know, because the Indians are doing are doing much better now, Um,

I think. And as as far as playlists are concerned, so just we we have forty playlists owned and operated by Spotify, all different types of niche like niche playlists as well, So we do have the sort of flagships to you know, today's top pits, Hot Country, Viva Latino, Rap, Caviare R and B like all of those flagships, But then you've got a ton of other sort of mid tier and feeder playlists that kind of feed up into them.

For most of the artists that that that we're talking about, we're talking about artists who will who would never get

on radio. By the way, like we know how top forty works, You better have a huge budget if you want to get if you want to a can record all formats, be prepared to have a half a half a million dollars to to go all formats to get a top ten record at radio UM and so, and you need you need a real system to be to be able to be able to to to to do that, and then you have to have a certain type of

record with a certain type of sound. And so if you're looking at top forties specifically, you figure it's let's call it twenty five slots, and then let's call it twenty artists that are gonna fulfill those those twenty those twenty slots. And you know, because of the artists who are gonna have multiple songs and those slots, so you got uh uh one tenth of a percent, and then you got the one percent, and you know then then

then it kind of breaks down from there. So I think the sort of ecosystem of our playlist gives a fair shot to the entire industry at that at that point. And what what The one thing I like, what I love about you know, Spotify is that people can't figure it out. You can't. It's no, it's no hype. So it's not you can't come in there and and and sort of hype your record to get us to put

it on on on on a playlist. The data doesn't lie, So it's like, you know, okay, but if you talk to like Daniel Glass, he comes to l A, you'll hang out at Apple Music, it'll go to Spotify. To

what degree is the personal relationship important? Per Personal relationships are always going to be important, right, but they're only gonna be important to a certain extent because as much as I love Daniel, and if Daniel doesn't walk in the door with a great record, Daniel's record is gonna be treated like everybody else's record essentially lucky enough, you know, Daniel walks in with Jade Bird and she becomes one of my favorite artists and we're carrying a jay Bird

flag throughout throughout the building or whatever. But would that being said, a lot of the stuff that major labels are signing right now aren't coming through any label. They're coming through Spotify. So it's we were it's between our editors, um sort of looking at blogs, living on SoundCloud, you know, sort of digging in the crates, kind of finding new stuff because they want to discover things. I get calls from our editors basically saying, um, hey, hey, Troy, I

found this record. Um, we gotta they gotta figure out to aggregator to put it through because there's no record label, and then this act will end up with fifty million streams and they'll end up with a record deal and then the labels that you know are are signing them. So that's not a lot of the rap caviare stuff is with stuff that our editors found. Even on the pop side, Mike Mike Baggage finds things and then he puts it into the pop playlist and then they end

up getting signed. So if we what do you see the future? Because we can go on Spotify right now, we can see the Spotify Top fifty changes every day. We can see the number of streams and except for the Superstar of Superstars with one single radio is way behind. They won't add multiple tracks, they're off the months behind.

What do you foresee the future there? You know, I think I think radio's in trouble, you know readio radio as we know, it's in trouble, and I think it's inevitable because the only way from radio that you make your business better is to build the uh an experience. That's worse for the consumer, meaning you know, you gotta

put more ads into and into into the product. So you know, I even know when if I go and out and I turn on radio, is a high probability that is going to be commercials on so soon as soon as I turn it on. So that's one sort of friction point, you know, out of the gate. Then the second friction point is radio relies so much on research because they want to do they need to de

risk it or whatever. So you know, it's not like when uh DJs and programmers could make independent decisions before and they felt something and they could put it in, they could put it in right away. A lot of the radio stations are looking at Spotify data and kind of using that to decide which which records they're they're gonna put in. So by the time they hear that

that record is old on Spotify. So you know, So for my kids who get in the car and they're you know, going on Spotify and YouTube to kind of consume their music, if they turn on Top forty radio, whatever they're hearing is already months old by that time. So I think you lose a consumer at that point, or it starts feeling like, um, almost like an adult Top forty because you know, you're you're planning old music. So I think that's a big I think this is

a gap. And for us, we can't you know, and think this is a big you know sort of gap and friction point where you know, Spotify and and and frontline record labels, we can't keep your record in while you're going for your radio plan because our consumer has already moved on to your second or third single by the time you know you're getting added at at radio.

So you know. So I think that's the part that from an industry perspective, I think on the label side, they have to figure out what's what's gonna be, what's important to you, you know, being current with the consumers and being able to have you know, songs within the within these playlists or you know, getting added at top forty. So we'll see how to and if we go on the US Top fifty, it is very much urban slash

hip hop. So the question that's obviously illustrating demand, but to what degree does Spotify have a responsibility to give attention to other formats? Let me just say for myself, let me give an experience. I want to know what's going on, So I'll go to the Spotify Top fifty.

I'll listen. Then if I think of all the other genres, country, electronic, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of acts today forget that you people don't teem to understand that you get paid based on whether people stream you or not. But is is are we purely speaking to the public's demand or is there any way or is there responsibility for Spotify to boost other formats? So so, and as a really really really good question, so where um so, But so we'll separate it for a second.

So when you look at the top fifty, that's just demand, right, So that is that is the pulse of what people on our platform are are actually listening to. Because the difference with radio is push, the difference with Spotify is poll So that is consumers actually listening to that to that music because they can easily skip through it, right,

So this is what this is. He so urban hip hop is really top forty right now in terms is pop music in terms of popularity UM if you look at you know, we talked last week we announced UM the new the new free app on on Spotify, and a lot of what we talked about was personalization because when the beauty of the beauty of of of data is being able to give everybody in this room or

personalized experience. So and and that's that that was a that's a big friction point because if you're a country music fan and you show up and the first thing you see is is me goes, you know, and in the platform, you might churn out at that point, or if you can't, or if you feel sort of it's almost like you're walking into a room and not feeling welcome, you know, So how do you make people feel welcome

when they walk into that room. So a lot of the stuff that we're working on right now is built around personalization. So I think what what what people see in the in the new free app from the onboarding we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, allow you to tell us about yourself and and so when you come to Spotify, how do we give you a personalized experience? And then um, but you know, it's almost like the personalized experience would be to a the A story and the B story

is more to shared experience, you know. And I think right now it's a little bit of the opposite where it was in the past. It was the opposite where it was the shared story was for was out in front, and then the personalization was more in to discover weekly product and and things like that. We'll plause here for a brief moment and get right back to the Director of Creative Services and Spotify, Troy Carter. As you probably know, I'm mainly a writer and you can read my work

at left sets dot com. If you sign up for the newsletter, not only will you get my commentary on music, tech and my life in general, you'll be the first to find out when we publish a new conversation. Go to left steps dot com and sign up now more were the director of Creative Services, that's Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Okay, we're gonna open up the questions now. Two things, One wait for a mic, and to please ask a question

as opposed to giving your opinion. We're certainly interested in your opinion, but everybody may not. It's certainly for dinner or other times. So I have Troy here, please make it a question. Since you're talking about personalization, so you're saying that you're getting receiving enough qualitative data to give somebody, uh human behavior personalization. That's that's how much data you guys are receiving too, to personalize your face for that person,

exactly exactly. So just understanding how people listening to, how how people listen to music and um, what types of people are listening to what types of music allows us to give a better listening experience. So in terms and in that you know, it's funny because when when you talk about data now because of the Facebook thing, you know, it kind of freaks people out right. Um, but data used in the right way can give you an incredible experience.

So if you look at ten years of understanding the way tens and tens of millions, over a hundred million people listening listen to music. You really understand how to personalize and experience and that's how that's why I discover Weekly worked really well, Release Radar worked really well, and then um daily Mix worked really well. And now UM, I think we're we're we're we're able to dial it in even even better. Next question, Jim, we have to Mike,

So if someone else get a Mike Jake. UM, I have a question, if you guys have ever looked at the genre of music against the free service versus the paid service? Can you? I think what he means is do people listen who are paying listen to different stuff from the people who are not paying? Yeah, and and and do you have data on that? So the answer would be, I'm a pent sure we have data data on that. Um. I wouldn't be able to break down specifically.

I could say it broadly, you know, in terms of like sort of premium premium versus free, but um not really specifically right right now, okay, general and right here, Hey Trow, I'm here from Sweden. There's a lot of debate um back where I'm from about the sort of payment models from Spotify little bit a little bit louder places the payment models from Spotify to the labels, and from the labels to the artists and the sort of

royalty pool that's being built up. Do you know if Spotify is planning to change anything in the model in the nearest future or instead of discussion that happens in the office. Well, um, and this is is a is

a good question. You know. The reality is, you know, you kind of we I think we've gone through the sort of in a very very beginning of Spotify when when people said Spotify doesn't pay pay out, they were right because it was no scale, right, So it's just, you know, it's only a certain amount of paying customers on the platform, So the royalty payments were We're smaller

in the beginning. You fast forward, now we we paid out over eight billion euros you know, to to to the music industry, and but how that's distributed to artists and creators is based off of individual deals. So at that point, you know, it's we can't make um, rights holders pay out any specific way, you know, is their

individual deals with individual artists. Um. But the reality is, I think quite naturally, UM, just what what I see happening generally in the industry the next ten years are gonna look a lot different because you have a lot of are you got. I'm seeing artists that are um

and I'm just gonna speak very candidly. I'm seeing a lot of artists that are opting to stay independent because they're seeing how much, you know, you can really make, you can really make a living and you get you get real cash flow in terms of not having to wait, you know, along along if you are independent, how often you get paid from Spotify, um you get. It depends on your aggregator and how your aggregator works. But let's

say on average you get a monthly payment that trails. Right, So if I didn't mean to interrupt, do you get a monthly payment that that trails. But let's just talk

about the future of the business. Right If we look at the future of the business, and we look at a cross and this isn't me predicting Spotify, I'm just talking specifically for the industry and looking at other types of industry, why shouldn't artists get paid If uber drivers and lift drivers now can say cash out after their drive and that and it goes directly into their bank account of PayPal account, my guess is artists in the future, are gonna be able to cash out after a day

of streams, how whenever they meet, whenever they need that money. And cash flow is a big problem with artists. We know you might need to pay rent, you might need to buy gear, you might be going on tour, whatever, you might need to buy a car, whatever you need to do. Cash flows an issue. So when historically you know record labels have taken care of a cash flow problem, But in so I think UM, the question, the bigger

question becomes value proposition. Well, the value proposition UM for of giving up eighty five of your of your revenue in exchange for marketing, promotion, cash advance, whatever is it gonna be worth it? And that's I think that's gonna be That's gonna be the biggest trick. But I think I don't think deals are gonna stay the same. I think that the whole value chain is gonna change. I think record labels are gonna um evolve their their value proposition.

I think managers are gonna evolve their value proposition. I think UM those services are gonna start looking like each other. Management companies will look like labels, labels will look like management companies, and UM and then, But from there, I think it's going to be about the value that the artists feel like they can capture in the end. Does that answer? Does that help well? The other the other?

But the other thing about I think you're addressing is at this point in time, is it's sixty seven or sixty eight percent of every dollar goes to right soldiers um from from Spotify. Yes, some somewhere in the area. Right, So what happened if you to deal with an aggregator like tune in, you pay, I mean the tune cord you paid once a year, all that money will be yours, assuming you both write the song and record the song.

But if there's someone in between, like a label, assuming they're paying you at all, your deal maybe fifteen cents on the dollar that they get. But the issue this is also an interesting issue because they don't really want Spotify if they really start talking about this and pointing at the labels, their partners. The labels don't like it to be talked about. And we don't have to point like it, I think, And that's the whole thing, Like it's you know where where it's it's we We are

a very transparent company and you know we don't. We don't play hide the ball with with with record labels. We talked very openly about the about our business to them. Um. We also talked to to to the record labels about what the future the business is gonna look like. And Daniels a guy who he lives ten years in the in in the future, like that's that's how he he thinks. And you know, my and you know and I laugh because at times I say, hold on you your ten

years in the future. Sometimes I'm dealing with people who are ten years in the past. I gotta client of clothes. I gotta close the gap a little because mine very quickly. Okay, No, So I think Spotify is great, and I think that the okay and the payout is to rear to all distributions.

So that's all great. I'm what part of my question was relating to the sort of pool what happens if I pay my I don't know what it's here not so, But what you're addressing is if I pay ten dollars and only listen to bandex, should be index get all of my ten dollars. About five years ago, somebody ran the numbers and they found that people were actually going

to make less under that basis. I haven't seen the numbers run recently, but I would just go to the bottom line is but it goes to the pool, right Yeah. Spotify pays based on the listens, and every at least once a week somebody emails being something that's got fifty million streams that I have never heard of. It's not on a label. So people email me all the time that they're getting not even a million streams. Why are they not making money? The demand is not that high,

but interesting topics just want to gainst other people a chance. Gentlemen, when Lady back there in a million, a million streams isn't a lot on our platform, I'm gonna switch topics just very quickly. I've loved this so much. Thank you. My background, I'm a Silicon Valley nerd and worked in digital audio forever, started off at digit Design and I have to hear, uh, what the tip was that Jimmy Ivan gave you to make Lady Gagas sound better on tour.

I've just been dying to know what that was. That was what we we fired our front of house guy. I worked with a lot of sound engineers, so I know Horace, so hopefully it wasn't well. By the way, I love Horrors. By the way Hars we were Horrors was out with us for a long time. He's great. By the way, he did some of our best tours. Okay, we probably got hard right over here on the left, just to show we have interest over here. While he's standing, he can get it. We'll get next. Hi. Try great.

This was a great discussion, moderation aside. I thought it was fantastic. Um. I mean talking ten years down down the road, the way Daniel seems to look at things. Um, some of us also try to look that way in terms of you know, you you mentioned a lot of strategic partnerships that you've had in your other business dealings. What about in terms of touring. Has Spotify looked towards

strategic partnerships in that respect? You know, I talked we we talked about touring a lot, just because you know, it's it's an industry that we feel is it's it's broken, you know. Um. I was talking to one of our engineers about you know, product, and I was telling them it was I think it was with Gaga we sold out. We would put a tour up and I got a call from the promoter and they said, hey, we sold out four gardens and X amount of time, and you know we had we we had another two or three

in the queue. I'm thinking, I'm like, that's not good news. Somebody should have known that it was you know, enough, we could have done three more gardens instead of us

having to go to fucking Jersey after New York. Because to be able to monetize not have to pack up and move your show, not have to be hard on the artist's physical body by having to move them around is so many inefficiencies and in touring, and so the way towards around it right now is not through data, is basically through guys who have been out on the road, through booking agents, um, through hey, uh, this pop act did this amount of O two so you should be

able to do this amount of O twos or whatever. There's no data. The merchandise business is the same exact thing. It's no it's no data. So we feel like, you know, there's enough data at least that we have where we can identify super fans on on the platform and specific markets, and if with access to other types of data be at venue data pollstar data, you know, the artists, you know, UM,

their their fan site data, some other things. You can really make well informed decisions on touring, but not even the getta getta my. But I think even the product now though, to me, is remedial in terms of what's available. Like to be honest with you, I like routing the tour is the easiest part, right, but understanding who is

I'm doing that now? I'm doing it now. I did three hundred of them last year probably, so we you know, we probably sold close to a hundred million and tickets for people, so we we Well, so it's supposed to be clear. I get that email who's playing in my neighborhood from Spotify, but not not that okay, so I'm aware of that. Tell me about selling the super fans. So so basically yes, So basically what happens is UM booking agents come to us or managers that come to us,

and we do two things. So we either can help UM a lot of like superstars that come to us, and they'll say, we only want our super fans and x amount in the first few rows throughout the entire tour. So can you market the show with this? With the with this ticket allocation to our super fans. So that's one one part of it, so where we'll market the show to the super fans on our through our platform

essentially through our data. And then the other piece of it is distressed inventory, So for shows that aren't selling, being able to identify those super fans and those markets who may not know that the show's coming through and being able to to sell the distressed inventory as well. So what you'll see and by the way, even with the amount of tickets that we sold through there, um, we still think it's remedial. So the products that you know we're working on right now, we feel like it's

gonna get better and better. So one like one of the things Daniel talked about on our investor relations day, um, you know a couple of months ago, was this idea about a mark building out a marketplace. So essentially spotify is is will evolve into a marketplace where artists don't need us to do it. They'll be able to come on there and reach their fans directly, sell their tickets to their fans, directly merchandise message their fans, and to kind of build this relationship. Okay, who has the mic

right now, I got I got one over here. I just round it. Thank you, thank you. UM. You brought up India verses or artists wanting to stay indy. I think one of the biggest points of that is to have control. How many artists have recorded records and are just sitting there. So I think the biggest factor and staying independent is to have that control of of doing your career the way you wanted to. UM. I've been

on both sides of the majors in the Indies. I spent my first fifty or sixty decades at a major and my last sixty decades on the indie side. UM. I think right now, you know the answer is. I don't think it's radio or Spotify or TV or festivals or it's almost like what you did with Gaga is you ran around and did everything. You know. I think the future kind of is the past. I was preceded by a guy named Juggie Gayles, and Juggie was like

a song he was. He was a plugger. They called him song Fluggers, and they just went everywhere they went, you know, and you go everywhere. You have this intuition and you navigate it and try to you know fan the flames. I I think you know you brought up research and radio's research. I don't think the concept of research isn't incorrect. Like I look at the research on Spotify,

you look at what people are really doing. I think radio built this archaic, um call out research paradigm where they feel they can look in the rear view mirror or as those are the people who are listening to their stations. And that's that's what the problem is. It's it's they're so entrenched in that system and that's what's hurting them to, you know, to move to towards the future. Um. I was um thinking about Spotify. I was thinking about consumption.

Everything is about you know you when you look at the numbers on wrap or Wrap Cavy or a hip hop, there tend to one right oh and yet where you may tend to one in terms of like I look at the amount of followers, the amount of listeners, the

amount how how huge hip hop is right now? And I was thinking about the live business, about about these festivals where I'm getting to the question, um, when when you're looking at these festivals now Lallapalooza, bonar ruays here every day, there's more and more festivals and what's driving them, and it's it's um. The irony is that it's a time when people can be alone, they can sit in their house and be on the internet. They're all going out to these festivals and all you know, it's it's

it's fascinating to me. And when I look at these festivals and I look at again, I'm not in the touring side. I'm on the record of music side, but that that's being driven a lot by alternative and rock more than I think, you know, on the hip hop side. And my question to you is, why do you think there's such a disparity between you know, the recorded music side, the hip hop and the wrap and the live business

where these people are coming out in droves. Why is the recorded music and have such a higher demand, you know, on the hip hop side compared to I don't think it's a already at all. Like you know, you see hip hop acts that are selling you know, arenas out every every single night of a week, So I like, I don't think it's I don't think it's a disparity. And then when you look at you know, I think they're especially with the younger consumer like a Cachella consumer

or or lollapalooza. You know, you look at the festival lineups and is diverse, you know, and I think the diversity, Yeah, I think the diversity and and um, even with this past Catchella is a reflection of the way you know, kids are listening to music, so where they are listening to all different all different types. Huh it was Mike right here. I don't, I don't. It's not that it's catching up. I don't think it was ever behind. Actually I think it was behind. I think a lot of

the festivals were booked by old white guys. But but when you say live, live and festivals are two different things. The lot, the lot, the live business has never been, never been behind. But like I think festival realized they had to wake up and diversify the business if they wanted to keep with the with the consumer. Okay, gentlemen here, Okay, yeah, um, going back, I think Bob, you're you actually asked a question about uh, possibly labels controlling too much of what

gets to the list. Um, you made a comment about hype. Is you know there's no hype, it's the numbers don't lie, which list though well, because it's paylists right, right, So here's my question is of those how many how many editors are there? And then sort of the part two is, let's take an act that has no touring base, right, and I'm gonna use some old terms, but you can never get to call out without having the ad, right, So you've got to have that initial ad before you

can get the call out. So before you can get to numbers, there have to be some amount of hype or some amount of connection to those editors, right, No, not at all, like it's it's just a it's a handful like so to answer, I'll answer if you your questions. So is is a few hundred editors globally at Spotify, across the across the different genres. Our editors especially and in certain specific genres, they pride like part of their culture is you got to find stuff before everybody else

finds it. That's like that's part of hip hop culture, by the way, and part of Latin culture is as well. You want to get there early before anybody gets it. So they're looking for and they're competing with other services as well trying to find stuff. So a lot of the stuff that um our editors are finding like record companies call me every single day of the week trying to sign acts that are independent on on on Spotify. They're trying to sign these records that are that that

are doing well. And then you know, in the reality and just when we look at some of the big categories, major labels are over index and a hit records you got, you know, so you know, when we talk about you know, certain name like certain categories that people come to me sort of complaining about, they can't name me any big acts in that in that category in the first place.

So it's like, you know, I think major labels do an incredible job at making big top forty records, so that quite naturally they're gonna control a big portion of big top forty playlists. You know. When it comes to jazz music, maybe not so much. It comes to some of the categories, maybe maybe not so much. But I think it's um I think it's one of those things that people have started talking about so much that people

start believing that that that's actually the case. And I just come from I come from a school of hit records work, hit records work. Doug Morris, I remember going into Doug Morris's office after he left Universal and right before he went into Sony and UM, and he was asking me about, um, what a record that that we that that I put out on one of our acts, and you know, and I said, you know what, the video was too dark? You know, I kind of saw this,

you know, just change with the consumer. And you know it wasn't popping up. He said, no, it wasn't a hit. He said, it wasn't a hit. And that's the reality. Nobody wants to admit when their records aren't hits. So most of the complaints I get from people don't they don't have hit records over here. You mentioned that streaming is in its infancy. What does it look like when it's matured? And also based on the data, what emerging

genres are there that you guys are seeing. Well, you know, I think you know when you talk about when when it's matured, you know, and this is where I think we underestimate, you know, the size of of what the global recorded music market is going to be. So everybody talks about the sort of heyday of the record business at its height, and you know, when we were selling selling a lot of C D s more people are on on this planet are gonna have mobile phones than

they had CD players. So and when you look at the amount of youth, the youth population that's rising in Africa and in India, you look at China that you know that's never been a factor. And how and the and the paid music market I think is gonna. I think the music industry is gonna undergo exponential growth like we've never seen before. I think what we have to adjust to, you know, we are I think as and I'm just saying is just generally speaking the music industry

we operate as elite like, as elitists. So where we're under this impression that everybody is gonna buy a subscription and everybody in the world can afford. And if you look at the price of gas this week, people can't afford to put gas in their tank. People are barely making it in this country. People are struggling. And I think it's finding ways where Okay, whether it's through uh,

you know, advertising subsidies or whatever. I think there's ways to monetize you know, a billion plus consumer base across you know, the the entire music industry. Um, I think day the plans you know, and that's one of the things we talked about last week with the new free tier was being able to you know, we built you know, lighter data plans because you know, so on on your phone, it's not eating up your data plan. So I think

what's ahead of us is gonna is it's gonna. I think we're gonna see something like we we've never seen before. But but the market is UM. I don't want to say a number, but I think it's way, way bigger than what we've ever seen. Young lady right here, you've been waiting. I UM. What about the role um of curators on the platform and independent curators. Is Spotify developing a program even for example radio stations, blogs, um, just independent curators. What I don't see anything being done for

profiles for those entities and people. You you have independent curators that um, that are on the platform where you know where they and some people do a really good job at promo in their playlists and they you know, built followers. UM. You know, for us, our priority had to be our own and operated playlists, you know, because I think we were able to control the integrity of

those playlists. And what I mean by that is just making sure it doesn't turn to a place where people can pay people to get on playlist and you know so and I think you know, when that ecosystem was open in the in the beginning, a lot of you know, we had to change the terms of services because you had a lot of people paying to get on playlists or you know, exchanging favors to get on to get

on playlists. And the only thing that does is makes for uh a terrible consumer experience versus best song wins. So essentially, if we can program in a way where where best song wins is a better experience for the for the consumer. But we're not like there are a lot of brands and people who are built than their their profiles. But our priority is is owned and operated.

Who has the mic? Now? Yeah, right here, I try just going back to the future of streaming, UM, we see pricing differentiation for hires players like COB's entitle UM. Do you think that's sustainable? And my second question is, UM there's new UM streaming platforms like prime Phonic, which are focused on classical music. Do you think the future will be sort of based on differentiation by genre or

do you think the hardware ecosystem will dominate. You know, I think, you know, just in my my opinion, I think UM, having a niche UM a knee service is deaf is difficult, right, you know, because when you can get and and everything essentially that you pretty much want to listen to and in one place, UM, you gotta have a compelling value proposition to drive somebody to pay specifically for that niche service and in UM this sort of financial models to operate as a business around that,

and my I just think would be and it would be challenging, you know, especially as you're competing against you know, some some of the some of the larger players UM in terms of you know, fidelity you know you got I'm one of the the niche consumers that cares about you know, sound and and for me, its specifically for jazz music, Like when I listen to jazz and UM, you know, I got high fidelity speakers. I want to listen to it and and and and high fidelity UM.

But for a lot of the other records, is like you don't need to listen to it in high fidelity, right, but you got to find a big enough audience that's willing to pay for it. Um, I'd love to get to a place where everybody cares about how how records

you know, were intended to sound. But you know, I don't know if the general population, uh if that if that's something that they really genuinely care about, and I don't think we've been able to, um how like, so when the jump from cassette to c D was so exponential in terms of sound, and the jump from VHS too, you know, DVD was so was was exponential in terms of you know, a visual and sound, we haven't been able to kind of give any sort of exponential jump

yet to make people want to leap from from this to that. Ye just talking about Yeah, I don't okay, Jamie, Jamie, you have a question. I probably good to see. Yeah, Um, I have two questions and I want to I'll cut it down to one. And so I'm Lars Maria used to be at Pandora. The question that I have that I don't think anybody's asked you, what is the lowest hanging fruit that you think people are not picking off

of Spotify right now? Used to drive me crazy that there were things I couldn't explain or I could explain, and people just wouldn't do it, Like, what are they not doing? I mean, I think going back to what market you say, people, and it's just I'm talking about the the industry, you know. Um, you know, Mark was talking about how are you selling tickets? And you're like, we just sold a hundred million dollars worth of tickets? Like what what across the board is the thing that

people should be thinking about that they're not. I don't know, you know, um, I think I don't know if I have an answer for the low hanging fruit, but I do think the industry one of the biggest problems that I see is this sort of people haven't been able to differentiate. People haven't been able to fully move into a new model yet because people still think we're a retail were not a retailer. Um, people still think we're

like radio, where we're not radio like. So even down to the point where the people still haven't figured out who at the company should really interface with us yet. Should it be a promo guy? Is that the sales team? Is it marketing? Like? So I think it's kind of

understanding that this is a totally new system. The way the old system work doesn't work with with with with this, with this new system, and then so so and even down to going back to I get so many calls from people that say, I'm at a million streams and I'm like, a million streams is nothing, Like it's not there yet. You gotta get there, like it's um but because people in the record business think a million records

your platinum, a million streams isn't platinum, you know. So it's like, so it's this sort of uh chasm you got that that hasn't been crossed yet. So if I can steal a quick follow up on that, cycles, how do you do you have insight to tell everybody about cycles? And how I mean cycles are different now in a stream? What types of cycles? Song cycles? Uh, career cycles, album cycles,

all of that. Who's doing it? Right? So? So the way so I look at it as perpetual cycles, right, So it's not it's no more on on on and off. And you know what what we see now is you know you look at um you know two good examples of like a Bruno Mars or at Sharon where their

former albums just continue to kind of perform well. And chain Smokers there, you know, I think Adam and and and those guys are are really brilliant in terms of how they they're They're just innovative in their approach to to release the music, the hip hop game in general. I would just say, you know, they win loose. You know, they went gold star in terms of being able to um, to cater to new conc to the way consumers consume

and um. And it's just it bugs me out because the record business we used to be so forward and how like when we we turned Tuesdays into events right where it was, you know, when we put out albums, the way we set up set up albums, film studios were envied away. You know that that that we did it, and but yet Netflix is kicking our ass and innovation

of releases. You know, so when you released you know, I was telling I was at one of the record labels and they were talking about all of their new acts that broke on you know, because I I was complaining about artists development, and I'm like, you gotta build stars, Like just because they're getting streams don't mean that their stars. And they're telling me what we broke this act this year, this act, this year, this act this year, and this

act this year. I said I'll tell you what if you took those four artists right now and they got out of their car in front of the school that's across the street, and you took the kids from Stranger Things and they got out of the car, every kid's gonna run to the kids from Stranger Things. Like that's this year's one direction. We don't have a one direction right now. That's one direction right now. You look at

how we're still releasing single single, single album. You're releasing three singles before album, and Netflix is dropping the whole season on you day day one because everybody wants it there. And I asked the record I asked the record label, I said, why are you still doing it like that? But as a radio you want to build up a certain audience first, because the first week, first week means zero,

first week means nothing anymore. So, so it's kind of just getting people to cross over to the new world. And and and I'm seeing some younger labels and some younger artists right now, and that has no historical baggage. That are, you know, plowing their way into into into the new world very quickly. Single album. If you're a new artist, should people even bother to make albums or continue to put out a continuous dreament product. If if you can make a great album, make an album. The

problem is, you know, making a great album. That's a big challenge. Jamie, you said something, uh that really kind of perked my ears up a bit. Um. You said that radio is in trouble, and I absolutely agree. And I think that you're that Spotify as integration into automobiles is going to even put another nail in that coffin. But we aren't there yet. We aren't. Radio is not

dead yet. So you had said something that you did with Gaga where it was um social media and YouTube and getting the music out there so that by the time it went to radio and they were doing their testing, that everybody was already familiar with it, so it tested really well. Later you said that labels kind of have to pick. Are you going to go the radio route where you put a half million dollars behind a track

or are you going to go the Spotify route? And like, I does a label really have to choose or should they just be working it back? So let me let me clarify it. So so I don't think you have to choose between going to Spotify or going to radio. Um So, I was talking specifically around if you have a single and you start the single off on Spotify, by the time you build up that big enough story for radio, chances are it is gonna be Oh, that

single is gonna be over on our platform. Yes, so so, but what we get a lot is complaints that we're not hanging in there long enough on the single because it's not building, it's not uh linking in uh, it's not fused with their radio stories essentially, And I think for us it's not our that that's just not our problem because because only we gotta we gotta do. We have to build the great experience for the consumer. That's the like, that's our number one thing. It has to

be a great experience for the consumer. And um so, so that's where that's the sort of catch twenty two that we're finding, you know, some some of the labels in Okay, this gentleman, this is the last question for now, my Troy um bit of a tech nerd question, because you were saying you're building out a marketplace and then Daniel living ten years ahead of us, how much is which extent is AI and blockchain part of the discussion. UM. You know, UM, some I can comment on, some I

can't comment on. UM. I think it's just AI in general. You know, it's the future, you know. I think, you know, machine learning as part of what we already do in terms off you look at Discover weekly, Discover weekly as machine learning and UM and I think the more data that you get, the better than machines get. Right. So

I think it's gonna play a huge role. And I don't think it necessarily has as much to do with marketplace as much as it has to do with the personalization that that that that we're talking about, and just being able to make the experience better for you when you when you come up come on the platform. But I just don't think, you know, when we kind of got a sense of where machine learning is gonna gonna take us, the marketplace was more directed towards the block chain.

I can't calm it. Thank you, But you've been very open and honest. We've put you through the rigger for two hours. And by the way, I love Bob and Aga had these conversations. I got so many questions in my head, and I mean, we're off the audience. But when I say on some level, we only scratched the surface. That's supposed to Howard Stern saying you said everything, You've only said a little bit. But it's been so wonderful that you've come here and uh endured this for two hours. Troy,

thanks again, thank you, thank you. Hey. This week we have a very special episode my interview with Troy Carter at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Yes. Today, Troy is director of Creative Services that Spotify really spearheading change in the music business. But before that he was a manager. He managed Lady Gaga, Broke Lady Gaga what John legend Back has done so many things with acts. You're gonna hear about his ups and his downs. Troy

is completely honest. I know you'll love this. So, Troy, how'd you get into this crazy business? I started off just as a kid in West Philly. Uh grew up loving hip hop music and hip hop culture. Um. I wanted to be a rapper. I wanted to write graffiti. I wanted to be a breakdancer. So anything that was immersive and hip hop culture, you know, I just wanted to be around it. So you're not a woman, I can ask this question, how old are you today? Forty five?

So when you get into it, MTV ruled, okay, but Philadelphia always had a heavy soul culture. So how did you first get infected by music? We didn't we didn't have cable. We only had the five channels and um and we have Friday Night videos and the USA Networkers on NBC. It was I forget which network it was.

It might have been NBC. David Benjamin ran that I remember, but it was like, um, you know, it would come on late at night, and it was before music was segregated, so you would watch Rundy m C. You would watch Blondie, Michael Jackson, Prince, you know, so it was all types of music there. So it kind of exposed me to pop music, rock music. But and you know, and and like I said, and I love hip hop. So but it made me well round it from from a music was there music in your house growing up? It's a

ton of music in my house growing up. So um. It was a station in Philly called w d A S and UM, which it was a local station. A guy named butter Ball ran the station and um, but it was a lot of the Philly International records, Um a lot, everything from Uh, Marvin Gaye was big in our house. Earth Wind and Fire was big. Um she Stevie Wonder. So I grew up on a lot of souls. Did you play an instrument growing up? Nope, didn't play an didn't play an instrument. Okay, so you're listening to

music and you're watching Friday Night videos. At what point do you say I can do that? You know what? My my, my brother and my cousin they used to DJ and UM. So I tried DJ and and I was terrible. And then I said, um, well, maybe you know I'm gonna try to be a rapper. So I so I started rapping. And in ninth grade, me and my best friend had this idea. We met in English class and we said, you know, if if we ever meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, they're gonna give us

a record deal. So we used to go and and try to hang out at Jazzy Jeff's studio, go down there almost every single day. Um, Jeff never would let us into the studio. How many other people are hanging out other than the two of you? It just it was three. It was three of us. The group was called too too many, and um we called ourselves to too many because we only used to have enough money for one of us. So so it was three of us that used to hang out in front of it.

But when you were hanging out, uh where there are also a lot of other people want to be hanging out at the studio. No, so they were all inside the studio, So we were trying to get in, and so we would only want to bees and um so so, and we sincerely had this idea like we were that naive that we were gonna meet Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince and they were going to give us a record deal. And my best friend he used to always he say,

thoughts become things. You gotta think positive, you gotta think positive. And one day they let us in and we auditioned for him, and what happened. They gave us a record deal with a lot of experience under your belt. This is not the way the story usually goes. Do you think you were deserving of a record deal? Yes? But you know what what we found out though that we sucked, you know, so I think you know will what will we met will uh DJ Jazzy Jeff and his manager

James Lasseter. It was like a whole crew of guys hanging out in the studio and we popped in our demo and you know, um and Will said, how are you guys getting home? And we said we don't know. So he said, okay, I'll give you guys a ride home and he drove drove us home that night, and he told our families, you know, dropped us off, and he said, you know, I got them and um, but we I think more than anything else, more than even

the music. He respected our hustle and you know, we were silly kids and you know, so I think he liked us. So what happened? Maybe you gave you a record deal? Yes, and we signed. We signed the Jive Records through Will's production company, and we put out a record and got dropped. It was like all within, like all within like a year and a half is like the super this kind of whirl and uh, oh my god, our dreams came true to oh my god, this is the biggest disaster. My life is over. Did you get

an advance? Did you get any money? Got in advance? I think we we got in advance of about I think it was like thirty five thousand dollars, which might have been thirty five million dollars. And um, you know, because we had never gotten any money like you know before, and um, and we divided it up amongst the three

of us. And what did you do with your twelve grand I went straight to the car dealership like every rapper and uh and I bought a used Autie five thousand that was a stick ship if and I had never driven a stick shift before, but I wanted that car. And I think I burned out the clutch by the time I got home. So I burned through the money in the clutch within like weeks, just because you told me the story, and I don't want to forget it. You do tell a story of buying a Lexus use

Lexus and getting stopped for driving while black. How long after this was? That? That was? That was after? That was? That was years later? And Um, I started promoting shows

in Philadelphia, so I would promote these concerts. Um so like Notorious b I, G. Jay Z, Foxy Brown, a bunch of the New Woutang clan, a bunch of the New York rappers, and um and I bought a car off of Foxy Brown's manager, a guy named Don Poo, and um, and you know I drove the car back to Philly and that next week, no, with no exaggeration, within one week, I had gotten pulled over by the police six times within one week. But you know it

was one time. You know, it was a Saturday afternoon and um, I had bags like luggage and the trunk and I pull up and up and up at Derby and I get pulled over by the police and they make me get out of the car sit on the side of the curb while they throw all of my stuff out on the street. And so where I was at it was like a shopping district. So it's a Saturday afternoon in front of the movie theater, hundreds of people. You know, it was it was the most it was

probably one of the most belittling things. And then once everything checked out, you know, the cops said, you know, put your ship back in the car, and just you know, they they pull off and I'm left putting my underwear and everything else back into the you know, into into the into into my car. So you know, it's so you have an experience like that, where does that many experiences like And that's where I was going. But that was a peak experience before I was gonna ask you

about previous growing up. How does that what where does that leave your viewpoint in terms of race relations? Um, you know it's complicated, right because I think you know, I think you got so it was more police relations than race relations where where where I grew up, because it was only black people where where I grew up,

So it wasn't really any real racial issues. But there were the cops black or white both, so blue is what they were, right and um and and so we were harassed and and and profiled and we didn't have It wasn't a thing where when things happened in your neighborhood you called the police, you know. So, um and that and that was the that was the relationship and um so So I didn't really learn about race relations until I really started traveling to a lot of places,

you know, through throughout throughout the country. And um and then that's when I really started, you know, seeing Philly is very segregated, but it was very segregated, gated by the way. So Italians lived in a certain area, Blacks lived in a certain area. Of Puerto Ricans lived in a certain area Jews lived in a certain area and it wasn't a thing where it was any real I never felt that sort of tension because everybody stayed in their own pockets for the most part, almost kind of

like l a Alas racially segregated too. But when you were making the deal with DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith, are you still in high school? Yeah? I dropped out of high school and then um, I dropped out in eleventh grade and my mom she put me in a program called job Corps, which is like jail meets college and um and it's and it was Import Deposit Maryland. So basically she said, if you want to do this music thing, you better come home with a piece of paper.

And you know, because I just wanted to pursue music. And at eleventh grade, I quit school. Just stopping there for a second. You quit school because you were that excited about music, or you're also a poor student or an attentive student. It was I just was bored. Like I would I would go to school, check in with my advisor, hang out with my friends, and then we would go on these adventures, you know, sometimes like for

me is crazy. I would end up I would end up at a library some days and just studying subjects that I wanted to study. We would have or we would have hooky parties, you know, until my mom got home from work and then we would clear the house out and um, but we every day was this sort of adventure. But school, I just I was curious about learning, but not what they would teach me in school. So how long did the job Corps program last? I stayed in job Corps for a little. I got my I

got my g D and record time. It was like I was trying to get out of this place as fast as you could. How fast did you get the probably I think a little under a year maybe, And it was like, because it's the worst. This is where the courts appoint juvenile delinquents, so Virginia, New York, d C. You know, so they just put you all in one place essentially, and um, and you want to get out as fast as you can. But isn't that the place

that would tend you know? Their theory on jail is you got to jail, you learn how to become a criminal. When you were in this program, did you learn how to act bad? Yes? So so job Corps it was Um, it was. It was definitely a place where you had it was many sort of many criminal imprise enterprises and clicks built around and you know, you had gang members on campus from different gangs, you know, through throughout you know,

the Northeast corridor. And I think because I was always small, you know, and and you know, and I didn't get caught up and being just with the guys from Philly. So I would hang out with the New York guys, the Virginia guys and kind of stay away from any sort of the the the warring factions with with within within within job Corps. And so how long were you in job Corps overall? For for almost a year? Okay, So when you got your g D you were out. I was out. And the deal, the record deal was

after you. That was after okay. So the act fails, you've blown the money, then what? Um. You know, I remember being at my grandmother's house when I got the call that they were dropping us from from the record label. And um, and I and I was in her in my grandmother's room and because I was on the phone, I got the call and it broke my heart because you know, it was something I felt like we worked really hard for UM. I really we didn't have a

plan B of what I was gonna do. I was embarrassed that, you know, we had gotten this far and and and now you know, how do we tell people this? UM? And from there, I just I started. I learned a lot about the business from that. From that experience and UM and I asked James Lasseter, who was Will Smith's manager, UM could I start working with him? And I started working at the recording studio and I was his assistant.

Was it pretty much just that fast? It was probably over, if I had to guess, maybe over a six month time period where I sort of transitioned into more of the business, because we ever have a straight job working at the supermarket? Any of that? Did I while I

was a kid? No, While in this interim between UH getting dropped from the label and going to work for the management, I had one period where I couldn't find It was as sort of and I don't know if I even if I ever told this this story before, but UM, I remember I couldn't find a job, and I didn't have any money. I had kind of given

up on on the on the record business. And at one point I've I've filed for uh for for welfare and I got I had gotten one check, and I remember giving the money from my check to my aunt because my younger cousin had just gotten killed and you know, they were doing this funeral or whatever. And then I'm like, it's just, uh that was it was just like a low point and I'm like, this isn't what I want my my life to be. And um, but as a kid,

I worked at McDonald's, I worked at Burger King. I worked at um uh Olga's Kitchen, which was like a restaurant, and so I had all types of ide jobs here here and there. And so you go to work in the recording studio and for your the manager lasseter or what do you do, Um everything car getting car wash,

booking sessions for DJ Jazz Jeff, carrying records for Jazz Jeff. Um. But you know, with James, when I was James's assistant, the best part of it was I used to have to run his phone calls, So I had to listen in on every phone call that he did by rolling his calls. So it kind of taught me the sort of vernacular and and sort of cadence how people talk

to each other on on the phone, you know. And I think one of the biggest things was, you know, I thought everything was all business with people, but you know, just hearing them talk about people's families and kids and you know, people they would talk for ten fifteen minutes about everything else before they kind of got into this. I know, people, you're so hungry when you get into the business. You have meetings, immediately started the sales pitch.

They don't really people want to know who are you, what's going on? You are a reasonable person. So so that that was good for me to learn very early because um and and James and he and I are still really really close to this day. But he he was a guy who we grew up eight blocks away from each other, like and what we didn't know My mom and his mom used to catch the bus together.

And you know, he had become Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince's manager because he was the only guy in the neighborhood with a car, like you know, because back back then you used to have to put you know, turntables and everything and load the cars up or whatever. He was the only guy with a car, so um so seeing a guy who grew up, you know, right in our neighborhood. It kind of showed me like, okay, if James can do it and talk to like studio executives and record company heads, and it just made it less

than a little less in timidity and for me. And so what was your breakthrough from being consistent gopher to the next level? Um, James? Uh So, So like in between that time, you know, I was promoting these shows and Philly and okay, just a little bit slow. You're promoting him yourself or with James. So so James h ended up moving to l A and he was doing he started during Fresh Prince of bel Air. I had come out to l A for a little bit. I

went back to Philly and I was from promoting. I started off promoting like clubs, and then I would get acts to perform in the in the clubs and um, and I would collect money from guys in my neighborhood essentially, so it would be guys who have money. I said, you know, at that time, I didn't know it was called money laundering, because guys would give me money like hey, this is great. And so in reality you were money laundering. You were just unaware. I just was unaware. Now, no

statue and all those guys are probably in jail. Um. But I would do these do these shows with all of the rappers. And this is before it was Live Nation and all of the big conglomerates. And it was a local guy in Philly named Larry Maggott. We used to promote the concerts in Philly if the Spectrum where the roof blew exactly and um, but they didn't do hip hop because hip hop shows, you know, and then

fights and shootings and couldn't get insured. And and I was one of the crazy guys who would do it. And I've started meeting all of these people through these relationships. And I met Puffy through promoteing a notorious b I bit slower. Being a promoter is a license to go out of business, Okay, people usually like even Lior, he had one successful gig and then he lost all that money and more on the next gig. So in your a particular case, every gig I didn't think would be

in the black. No, it's you know, you had really really really great nights and you had some really really really bad nights, and you know it was it was I remember It was a rap group on Jive called Foosh Nickens and Um and I used to love their music, and I think I might have been the only person that loved the music because literally, no exaggeration, I had five people show up, but I still paid him a

hundred percent of the money built the relationship. It was bad shows where we were down, but every single act got paid. So but wasn't it the money of the so called criminals that was paying them? Yeah, and what of the criminals? What are the criminals say when they were losing money? They were happy to be there. It's like you're hanging out with Biggie, Okay, So it's like hanging your hanging out. So so everybody everybody and and was funny about hip hop as the streets and music.

We were all contemporaries, So J and Dame and their whole crew. They were street guys from New York coming to hang out with us Big and Don Poo and Mark Pitts and all of those guys. They were street guys coming out the with us Wu Tang from Staten Island. So it was it was a thing where everybody felt it was. Everybody was really respectful of of of each other in that way because we knew what it took to get there, and and it was almost a thing

where you couldn't go out the back door. It's just you know, just from a street code perspective, you can't leave out of the back door. So you got these guys to come, and this is before it was like bank wiring and all of that stuff. So you would pay them that money up front, the first pent up front, but when they showed up, you better have you know, you had to have the rest of that. You're talking about the street you know, cred and the similarity, but

getting people from different communities was there also friction. Never mind the money, you know what, most of the most of the friction sort of came from just the nature of the beast of doing these type of shows and

the these type of neighborhoods. Right, so it's you got rival factions that are gonna are gonna show up, and um, it could be a bad night when somebody steps on somebody's shoe and they don't say, you know, excuse me or I'm sorry, and that could end up in something or it might have been something that happened weeks before that. You know, people just happened to to to see each other. So you and um, it's par for the course. Okay. So we didn't know, to be honest though, we didn't

know any different. So it wasn't you know, sort of and it wasn't strange. It wasn't like it's kind of like that movie Hoop Dreams when they celebrate the kids sixteenth birthday and they said, we're thrilled he just made it to sixty and when when I said, it took to me eighteen and twenty one in my mind with what were the ages in my mind that that I made it to eighteen and that that I made it to one And my closest cousin, he and I grew

up together and we were like this. Um, he got killed when he was when he was seventeen years seventeen. What was what precipitated his death? He was out at the Chinese restaurant, Chinese Takeout, getting chicken wings, and somebody decided that they were going to rob the restaurant, drobed the guys who were at the restaurant that night, and I ended up The guy who killed them was a guy who I grew up with, and we went to school with and everything else. He didn't even know it

was my cousin. So um and yeah, ended up killing him. Did that guy go to jail? Yeah, they went to jail. Okay, So in your pursuits you meet Puffy and how do you maximize that relationship? Well, Puff, Um, it was. It was a concert that I was throwing with Notorious b I g Um and Wootang and a few other acts on Penn's campus and um, and I got a call that Notorious Notorious b I g was Um, he wasn't gonna make it down in time for the show because he was shooting the video for Big Papa at that time.

And I get into an argument with Mark Pitts on the phone, that turns into an argument with Puffy on the phone and m and but yet they still came down. The show was over. You know, we had to refund a few people, but he didn't make it. And but they told Biggs manager and make sure Troy gets his money back. Um, we'll give you another show. And we

were hanging out that night. I was having an after party and Puff was holding court and you know, v I p section and you know I'm talking and I said, you know what you know, I want to come work for you. And he said, all right, well your first job is get me that girl from behind the bar and um, and I got puffed the girl from behind the bar. And then a couple of weeks later I was interning that bad Boy. Then he moved to New York. No, I would commute three days a week. I would commute

on p there Pan trailways. Um seven do I think it was seven dollars each way Peter Pan trailways from Philly to uh to uh To to New York. And so you're interning, you're obviously, you know, doing your best to do a good job. What's your break a bad boy?

You know. I didn't get a break at Bad Boy, Um, you know, but what I did get was an education, you know Puff and even still to this day, you get a sort of master class and hustle and just seeing this guy operate that company just off of like I would see Puff at the club at night, and then I would see Puff in the office in the morning, and then at he had his recording studio called Daddy's House, where he you know, would be where he would make records.

So you know, it just it was this sort of NonStop thing, but this sort of of masterful dance of being able to navigate sort of hip hop culture in the streets with corporate America and uh so that it just was that master class. So I didn't get a break in terms of uh, you know, I made it. It was you got cursed out, you got um worked to death, and you just wanted more of it, like you know, I just I couldn't get enough of it? And what was your next journey after that? Um? Afterwards,

I started, UM. I went back to work for James Lasseter in in l a And UM, he and Will started a movie production company called Overbrook Entertainment, and UM so I was James's assistant and I did that and UM and James ended up firing me. I think after like a year and a half he ended up firing me and um sending me back to Philly. And then that's when my that was my big break when he fired did you because you've done a good job? I didn't you do? Or he said I'm colding you back,

keeping you here. Um I wish I wish he was holding me back, keeping me there. I was arrogant as you can you could get. UM, I thought I knew everything, and James like it was no humility. And I remember, you know, I didn't have a I didn't have a car when I living in l A. And if you live in l A, you know how hard it is not to have a car. And um, and at one point I was dating this girl and um, and I would take the car service to go visit this girl.

But and at the end of the week, I would just pay the general manager of the company when I got my check, here's the car service, you know, here's the money for the car service. And for some reason, she told James Troy has been using the car service. And he came in the office and aired me out and you know, in front of everybody, and told me, you know, he kicked me out of California. And he said, you know, he fired me on the spot, kicked me

out of California. Me and him get into this huge shouting match in his office, and Will and Jada actually walked in like right after, and um, and Will said, you know what, go back to Philly. You know, we we'll give you a severance, but go back to Philly, and you know, get get yourself together. And I went back to Philly with my tail between my legs and what would would you start up in Philly? UM? I

started up UM. It was it was a company called Black Friday that guys from my neighborhood that I knew. They basically UM started this management company. It was like a management production company. And they asked if I would come and basically run the company for him? Can I could? I could? I build it and started up for him and Eve was even Beanie Seagull where the clients there. And it was a hot mess and I ended up. You know, after a while, I'm like, I can't do

this anymore. It was a lot of disorganization. One one client UM came into the office. One day, I got a call that the client got into an argument with one of the guys who owned the company and start shooting at him in the office. And that was it for me and I and I ended up that and I left at that point, and Eve was leaving and she had enough and she asked if I would help her find the manager. I took her to meet with Chris Lighty a few other managers, and then she asked

if I would do it. Okay, so you do it and tell me how you ultimately get to there to making your deal with Sanctuary. So I started managing eve UM. I ended up signing a few other clients, me and up my partner at that time, Jay Irving. We built this company called Irving Wonder in Philadelphia, which was like you know, utique management company and UM. And we got a call from Matthew Knowles one day and Matthew asked if we would I want to sell our company to Sanctuary.

He had just sold this company to Sanctuary. They were looking to build their urban music division and and he basically told me how much money? And I said, when where do I sign? Because I never, like, I had never seen that type of money in my life. So you know, without asking, I'm like, let's go, let's get this done. And how did it end with Sanctuary? Terrible? But you kept the money right? Yeah? But you know the thing is what I what I learned about Sanctuary.

Like with the Sanctuary situation, I was so focused on the exit and the money that I was that it blinded me from all of the red flags that I should have noticed as they were doing their diligence on us. We should have been doing there our diligence on them, on them and um. And it just wasn't that. We went from a really cool culture at our company, like actually Jay Irvan and and his wife. UM, that's who I'm up here in Santa Barbara with this weekend. You know.

It was me and my best friend. We built this company. We hung out every day, We hung out with our employees, we hung out with our artists. And then we sold this company the Sanctuary and the culture it just with the culture was terrible and um and the leadership wasn't great. Um and I'm just being honesty. They were terrible people. The you know, the guy running the company was a terrible person and he ended up we you know, we

were trying to buy our company back. And because you know, I, like I said, I grew up like I love the music business. I love what I do. Um, I grew up loving this business. I grew up loving the music. And then it felt like I didn't want to go to work in the morning. I didn't want to go into the office is and I wanted to buy the company back. And so I started this negotiation to buy the company back, and we couldn't reach a deal. And

then somebody told me, who works in finance. They said, hold out for a little bit longer, because if you hold out, I don't even think they're gonna be able to make salary. They're not even gonna make your your your uh, your paycheck. So I'm walking into a restaurant and I never forget it's on my birthday. I'm walking into a restaurant, and my attorney at that time, David Landy, calls me up and he said, you know, are you by yourself? I said no, but I can walk out.

I said, what's up? He said, Sanctuary. I just got a fact from Sanctuary and they're suing you and Jay for calls. I said, what's the calls? He said, they don't have a cause. And what we found out was the cause was they couldn't make our paychecks and they didn't want to pay us out. And and you know, our business is very rare when anybody in our business

gets suit for calls. And to have that on the front cover of a variety, you know, magazine or whatever, and to know that, like it just was they just with terrible people, and we ended up being able to you know, they ended up having to pay us out. And you know, I, you know, I ended up starting a new company, but it was a valuable lesson and culture and people and that the new company is atom Factory. Was Adom Factory until the audience Why you named it

atom Factory? Um? The idea what Adom Factory was? You know? Thinking about it was something I wanted to do, something small but yet powerful, and you know, and and and the name Adam just kind of some summarized it for me, like you know, um, you know, because I never wanted, you know, a talent roster with a hundred people on the roster. But how can I build a small company but that still has some gravitizing importance? So how do

you sign Leady Gaga? Um? Got guy I met Gay got through a guy named Vincent Herbert and Vincent Um I had known since I was coming up in the business. And he caught me up one day and he said, I got this girl who you have to meet. Um, I'm flying her from New York tomorrow and I'm gonna bring her by. And you know, he showed up and she walked in with you know, these big sunglasses on and you know, no pants and fishnet stockings and played hit after hit. Um, it was what what I loved.

What I loved was it looked like she landed from another planet. But she owned it. And I told Vince, I said, you gotta bring her back, like just promised me you'll you'll bring her back. And a few months later he he actually he lived up to that promise and he bought her back. Now, when you signed or did anybody else want her? No, she had she had

just gotten dropped from deaf Jam. Um, probably a few months prioritized meeting, she had gotten dropped from deaf Jam and um, you know she kind of I went to West Virginia for a while and like spent some time with a grandmother and um, and so she was like, you know, it was one of those things with where you had nothing to lose, like you know I had.

I was going through a terrible time financially. You know, this was like two thousand and seven when we met, going like so right, you know, I had invested everything into this new company, even fired me right before that, and um, and you know my wife and I, you know, we were losing our house. You know, her and my mother in law literally pawned their wedding rings that to save our house. They you know, our kids were getting kicked. You know, we couldn't pay school tuition or anything like that,

so financially I was completely wiped. Um and when Gaga came, that was like the only thing I had to work on essentially, and she had just gotten dropped. And I think it was one of those things where is you have nothing to lose, and like you gotta make it work. And we both really really had to make it work. And what did you tell her to get her to sign with you? You know, I took her to a

fancy restaurant called Spaghetti Warehouse. We went to Spaghetti Warehouse, I swear to you, and um and uh, and we just talked. I think we spent like a couple of hours together. And then I remember I think it was I think it was. Wasn't it Layla's birthday? Baby? Yeah, and because I remember it was my daughter's birthday and um, and it's and I had to stop for cupcakes on the way home. So it's literally me and Gaga standing

on um little Santa monicat like sprinkles cupcakes. Remember it used to be like a line outside the door, and like, you know, she's you know, looking like Gaga on like in front at Sprinkles and we're but we hit it off right away, like we like it was. We got

each other right away. And um, I believed in in her vision and she trusted me with everything, and we we you know, and and but a few things like this is what's interesting, Like like a lot of times, you know, you you you hear, you know, the sort of romantic stories about you know, how every thing happened or whatever. But you know, Vincent Herbert had just walked away from his record label, UM that he had with a guy Barry Hankerson. So Vincent kind of left his

record label behind. So this was his new thing and Goga was the only thing he had. Jimmy was in the middle of his divorce at that time, UM, and you know, Interscope was probably this was probably one of Interscope's tough as years, you know, during during that time period or whatever. And so Jimmy was kind of doing his thing and left us alone on the guy got projects, so basically kind of gave us carte blanche. So we

were kind of running doing our own thing. So she was making these records and he was focused on Pussycat Dolls. So every record that she would make Jimmy was taking the records like you know, and she would give records to Pussycat Dolls or Rodney jerk And I remember one record that you know, uh, she had written with Rodney Jerkins and she wanted it for herself and Rodney's like, no, she's a new artist. I'm not giving her this record. I need to get this record to Britney Spears. Brittany

is you know, she's a superstar. We're giving this record the Britney Spears and Goga was pissed. Um. The record was called Telephone, so of course, you know, Gaga becomes gay guy. And Brittany had recorded the record as a demo and she's like, nope, get that record back. And she put Beyonce on that record, and that record became, you know, a number one hit. But she couldn't keep a record because everybody would take it because she wasn't a big star. But I started keeping making sure we

could keep those records. So just Dance we kept, which became a number one record. Um, Love Game we kept became a number one run record. Poker Face we kept that one became a number one record, and um so it just was really fighting and and sort of a blocking and tackling. We'll take a quick break and come back with more of my conversation with director of Creative Services that Spotify, Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. This week, I'm speaking

with Troy Carter. Recently I interviewed Brian Fogel, who created Oscar winning documentary LUs. Be the first to hear next week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm tuned in Apple Podcast or your podcast Apple Troys. While you're there, be sure to rate and review the podcast. Okay, let's get back to my conversation with Troy Carter. Now. The story is she was making dance music at a time dance music was not on the chart or on the radio, and the interscope went to the wall for you. Is

that true? Yeah, it was. We were getting a lot of pushback from Top forty radio because they thought that it was to electronic because it was sort of four on the floor and read one who was the music producer was just um, you know, he came out of Sweden, so it was you know, sort of Swedish sound at that time, and we didn't take no fin answer, but neither did Brenda Romano, who was working Top forty radio at that time, and so she just kept knocking on

those doors. And but the Internet and being able to kind of build that story and come back to radio was really important. So we were building audiences um on YouTube and you know, and building this sort of international following on YouTube. We were doing the same thing on Twitter, We were doing the same thing um on a couple other platforms. And then NAT started translating into call out at radio so they would put the record on and

kids already knew the record. You know, the radio was late at that time because kids were already familiar with the record. Sort of what's happening with Spotify now, but saving that for a little bit later. Okay, Gaga blows up.

It must be an amazing learning experience for you. Yeah, you know, it's It's what I realized was, you know, it's levels you know, and the business and its levels in life, you know, um, because with Eve, Eve had a wildly successful career for hip hop artists, you know, and and even you know, we did her TV show and it lasted for you know a few years, but you know, that was primarily you know, it was African American audiences that was consuming you know, the the TV show,

So we weren't We didn't have that level of pop exposure at at at that time. So and I had glimpses of it through Sanctuary because Destiny's Child was you know, managed by Sanctuary and a few other pop acts, but I wasn't personally exposed to it. So with Gaga, only had experience as a hip hop manager, so I kind of managed her like a hip hop act. So we were doing three shows a night. Um, you know, the

sound was terrible half the time. You know, you know rappers, you know they're holding the micro like this or whatever, and um, so we didn't know sound. And um, you know Jimmy Iveen. She was opening for New Kids on the Block. And I remember Jimmy pulling me to the side after the first show at Staples Center and he said, the show was great, sound was terrible. This is what you need to do to fix the sound. You know, this is the guy you need to call to fix

the sound. And he taught me, you know, sort of sonically with pop acts as supposed to sound like. And then I met Arthur Fogel and Michael Rapino, and they taught me what pop acts as supposed to tour like, you know, So it was it was I was I felt like I was in school learning a lot of this stuff. So where I knew this sort of basic um fundamentals of protect your client with everything you have. And so my instincts were worked, you know, in terms of of protecting a client, but in terms of global

touring and making and building a global superstar. I've gone to countries I had never gone to, and you know, it just was a whole new experience. And at any time in the height of her career did another manager try to steal your act all the time? You know. I remember I remember getting a call from UM just this is as she was really this is as the first single was taken off, and her lawyer, Um, her first lawyer called up and and said, um, uh, I'm

not even gonna mention him. Uh big, big, big manager calls calls up and he wants to take a meeting uh with with with uh And this is why I love her. By the way, big manager called up the lawyer tried to set the meeting up and and like around me and she called me, Wow, she called me, and um, she said fire him the lawyer. Yeah, that's great, But eventually it does end with Stephanie. Now we've talked

about that. But for the people who don't know the story in retrospect, I know there was an issue she had to do boyfriend, etcetera. Did you see it coming? No, you know, I don't think you ever see that ce C C that type of thing coming. And um, and you know, and and of course you know I can't get into any of the specifics or anything like that, you know, Um, but and I and I don't want to sit here and bullsit you and and and you know,

say any sort of fake story. But you know, the reality is, you know, she and I had a credible relationship, like and even to this day, I still I still love her despite anything that's happened with her. H No, we don't we know contact with her right now. And um, but you know, I think it's hard to go through that sort of period of time and and where you're pretty much living on a bus together. You know, you're

traveling the world together. You know, UM, just down to like you know, birth of kids and you know everything, so where and and it's not like I had a big roster, you know, for the first when I was managing GOG. I think for the at least for the first couple of years, she was really the only client that I was that I was focused on, So she and I were really tight. So I wouldn't yet So when when it when it comes, I don't think you've ever prepared for it, you know, so and and it's emotional.

You go through the sort of the motions of hurt and anger, and and and and everything else or whatever. But the reality is, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't give it back for the world because I think it was an incredible experience. She helped my career just as much as I helped her career. We both came up and in the business together, and um, and life happens, man like you know, life, life happened. Now, since you've managed her, stop manager, she has not had a hit.

She's had very successful road business. First with Tony Bennet, she's brought If you were to manager again, what do you think she should do to sustain and build her career. The good thing is, you know we're talking about and I'm not just saying this. She's probably one of the most. And when I say one of the most, I'm not even saying broadly. I'm talking, you know, top five most talented artists and in the business. And it's very hard.

You know, probably you know when you look at her live show, it's probably only a couple of artists you know that that is up on that level in terms of live live concert performances, playing like piano is you know, it's vocalists, like you know, performance artists, top top top, top, top level. Find it's just getting the records. That's all it boils down to. It's like you know, if if, who,

who are you collaborating with? And and the reality is finding making making great records with superstars is hard and it's a village because you got have to have incredibly strong producers in the room who can push back. You have to have an incredibly strong person at the top of that record label because Jimmy, basically Jimmy was tough. Like you know, you bring records in. Jimmy's a record producer, so Jimmy's gonna tell you how that record sounds or whatever.

Vincent was a record producer and a songwriter, so Vince is going to tell you how to how that record sounds or whatever. And so it's a filter that it goes through, so it's not just the people in the room that are that are collaborating. And you put the record out, you gotta beat you gotta beat that record up, and you gotta be tough on tough on that record. But I think she I'm not worried about her, to be honest with you. It's like, you know, artists like she,

She's just one of those artists. She's gonna be around for fifty years. It certainly seems like that. So while she's at the peak of her success, you meet a guy who guide you into the investment tech world. Can you tell the simple multitude about that? Yeah, it was um. You know, we were doing we were doing a lot of experimenting, UM with social media and I and I've always been curious around other businesses, you know, so that's been a thing where I just want to learn everything

I can about what you do. Like so if I'm curious, I'm going down the rabbit hole. And UM, and we started. I remember I got invited to do a day trip to Silicon Valley and I never gone to the valley before and never gone to Palo altoo before and UM and I flew in in the morning and my first meeting was with I think it was David simmon off from Yahoo, like at a coffee shop at like eight o'clock in the morning and you know, and just he's telling me about the valley and you know, and just

his history and everything and very very interesting. And then my second meeting was at Palentteer and UM and if you if if Palentteer is probably the most sophisticated technology company in Silicon Valley. And it was founded by a guy named Joe Lonsdale who was Peter Tiel's like you know, protege, you know, as Peter was coming out of PayPal, and you know, I go into their offices and it's like the TV show twenty four And what Palentteer basically does

is they track um, terroristic algorithms on the Internet. So and so when after nine eleven, when the FBI was building air thing and CIA was building air thing, the d A was building air thing, none of the technology talked to each other and you know, and really worked in a way to and Palenteer figured it out. So I'm seeing this with my own I'm like, am I even you know, it's like, you know, some serious stuff.

And then we went to Facebook and all of these companies, and then and that night they threw me a barbecue at Joe Linsdale's house and and I'm talking to all of these guys and you know, people could barely look you in the face. And you know, there's like as Berger's Convention. I told my wife, I'm like, I'm doing

this wrong in l A right now. Like it's like everybody's driving I'm driving a Rolls Royce and these billionaires are driving prius Is and uh and this is revenge in the nerds and the nerds one big and um. And then they started inviting me into into deals and said, you know, you want to invest here. And I started investing here and then invest in there. You're listening to my conversation with Director of Creative Services and spot By Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in

Santa Barbara, California. I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to listen to sound bites from the interviews and see some of my guests, check it out it at tuned in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now we're of my conversation with the director of Creative Services at Spotify, Troy Carter on the Bob Left Sets podcast. You were pretty much the first person, certainly in the music business who

was investing. You know what, because I went in and I would probably go to the valley at least twice a week, so I would be in l A three days a week, and i'd be in San Francisco and Palo Alto two days a week, and I would start parking myself and people's offices and setting up shop in their offices during the day and um. And then when I remembered it was one of the guys I met was it was a guy named Shervin Pishavar and Shervin Um he had just sold his business and he started

um investing at a firm called Menlo. And he caught me up and he said, I want to do this thing like this sort of uh, we're gonna be like this, this sort of Jedi investment group, and I just want you to be one of the Jedis and um, and he caught me up about I think Warby Parker was one of the was it the first deal that Shervin Um asked me about and then um the second deal was was Uber. But then he said, well, you know I want to do I want to start putting l

A people into into the deals. Can you help introduce me to some people in in l A. And Um, so I started introducing them to to some people in l A. And we put some l A people into the Uber deal and then kind of started building this thing that sort of bridge between San Francisco and and

in l A. Did you get compensated for establishing those relationships? Uh, just as an invest or, so so just from my my my compensation was Shervan would put me into he people would put me into more deals, and then the way And this is the other thing I loved about the valley that was so different from the music business. The music business is zero sum. It's like some in

order for you to win, somebody has to lose. And then when and then the structure of a record label, um, whenever there's sort of a windfall, only the people at the very very top of the pyramid get get wealthy and nobody else gets gets wealthy essentially, and um and in technology and an investment. The way it works is the opposite, because you you you want the healthiest syndicate around the deal so that the entrepreneur and the company

has the best chance of success. So if I know that this person here and this person here and this person here could be very helpful, I want them, then I want them in the deal because I'm gonna do better. And so that's how that's how this sort of is a network effect. So like you know, Rocking, I would put rock Nation into deals, then they would put me into deals. Um you know, Scooter and I start putting each other into deals. Gayo, Siri and I started putting

each other into deals. Um you know, I remember it is funny enough. One of our companies, one of the first companies I invested in um it was a company called zim Ride that came to my office and we invested and they would calm work out of our offices in l A and then um after Uber launch, the founder caught me up and he's and he said, I want to see can you connect me with Live Nation because they have these festivals and we have this our

car pooling business. I want to see if we can car pool people back and forth so I called up micro Rapino UM. Michael was great, he did the deal and Michael put you know, put some money into the company. And fast forward, that company went from zim Ride to become in Lift. So you know, and this is eight

years ago. So in terms of that that sort of value at that particular time seven or eight years ago and when it becomes now, that's how you That's so when you say the compensation, is that sort of flow that that that that happens. But I'm not asking anybody for money or anything in return. In your office, you have a whole wall of the companies you've invested in at this point in time. How many companies do you think you've invested in? UM is probably about a hundred

and twenty. And if a hundred and twenty, how many went completely bust? Uh, completely bust? Probably thirty or forty? Probably third about thirty I would say, are completely bust, probably forty. I would put him in in and a third a third and a third. You got you got winner, you got winners, neutral and and dogs. Okay, so you're doing this, You're done with Gaga, and then you'd like record label. I might just have a record label, right,

and then you have Making Trainer. Okay, the interesting thing from the outside observer, when you're involved with Making Trainer, she's everywhere and successful, and since you've been gone, she has not achieved that level of success, showing that your ability. But at what point do you you were an investor in Spotify, at what point do you wake up and say, I'm gonna cross the street from being a manager to

working for Spotify. So I invested in Spotify, and I think it was like two thousand and eleven, two thousand eleven, and UM and Daniel and I we we ended up. We we didn't initially meet when I'm used it and then I think it had to be about six or seven months later. UM as a group called called Charity Water out of New York, a guy named Scott Harrison. He put together a group of probably fifteen or twenty founders to go to spend a week and a half in Ethiopia and UM and basically you you build um

wells and different villages through throughout Ethiopia. And Daniel was on that trip. And when you when you're in uh and and suv for four hours with somebody going through villages and you know, you're you're seeing you know some you know, it's it's it's incredible. It is very emotional, you know, kind of visiting these different places like just in but like if not even in a sad way,

but it's like the people they are fa tastic. But he and I didn't meet sitting across the desk from each other, and I think that connected us in a way where we got to know each other personally before

we did any sort of business together. And so when Spotify was, you know, had come to America, I would, you know, he and I would talk strategy, whether it was people who were holding back albums from you know, from the from the service, you know, some communication strategy, you know, some introductions to managers and things like that. But every time he would come to l A, he and I would spend a bunch of time together. And he had just become one of my favorite, my favorite people.

And then, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, I was, I was so burned out from being a manager. And I've done it. I've done it for seventeen years and um and like you said, you know, Megan Trainer, Charlie Pooth and a few other clients you know where like my my the last clients on the roster or and I saw, you know, I get I get signs

in my life. It's almost like gott to pull the rug up from under me sometimes, like you know, but you know, if if I don't want to make the decision myself, and I saw I started to see some of the cracks and Adam Factory's business. Um, I started to look at the future of like the management business for myself. And I I wasn't getting up in the morning excited. Um and you know, to to the amount of I don't I don't phone it in, Like I just don't have the thing where I can phone it in.

And if I'm working for a client, I'm putting my soul into it. And when you put your soul into something, and you know, you get punched in the gut and it's like you know, you're not appreciated, and you know it's like you know, sometimes you know, some clients to you know, you you you got to drag them across the finish line and you gotta explain to him why should you shouldn't cancel a show, or you should you should show up one time, or you should do that

I just was ready to do something different. And Daniel and I started having these conversations. And I remember I was sitting at the Soho house. He and I were working on a project together. Um I was. I was testing something out for him on on the Spotify platform.

And we were at the Soho house and we started talking about what this sort of creator services thing would look would look like, you know, sort of from the outside end, and um, and we started having one of those what ifs conversations, and I remember, you know, I talked to my wife about it. I got cold feet. Like I had agreed to it, then I got cold feet and I told him, you know, I don't think I'm gonna do it, And you know, we went back

and forth and no saggeration. Within a six week period, I had wound you know, I had wound down Atom Factory and was in Spotify about six six I've lived with you through a lot of challenges of Spotify, but now streaming is one. Revenues are up. What you are the major challenges you're facing now. Um, you know, I think so you know this the streaming business. I think we're still in its infancy right now. So you know, I think you have some markets that are mature, like

Sweden's very like a very mature market. Um. America to me is still a young streaming market. Um. You look at places like India that's still you know, young, and what's gonna happen in and sort of Africa, um, and you know some of the other markets as well. I think it's I think in terms, I think what we

had this is more of an industry thing. It's so out of defining as companies what our relationship is with the rest of the with with the rest of the industry, because you know, I definitely foresee you know what, what what all of our roles are right now are gonna look much much different over the next ten years, meaning what it is to be a record label, what it is to be a talent manager, what it means to be a promoter, you know, and what it means to be an artist by the way, so all of this

is gonna look different. So I think just the thing is being able to um get who gets to the future, Who gets to the future the fastest? Okay, um, I got a number of questions. Let me think of the one. Let's go to the one that everybody is concerned about playlists. What are we here in the street. We hear the individual playlist or is being squeezed out by the major labels. We hear that what do you mean by that when

you say that? They were saying that, you know that it's the major label playlists who are major labels playlists, and the Spotify playlists are getting most of the streams, and that the the major labels have power on Spotify akin to their power at radio with their promotion teams. I don't, I don't. I don't agree at all, because you know, I think I'm not saying that. This is

my point. That was what people say, yeah, yeah, and which I which I don't, I don't agree, And um, you know, and I talked to the indie labels all the time, and you know, it's it's funny because you know, the indies like people that have this sort of big narrative out there. And then you know, and then I asked him a simple question, are the indie labels doing better you know now that that Spotify is here than

than they were before? And and uh, unanimously to answers, s you know, because the indies are doing are doing much better now. Um, I think, and as as far as playlists are concerned, So just we we have forty playlists owned and operated by Spotify, all different types of

niche like niche playlists as well. So we do have the sort of flagships to you know, Today's top Pits, Hot Country, Viva Latino, Rap, Caviare, R and B like all of those flagships, but then you've got a ton of other sort of mid tier and feeder playlists that kind of feed up into them for most of the artists that that that we're talking about, we're talking about

artists who will who would never get on radio. By the way, like we know how Top forty works, you better have a huge budget if you want to get if you want to take a record all formats, be prepared to have a half a million dollars to to go all formats to get a top ten record at radio um and so, and you need you need a real system to be to be able to be able to to to to do that. And then you have to have a certain type of record with a certain

type of sound. And so if you're looking at Top forties specifically, you figure it's let's call it twenty five slots and then let's call it twenty artists that are gonna fulfill those those twenty those twenty slots, and you know, because of the artists who are gonna have multiple songs and in those slots. So you got uh one tenth of a percent, and then you got the one percent, and you know, then then then it kind of breaks

down from there. So I think the sort of ecosystem of our playlist gives a fair shot to the entire industry at that at that point. And what what I the the one thing I like what I love about you know, spot if I is that people can't figure it out. You can't. There's no it's no hype. So it's not you can't come in there and and and sort of hype your record to get us to put it on on on on a playlist. The data doesn't lie.

So it's like, you know, okay, but if you talk to like Daniel Glass, he comes to l A, you'll hang out at Apple Music, will go to Spotify. To what degree is the personal relationship important? Per Personal relationships are always going to be important, right, but they're only gonna be important to a certain extent. Because as much as I love Daniel and if Daniel doesn't walk in the door with a great record, Daniel's record is gonna

be treated like everybody else's record. Essentially lucky enough, you know, Daniel walks in with Jade Bird and she becomes one of my favorite artists and we're carrying a jay Bird flag throughout throughout the building or whatever. But with that being said, a lot of the stuff that major labels are signing right now aren't coming through any label. They're

coming through Spotify. So it's we were it's between our editors, um sort of looking at blogs, living on SoundCloud, you know, sort of digging in the crates, kind of finding new stuff because they want to discover things. I get calls from our editors basically saying, um, hey hey, Troy, I

found this record. Um, we gotta they gotta figure out to aggregator to put it through because there's no record label, and then this act will end up with fifty million streams and they'll end up with a record deal and then the labels you know, are are signing them. So that's not a lot of the rap caviare stuff is with stuff that our editors found. Even on the pop side. Mike Mike baggage finds things and then he puts it into the pop playlist and then they end up getting signed.

So if we what do you see the future, Because we can go on Spotify right now, we can see the Spotify Top fifty changes every day. We can see the number of streams and except for the Superstar of superstars with one single, radio is way behind. They won't add multiple tracks, they're off the months. Find what do

you foresee the future? There? You know, I think I think radio's in trouble, you know readio radio as we know, it's in trouble, and I think it's inevitable because the only way from radio that you make your business better is to build the uh an experience that's worse for the consumer, meaning you know, you gotta put more ads

into and into into the product. So you know, I even know when if I go and out and I turn on radio, is a high probability that is going to be commercials on so soon as soon as I turn it on. So that's one sort of friction point, you know, out of the gate. Then the second friction point is radio relies so much on research because they want to do they need to de risk it or whatever.

So you know, it's not like when uh DJs and programmers could make independent decisions before, and they felt something and they could put it in, they could put it in right away. A lot of the radio stations are looking at Spotify data and kind of using that to decide which which records they're they're gonna put in, So by the time they hear that, that record is old

on Spotify. So, you know, so for my kids who get in the car and they're you know, going on Spotify and YouTube to kind of consume their music, if they turn on Top forty radio, whatever they're hearing is already months old by that time. So I think you lose a consumer at that point or it starts feeling like, um, almost like an adult Top forty because you know, you're

you're playing old music. So I think that's a big I think this is a gap and for us, we can't you know, and I think this is a big, you know, sort of gap and friction point it you know, Spotify and and and frontline record labels, we can't keep your record in while you're going for your radio plan because our consumer has already moved on to your second

or third single. By the time you know, you're getting added at at radio, so you know, so I think that's the part that from an industry perspective, I think on the label side, they have to figure out what's gonna be what's important to you, you know, being current with the consumers and being able to have you know, songs within the within these playlists, or you know, getting added at top forty. So we'll see how to and if we go on the US Top fifty, it is

very much urban slash hip hop. So the question that's obviously illustrating demand, but to what degree does Spotify have a responsibility to give attention to other formats? Let me just say for myself, let me give an experience. I want to know what's going on, So I'll go to Spotify Top fifty. I'll listen. Then if I think of all the other genres, country, electronic, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of acts today forget that. You know, people don't seem to understand that you get

paid based on whether people stream you or not. But is is are we purely speaking to the public's demand, or is there any way or is there responsibility for Spotify to boost other formats. So so and as a really really really good question, so where um so, But so we'll separate it for a second. So when you look at the top fifty, that's just demand, right, So that is that is the pulse of what people on

our platform are are actually listening to. Because the difference with radio is push, the difference with Spotify is pull. So that is consumers actually listening to that to that music because they can easily skip through it. Right, So

this is what this is urban. So urban hip hop is lead top forty right now in terms is pop music in terms of popularity UM if you look at you know, we talked last week we announced UM the new the new free app on on Spotify, and a lot of what we talked about was personalization because when the beauty of the beauty of of of data is being able to give everybody in this room a personalized experience.

So and and that's that that was a that's a big friction point because if you're a country music fan and you show up and the first thing you see is is me goes you know in the platform, you might churn out at that point, or if you can't, or if you feel sort of it's almost like you're walking into a room and not feeling welcome, you know, So how do you make people feel welcome when they walk into that room. So a lot of the stuff that we're working on right now is built around personalization.

So I think, what you what what people see in the in the new free app from the onboarding, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, allow you to tell us about yourself and and so when you come to Spotify, how do we give you a personalized experience? And then um, but you know, it's almost like the personalized experience would be to a the A story and the B story is more to shared experience, you know. And I think right now it's a little bit of the opposite where

it was in the past. It was the opposite where it was the shared story was for was out in front, and then the personalization was more in to discover weekly product and and things like that. We'll pause here for a brief moment and get right back to the director of Creative Services and Spotify, Troy Carter. As you probably know, I'm mainly a writer and you can read my work at left sets dot com if you sign up for the newsletter not only will you get my commentary, i'm music,

tech and my life in general. You'll be the first to find out when we publish a new conversation. Go to left steps dot com and sign up now more. Were the director of creative services that Spotify. Troy Carter recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Okay, we're gonna open up to questions. Now. Two things, One wait for a mic, and to please ask a question as opposed to giving your opinion. We're certainly interested in

your opinion, but everybody may not. It's certainly for dinner or other times. So I have Troy here, please make it a question. Since you're talking about personalization, so you're saying that you're getting receiving enough qualitative data to give somebody, uh human behavior personalization. That's that's how much data you guys are receiving too, to personalize get your face for

that person exactly, exactly. So just understanding how people listening to, how how people listen to music, and um, what types of people are listening to, what types of music allows us to give a better listening experience. So in terms and in that you know it's funny because when when you talk about data now because of the Facebook thing, you know, it kind of freaks people out right. Um, but data used in the right way can give you

an incredible experience. So if you look at ten years of understanding the way tens and tens of millions over a hundred million people listening listen to music, you really understand how to personalize and experience. And that's how That's why I discover Weekly worked really well, release Radar worked really well, and then um daily Mix worked really well. And now know, UM, I think we're we're we're we're

able to dial it in even even better. Next question, Jim, we have to Mike, So if someone else get a Mike Jake. UM, I have a question, if you guys have ever looked at the genre of music against the free service versus the paid service? Can you I think what he means is do people listen who are paying listen to different stuff from the people who are not paying? Yeah, and and and do you have data on that? So the answer would be I'm add percent sure we have

data data on that. UM. I wouldn't be able to break down specifically, I could say it broadly, you know, in terms of like sort of premium premium versus free, but um, not really specifically right right now, okay, gentlemen, right here, hey Troy, I'm here from Sweden. There's a lot of debate eight um back where I'm from about the sort of payment models from Spotify little bit a little bit louder place, the payment models from Spotify to the labels and from the labels to the artists, and

the sort of royalty pool that's being built up. Do you know if Spotify is planning to change anything in the model in the nearest future or instead of discussion that happens in the office. Well, well, um, and this

is is a is a good question. You know. The reality is, you know you kind of we I think we've gone through this sort of in a very very beginning of Spotify, when when people said Spotify doesn't pay pay out, they were right because it was no scale, right, So it's just you know, it's only a certain amount of paying customers on the platform, So the royalty payments were smaller in the beginning. You fast forward and out we paid out over eight billion euros, you know, to

to to the music industry. And but how that's distributed to artists and creators is based off of individual deals. So at that point, you know, it's we can't make UM rights holders pay out any specific way you know is their individual deals with individual artists. UM. But the reality is, I think quite naturally, UM, just what what

I see happening generally in the industry. The next ten years are gonna look a lot different because you have a lot of are you got I'm seeing artists that are UM and I'm just gonna speak very candidly, I'm seeing a lot of artists that are opting to stay independent because they're seeing how much, you know, you can really make, you can really make a living and you get you get real hash flow in terms of not having to wait you know, along along if you are independent,

how often you get paid from Spotify um you get It depends on your aggregator and how your aggregator works. But let's say on average you get a monthly payment that trails. Right, So if I didn't interrupt, do you get a monthly payment that that trails. But let's just talk about the future of the business. Right, If we look at the future of the business, and we look at a cross and this isn't me predicting Spotify. I'm just talking specifically for the industry and looking at other

types of industry. Why shouldn't artists get paid If uber drivers and lift drivers now can say cash out after their drive and that and it goes directly into their bank account of PayPal account, my guess is artists in the future are gonna be able to cash out after a day of streams how whenever they need, whenever they need that money. And cash flow is a big problem

with artists. We know you might need to pay rent, you might need to buy gear, you might be going on tour, whatever, you might need to buy a car, whatever you need to do. Cash flows an issue. So when historically you know, record labels have taken care of a cash flow problem. But in so I think, um, the question, the bigger question becomes value proposition. Well, the value proposition um for of giving up eighty five of your of your revenue and exchange for marketing promotion, cash advanced,

whatever is it gonna be worth it? And that's I think that's gonna be That's gonna be the biggest trick. But I think I don't think deals are gonna stay the same I think that the whole value chain is gonna change. I think record labels are gonna um evolve their their value proposition. I think managers are gonna evolve their value proposition. I think UM those services are gonna

start looking very like each other. Management companies will look like labels, labels will look like management companies and UM and then but from there, I think it's going to be about the value that the artists feel like they can capture. In the end, does that answer? Does that help? Well?

The other? The other? But the other thing about I think you're addressing is at this point in time, is it's sixty seven or sixty eight percent of every dollar goes to right soldiers, UM from from Spotify, Yes, some somewhere in the area. Right, So what happened If you've had to deal with an aggregator like tune in you pay, I mean the tune corret you paid once a year. All that money will be yours, assuming you both write

the song and record the song. But if there's someone in between, like a label, assuming they're paying you at all, your deal maybe fifteen cents on the dollar that they get. But the issue this is also an interesting issue because they don't really want Spotify if they really start talking about this and pointing at the labels their partners, the labels don't like it to be talked about. And we

don't have to point like it, I think. And that's the thing, like it's you know where we're it's it's we We are a very transparent company and you know we don't we don't play hide the ball with with with record labels. We talked very openly about the about our business to them. Um. We also talked to to to the record labels about what the future the business is gonna look like. And Daniels a guy who he lives ten years in the in in the future, like

that's that's how he he thinks. And you know, my and you know and I laugh because at times I say, hold on you your ten years in the future. Sometimes I'm dealing with people who are ten years in the past. I gotta client of clothes. I gotta close the gap a little because mine very quickly. Okay, No, So I think Spotify is great, and I think that the okay and the payout is similar to own distributions. So that's all great. I'm what part of my question was relating

to the sort of pool. What happens if I pay my I don't know what it's here not. So what you're addressing is if I pay ten dollars and only listen to bandex, should be index get all of my ten dollars. About five years ago somebody ran the numbers and they found that people were actually going to make less under that basis. I haven't seen the numbers run recently, but I would just go to the bottom line is

but it goes to the pool, right Yeah. Spotify pays based on the listens, and every at least once a week somebody emails being something that's got fifty million streams that I've never heard of. It's not on a label. So people email me all the time that they're getting not even a million streams. Why are they not making money? The demand is not that high, but interesting topics just want to gainst other people a chance. Gentlemen, lady back there in a million. A million streams isn't a lot

on our platform. I'm gonna switch topics just very quickly. I've loved to this so much. Thank you. My background I'm a Silicon Valley nerd and worked in digital audio forever started off at digit Design, and I have to hear, uh what the tip was that Jimmy Ivan gave you to make Lady Gagas sound better on tour. I've just been dying to know what that was. That was what we fired. We fired our front of house guy. I've worked with a lot of sound engineers, so I know Horace.

So hopefully it wasn't well. By the way, I love Horrors. By the way Harors we were. Horrors was out with us for a long time. He's great. By the way, he did some of our best tours. Okay, we probably got hard right over here on the left, just to show we have interest over here while he's standing, he can get it. We'll get next. Hi. Try great. This was a great discussion, moderation aside. I thought it was fantastic. Um, I mean talking ten years down down the road, the

way Daniel seems to look at things. Um, some of us also try to look that way. In terms of you know you, you mentioned a lot of strategic partnerships that you've had in your other business dealings. What about in terms of touring. Has Spotify looked towards strategic partnerships in that respect? You know, I talked, we we talked about touring a lot just because you know, it's it's

an industry that we feel is it's it's broken, you know. Um. I was talking to one of our engineers about you know, product, and I was telling them it was I think it was with Gaga, we sold out we would put a tour up. And I got a call from the promoter and they said, hey, we sold out for gardens and X amount of time and you know we had we we had another two or three in the queue. Said

I'm thinking, I'm like, that's not good news. Somebody should have known that it was you know enough, we could have done three more gardens instead of us having to go to fucking Jersey after New York. Because to be able to monetize not have to pack up and move your show, not have to be hard on the artist's physical body by having to move them around is so many inefficiencies and in touring, and so the way towards

around it right now is not through data. Is basically through guys who have been out on the road, through booking agents. UM, through hey, uh this pop act did this amount of O two so you should be able to do this amount of O twos or whatever. There's no data. The merchandise business is the same exact thing. It's no, it's no data. So we feel like, you know, there's enough data at least that we have where we can identify super fans on on the platform and specific markets.

And if with access to other types of data be at venue data, poll Star data, you know, the artists you know, um, their their fan site data some other things, you can really make well informed decisions on touring. But not even the Getta Getta. But I think even the product now though to me, is remedial in terms of what's available. Like, to be honest with you, I like routing the tour is the easiest part, right, but understanding who is I'm doing that now? I'm doing it now.

I did three hundred of them last year probably, so we you know, we probably sold close to a hundred million and tickets for people, so we we Well, so it's supposed to be clear. I get that email who's playing in my neighborhood from Spotify, but not not that okay, so but I'm aware of that, tell me about the super fans. So so basically, yes, so basically what happens is UM booking agents come to us or managers that

come to us, and we do two things. So we either can help UM a lot of like superstars that come to us and they'll say, we only want our super fans and x amount in the first few rows throughout the entire tour, So can you market the show with this with the with this ticket allocation to our super fans. So that's one one part of it, so where we'll market the show to the super fans on

our through our platform essentially through our data. And then the other piece of it is distressed inventory, So for shows that aren't selling, being able to identify those super fans and those markets who may not know that the show's coming through and being able to to sell the distressed inventory as well. So what you'll see and by the way, even with the amount of tickets that we sold through their UM, we still think it's remedial. So the products that you know we're working on right now,

we feel like it's gonna get better and better. So one like one of the things Daniel talked about on our investor relations day UM you know a couple of months ago, was this idea about a building out a marketplace. So essentially Spotify is is will evolve into a marketplace where artists don't need us to do it. They'll be able to come on there and reach their fans directly, sell their tickets to their fans, directly, merchandise, message their fans,

and to kind of build this relationship. Okay, who has the mic right now? I got I got one over here. I just found it. Thank you, thank you. UM. You brought up India verses or artists wanting to stay Indy. I think one of the biggest points of that is to have control. How many artists have recorded records and they're just sitting there. So I think the biggest factor and staying independent is to have that control of of

doing your career the way you wanted to. UM. I've been on both sides of the majors in the Indies. I spent my first fifty or sixty decades at a major and my last sixty decades on the indie side. UM. I think right now you know the answer is. I don't think it's radio or Spotify or TV or festivals or it's almost like what you did with Gaga is you ran around and did everything you know, I think the future kind of is the past. I was preceded by a guy named Juggie Gayles, and Juggie was like

a song he was he was a plugger. They called him song Fluggers and they just went everywhere they went, you know, and you go everywhere. You have this intuition and you navigate it and try to you know, fan the aims. I I think, you know, you brought up research and radio's research. I don't think the concept of research isn't incorrect. Like I look at the research on Spotify.

You're looking at what people are really doing. I think radio buildings archaic um call out research paradigm where they feel they can look in the rear view mirror or as those are the people who are listening to their stations. And that's that's what the problem is. It's it's they're so entrenched in that system and that's what's hurting them to, you know, to move to towards the future. Um. I was um thinking about Spotify. I was thinking about consumption.

Everything is about you know, you when you look at the numbers on wrap or Wrap Cavy or a hip hop, there tend to one right. Oh and yet where you may tend to one in terms of like I look at the amount of followers, the amount of listeners, the amount, how how huge hip hop is right now, And I was thinking about the live business, about about these festivals. I'm getting to the question, um, when when you're looking

at these festivals now, Lallapalooza, bonar Ruaisia. Every day there's more and more festivals and what's driving them and it's it's, Um, the irony is that it's a time when people can be alone, they can sit in their house and be on the internet. They're all going out to these festivals and all you know, it's it's it's fascinating to me. And when I look at these festivals and I look

at again, I'm not in the touring side. I'm on the recorded music side, but that that's being driven a lot by alternative and rock more than I think, you know, on the hip hop side. And my question to you is, why do you think there's such a disparity between you know, the recorded music side, the hip hop and the wrap and the live business where these people are coming out in droves. Why is the recorded music and have such a higher demand, you know, on the hip hop side

compared to I don't think it's a disparity at all. Like, you know, you see hip hop acts that are selling you know, arenas out every every single night of the week. So I like, I don't think it's I don't think it's a disparity. And then when you look at you know, I think they're especially with the younger consumer like a

Cachella consumer or or Lollapalooza. You know, you look at the festival lineups and its diverse, you know, and I think the diversity, yeah, I think the diversity and and um, even with this past Catchella is a reflection of the way you know, kids are listening to music, so where they are listening to all different all different types. Huh, it was Mike right here. I don't, I don't. It's not that it's catching up. I don't think it was

ever behind. Actually I think it was behind. I think a lot of the festivals were booked by old white guys. But but when you say live, live and festivals are two different things. The lot, the lot, the live business has never been, never been behind. But like I think festivals realized they had to wake up and diversify the business.

If they wanted to keep with the with the consumer. Okay, gentlemen here, Okay, yeah, um, going back, I think Bob, you're you actually asked a question about uh, possibly labels controlling too much of what gets to the list. Um you made a comment about the hype. Is you know there's no hype, it's the numbers don't lie? Um which list though? Well, because it's fortylists right, right, So here's my question is of those how many? How many editors

are there? And then sort of the part two is, let's take an act that has no touring base, right, and I'm gonna use some old terms, but you can never get to call out without having the ad, right, So you've got to have that initial ad before you can get to call out. So before you can get the numbers, there has to be some amount of hype or some amount of connection to those editors, right, No, not at all, Like it's it's just a it's a handful like So to answer, I'll answer if you your questions.

So is is a few hundred editors globally at Spotify, across the across the different genres. Our editors especially and in certain specific genres, they pride like part of their culture is you got to find stuff before everybody else finds it. That's like that's part of hip hop culture, by the way, and part of Latin culture is as well. You want to get there early before anybody gets it. So they're looking for and they're competing with other services

as well trying to find stuff. So a lot of the stuff that um Our editors are finding, like record companies call me every single day of the week trying to sign acts that are independent on on on Spotify. They're trying to nine these records that are that that

are doing well. And then you know, in the reality and just when we look at some of the big categories, major labels are over index and all hit records you got, you know, so you know, when we talk about you know, certain name like certain categories that people come to me sort of complaining about, they can't name me any big acts in that in that category in the first place.

So it's like, you know, I think major labels do an incredible job at making big top forty records, so that quite naturally they're gonna control a big portion of big top forty playlists. You know, when it comes to jazz music, maybe not so much. It comes to some other categories maybe maybe not so much, but I think it's um. I think it's one of those things that people have started talking about so much that people start

believing that that that's actually the case. And I just come from I come from a school of hit records work, hit records work, Doug Morris. I remember going into Doug Morris's office after he left Universal and right before he went into Sony and UM, and he was asking me about, UM, what a record that that we that that I put out on one of our acts, and you know, and I said, you know what, the video was too dark?

You know, I kind of saw this, you know, just change with the consumer, and you know it wasn't popping up. He said, no, it wasn't a hit. He said, it wasn't a hit. And that's the reality. Nobody wants to admit when their records aren't hits. So most of the complaints I get from people they don't have hit records. Over here. You mentioned that streaming is in its infancy.

What does it look like when it's matured? And also based on the data, what emerging genres are there that you guys are seeing, Well, you know, I think you know, when you talk about when when it's mature, you know, and this is where I think we underestimate, you know, the size of of what the global recorded music market is going to be. So everybody talks about the sort of heyday of the record business at its height. And you know when we were selling selling a lot of CDs.

More people are on on this planet are gonna have mobile phones than they had CD players. So and when you look at the amount of youth, the youth population that's rising in Africa and in India, you look at China that you know that's never been a factor, and how and the and the paid music market, I think it's gonna I think the music industry is gonna to

go exponential growth like we've never seen before. I think what we have to adjust to, you know, we are I think as and I'm just saying is and just generally speaking the music industry we operate as elite like as elitists. So where we're under this impression that everybody is gonna buy a subscription, and everybody in the world in a ford. And if you look at the price of gas this week, people can't afford to put gas in their tank. People are barely making it in this country.

People are struggling, and I think it's finding ways where Okay, whether it's through uh, you know, advertising subsidies or whatever. I think there's ways to monetize you know, a billion

plus consumer base across you know, the the entire music industry. UM. I think data plans, you know, And that's one of the things we talked about last week with the new free tier was being able to you know, we built you know, lighter data plans because you know, so on on your phone, it's not eating up your data plan. So I think what's ahead of us is gonna is it's gonna. I think we're gonna see something like we we've never seen before. But but the market is um.

I don't want to say a number, but I think it's way, way bigger than what we've ever seen. Young lady, right here, have you been waiting? I? UM? What about the role um of curators on the platform and independent curators. Is Spotify developing a program even for example radio stations, blogs, um, just independent curators. What I don't see anything being done

for profiles for those entities and people. You you have independent curators that um, that are on the platform where you know where they and some people do a really good job at promoting their playlists and they you know, built followers. Uh um. You know, for us, our priority had to be our own and operated playlists, you know, because I think we were able to control the integrity

of those playlists. And what I mean by that is just making sure it doesn't turn to a place where people can pay people to get on playlist and you know so and I think you know, when that ecosystem was open in the in the beginning, a lot of you know, we had to change the terms of services because you had a lot of people paying to get on playlists or you know, exchanging favors to get on to get on playlists. And the only thing that does is makes for uh a terrible consumer experience versus best

song wins. So essentially, if we can program in a way where where best song wins is a better experience for the for the consumer. But we're not like there are a lot of brands and people who are building their their profiles. But our priority is is is owned and operated. Who has the mic? Now? Ye right here? I try just going back to the future of streaming UM, we see pricing differentiation for hires players like COB's entitle.

UM do you think that's sustainable? And my second question is, UM, there's new UM streaming platforms like Prime Phonic, which are focused on classical music. Do you think the future will be sort of based on differentiation by genre or do

you think the hardware ecosystem will dominate? You know, I think you know, just in my my opinion, I think UM, having a niche UM a knee service is deaf is difficult, right, you know, because when you can get and and everything essentially that you pretty much want to listen to him in one place, UM, you gotta have a compelling value proposition to drive somebody to pay specifically for that niche service and then UM this sort of financial models to

operate as a business around that. And my I just think would be and it would be challenging, you know, especially as you're competing against you know, some some of the some of the larger players UM in terms of you know, fidelity you know you got I'm one of the the niche consumers that cares about you know, sound and and for me it's specifically for jazz music. Like when I listen to jazz and um, you know, I got high fidelity speakers. I want to listen to it

and and and high fidelity. Um. But for a lot of the other records, is like, you don't need to listen to it in high fidelity, right, but you got to find a big enough audience that's willing to pay for it. Um. I'd love to get to a place where everybody cares about how how records you know, were intended to sound. But you know, I don't know if the general population, uh if that if that's something that

they really genuinely care about. And I don't think you've been able to, um, how like, so when the jump from cassette to CD was so exponential in terms of sound, and the jump from vhs too, you know, DVD was so was was exponential in terms of you know, a visual and sound, we haven't been able to kind of give any sort of exponential jump yet to make people want to leap from from this to that. Ye just talk Yeah, I don't okay, Jamie, Jamie, you have a question.

I probably good to see. Yeah, Um, I have two questions and I want to I'll cut it down to one. And so I'm large. Maria used to be at Pandora. The question that I have that I don't think anybody's asked you, what is the lowest hanging fruit that you think people are not picking off of Spotify right now? Used to drive me crazy that there were things I couldn't explain or I could explain, and people just wouldn't

do it, Like what are they not doing? I mean, I think going back to what you say, People and lois just I'm talking about the the industry, you know, Um, you know, Mark was talking about how are you selling tickets? You're like, we just sold a hundred million dollars worth of tickets? Like what what across the board is the thing that people should be thinking about that they're not.

I don't know, you know, Um, I think I don't know if I have an answer for the low hanging fruit, but I do think the industry one of the biggest problems that I see is this sort of people haven't been able to differentiate. People haven't been able to fully move into a new model yet because people still think

we're a retailer. We're not a retailer. Um. People's to think we're like radio, where we're not radio like so even down to the point where the people still haven't figured out who at the company should really interface with us yet. Should it be a promo guy, is that the sales team? Is it marketing? Like? So, I think it's kind of understanding that this is a totally new system. The way the old system work doesn't work with with

with with this, with this new system. And then so so and even down to going back to I get so many calls from people that say, I'm at a million streams and I'm like, a million streams is nothing, Like, it's not there yet. You gotta get there, like it's um but because people in the record business think a million records your platinum, a million streams isn't platinum, you know. So it's like, so it's this sort of uh chasm you got that that hasn't been crossed yet. So if

I can steal a quick follow up on that. Cycles, how do you do you have insight to tell everybody about cycles? And how I mean cycles are different now in a streaming with types of cycles, song cycles, uh, career cycles, album cycles, all of that, who's doing it? Right? So? So the way so I look at it as perpetual cycles, right, so it's not there's no more on on on and off.

And you know what what we see now is, you know, you look at Um you know, two good examples of like a Bruno Mars or at Sharon where their former albums just continue to kind of perform well. And Chain Smokers there. You know, I think Adam and And and those guys are are really brilliant in terms of how they they're They're just innovative in their approach to to

release the music, the hip hop game in general. I would just say, you know, they win blue you know, they win gold Star in terms of being able to um, to cater to new concert to the way consumers consume and um. And it's just it bugs me out because the record business we used to be so forward and how like when we we turned Tuesdays into events right where it was, you know, when we put out albums, the way we set up set up albums, film studios were envied away. You know that that that we did it.

And but yet Netflix is kicking our ass and innovation of releases. You know, so when you released you know, I was telling I was at one of the record labels and they were talking about all of their new acts that broke on, you know, because I was complaining about artists development, and I'm like, you gotta build stars, Like just because they're getting streams don't mean that their stars. And they're telling me what we broke this act this year, this act, this year, this act this year, and this

act this year. I said, I'll tell you what if you took those four artists right now and they got out of their car in front of the school that's across the street, and you took the kids from Stranger Things and they got out of the car, every kid's gonna run to the kids from Stranger things. Like that's this year's one direction. We don't have a one direction right now. That's one direction right now. You look at

how we're still releasing single single, single album. You're releasing three singles before album, and Netflix is dropping the whole season on you day day one because everybody wants it there. And I asked the record I asked the record label, I said, why are you still doing it like that? Because the radio, you want to build up a an audience first, because the first week, first week means zero,

first week means nothing anymore. So, so it's kind of just getting people to cross over to the new world. And and and I'm seeing some younger labels and some younger artists right now and that has no historical baggage. That are you know, plowing their way into into into the new world very quickly. Single album? If you're a new artist, should people even bother to make albums or continue to put out a continuous dreament product? If if you can make a great album, make an album. The

problem is, you know, making a great album. That's a big challenge. Jamie. You said something, uh that really kind of perked my ears up a bit. Um. You said that radio is in trouble, and I absolutely agree. And I think that you're that Spotify's integration into automobiles is going to even put another nail in that coffin. But we aren't there yet. We aren't. Radio is not dead yet.

So you had said something that you did with Gaga where it was um social media and YouTube and getting the music out there so that by the time it went to radio and they were doing their testing, that everybody was already familiar with it, so it tested really well. Later you said that labels kind of have to pick. Are you going to go the radio route where you put a half million dollars behind a track, or are

you going to go the Spotify route? And like, I does a label really have to choose or should they just be working it back? So let me let me clarify it. So so I don't think you have to choose between going to Spotify or going to radio. So I was talking specifically around if you have a single and you start the single off and Spotify, by the time you build up that big enough story for radio, chances are it's gonna be old. That single is gonna

be over on our platform. Yes, so so, but what we get a lot is complaints that we're not hanging in there long enough on the single because it's not building, it's not uh linking in uh, it's not fused with their radio stories essentially. And I think for us, it's not our that that's just not our problem because because only we gotta we gotta do we have to build the great experience for the consumer. That's the like, that's our number one thing. It has to be a great

experience for the consumer. And um so so that's where that's the sort of catch twenty two that we're finding. You know, some some of the labels in Okay, this gentleman, this is the last question for now, my Troy. UM a bit of a tech nerd question because you were saying you've building out a marketplace and then Daniel living ten years ahead of us. How much is which extent is AI and blockchain part of the discussion? UM? You know, UM, some I can comment on, some I can't comment on. UM.

I think it's just AI in general. You know, it's the future, you know, I think, you know, machine learning as part of what we already do in terms if you look at Discover weekly, Discover weekly as machine learning and UM, and I think the more data that you get the better than machines get. Right, So I think

it's gonna play a huge role. And I don't think it necessarily has as much to do with marketplace as much as it has to do with the personalization that that that that we're talking about and just being able to make the experience better for you when you when you up come on the platform. But I just don't think, you know, we we kind of got a sense that where machine learning is gonna gonna take us, the marketplace was more directed towards the block chain. I can't comment,

thank you, but you've been very open and honest. We've put you through the rigger for two hours. And by the way, I love Bob and Aga Hattie's conversations. I say, I got so many questions in my head, and I mean, we're off the audience. But when I say, on some level, we only scratched the surface. That's supposed to Howard Stern saying you said everything, You've only said a little bit. But it's been so wonderful that you've come here and

uh endured this for two hours. Troy, thanks again, thank you, thank you. I'm sure you dug that I loved. Troy is such an animated character, whether he's telling stories working in Spotify now, are hustling back in the early days in Philadelphia and in California. So once again you're listening to the Bob left Sex Podcast Troy Carter, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I know you love Troy

just like me. Until next time, I'm Bob left Sez Meta