How He Built Diplo

34:29This is back when they started. He would do the morning show. He'd get there at like 6 or 7 a.m. and play records for three hours. And he's a little bit sardonic, and he would talk a lot, and he'd be like, wow. But it was very good radio. It was very compelling. He does his own thing now called The Dew, which I still listen to three or four times a week. Oh, shit. And he still does like two, three-hour morning radio shows. He's got a drive-time show. He's got everything. But I'm an enthusiast around. I like music in general. But the radio part of it is really interesting. It's really cool to turn on a radio and hear a song that you know or maybe the one that you're working on or whatever.

35:09And then DAB is sort of undervalued. And then, you know, you can buy a little radio that gets DAB. I have a little radio here in Australia, but I listen to all the stations. It's pretty interesting. But you're super niche, right? Like most consumers aren't doing that. Most fans aren't doing that. Maybe not, but what I learned with NTS is that there are a lot of listeners. For everyone that maybe rejects Spotify, say, and wants an alternative for new music, emerging music, alternative, whatever, there is a station that exists that predates even NTS. And it could be a stream of the FM station, and you can find it online and you can listen to it.

35:50And you can put it on and have it in the background going like you would a playlist or the play button or whatever it is. So I like that there's options. And the numbers don't really lie. Like there are people listening to radio. I agree with you. It doesn't have the – I don't know from Australia because I wasn't here during that time. But it has a – everything is a small part of the whole now. so if you're breaking an artist today you would still put a lot of value in radio definitely i wouldn't look i wouldn't spend the money we used to spend on campaigns but there's an intrinsic value to it and there and there are there are promotion companies that are very good at getting the records that work in the right hands so like if you're a house dj or whatever um you probably have a radio show somewhere right so like a radio promotion company, those guys, they trust those.

36:46You can send them a white label. You can send them an edit. You can send them the new single and they'll work your record. And maybe it ends up on specialty, whatever. But I've seen, at least through my own experience, what I've seen is you could dismiss the radio promotion thing pretty easy, right? But if you have the right kind of style of music and it works in a category, you get it out there and all of a sudden you see, let's just let's use like uh morning becomes eclectic and it's the us it's kcrw right they have a playlist for their djs that play records on their radio shows so then all of a sudden you see your your song going into these playlists and people that are enthusiasts of that station their playlists and all of a sudden there's something starting to happen and so i think that really works you mean their playlists on the streaming platforms yeah yes so they might have a they have a playlist for their show and what they've in rotation and they put it on that playlist.

37:42And then suddenly you start noticing like, Oh, like, Hey, there's a hundred streams from this one play. What is this playlist? Oh, it's this radio show that's online or that's, that's a radio morning show in the U S but they have their playlist available to anyone because it's on a streaming service. And you know, Apple too, when they started, like when Zane went in there and started doing radio, if you were premiered, if you had an Apple music premiere, you were guaranteed, you could guarantee a lot of streams from that spin on the radio going into their Apple, like whatever the name of the playlist was, their Apple radio one, you could guarantee you're going to get a lot of listens based on that one spin.

38:30I don't know what the data is now, but it was very effective. And I just think maybe it, it goes along the lines. I'm not saying you're, it just kind of goes along the lines of what you value and how you value it. And, you know, I think the idea that doing music is easy is it's not easy. Um, so, so if I think about your key breakout moment with Diplo was this deal you did in France and then all the radio and connection, it came from, from that, that was like a pain flexion point? That was one of them. Um, there were a few, I think I worked with this company M theory for a while, a long time. Um, and we sort of, they were very instrumental in, I think a lot of people for a while were like, why are you working with these guys?

39:22And I don't think I was able to articulate it then, but I know for sure was that they provided something I would probably never have the skill set to at the time and maybe today still. And they were also very willing to work with me on how I wanted to do it. And I was very adamant about being independent. M-Theory are a label? M-Theory are a consulting – is there a consulting company? Marketing company? I actually don't know. What do you call M-Theory? What are they? They're like – So explain exactly what they did. M-theory, in science, it's the theory of everything. Okay. But there were three principles.

40:06And I would say for me, they were very instrumental in strategic development. And that goes from things that are structural to things that were typically the job of maybe a record company. And maybe the best way to frame them is strategic advisors. um and were they doing this for artists or were they doing this for companies and stuff as well like what was their primarily artists um i know i was like one of the first i was one of the first if not the first client um the guy who did the xx i know they worked with him on like touring or one one category they worked very closely with them on um i think now i think they work with like Jelly Roll now and stuff.

40:52I don't know. They're kicking ass. Yeah, yeah. I mean, two of the founders run Virgin now. Okay. They're behind the acquisition of Downtown and stuff for Virgin. Okay, great. So they're not, yeah, they're smart guys. Yeah. But yeah, they were very important into helping execute what I had set out to achieve and where I wanted to see it go. So the other role of the record company that played in you building Diplo was, I guess it sounds like it's underselling it, but it obviously was important, the PR side. So all the radio connecting to the right tastemakers, gatekeepers, et cetera. And then the brand strategy, which you engaged M Theory for and the business strategy there.

41:43Do you see that as still the role of the record company today? How has it changed since when you were doing Diplo? It's a good question. The role of the record company, I think, has changed dramatically over the last 20 years by virtue of a lot of different things. By what sort of the world is today, you know, and how you access music, how it's much more accessible than it was. You don't have to go anywhere. This could be a whole other conversation about just structurally what record companies are. It's tough to say because the role of the record company has just changed over time. And it's changed dramatically.

42:24You know, RCA, you know, before it was a record company, they sold phonographs and there were radio and radios. But, you know, before the market crashed in the 30s, they had the same market. They had an equivalent market cap to NVIDIA today. What? Yeah. But because it was, you know, the speculative trading of what radio could do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To culture, society, et cetera, as a technology. and now it is a record label and inside Sony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what I mean. Like it keeps changing and adapting and I would say record labels are very, big record companies are really good at adapting.

43:01It might feel very slow if you're inside it or you're trying to make something happen now, but they have been pretty great at adapting to the market and figuring out how to. Do you think that they're good at adapting or they just have been good at owning the assets so you have to go through them? I mean, it depends on what angle you're looking at it at. I mean, I would say if they weren't good at adapting, they would have sold off all those assets a while ago and they'd be something else, right? Vivendi wouldn't want a music division. Sony wouldn't want, you know what I mean? So I think it's both though, you know?

43:41So what is the role of record company today? Currently, I just think it's a rights position and it's probably a high interest loan to their bank. Pretty much. And so as a manager then, what should your expectation be of your label? How should you structure your business if you've signed to a label? I think that depends also on what kind of act. I think that the answer to that question depends deeply on what kind of act you are. if you're a 20 year old i want to be a pop sensation you know whatever the k-pop whatever it is then they're probably the best possible partner you could have because they have the most experience and sort of war chest to execute that um and if they sign up for it you know you have a better shot there in succeeding than you would elsewhere um it genuinely just depends like Like if you, sometimes you can't avoid it.

44:42Like maybe you get so big that it works against your best interest to not partner in some capacity with a major record company. How? You could be limited with your reach. Let's say the last part of the journey into completing the cycle of your particular project is frontline radio. They're very effective at delivering that to you. It could be retail. Retail plays a large role still in the lives of large artists. I think it's much harder to see, and it's much more obscure than it was when I started doing this. But like Target in the U.S., it plays a large role. If you're rolling out a big record and you're a fairly big artist, like Target plays a meaningful role in what you do if the eyes in those stores are relative to the album you're selling.

45:39Um, so those are maybe odd examples, but they're not. It's distribution of finance. Sounds like it. Distribution for the labels themselves. That's what they're offering you. Definitely. I think there are, there are certain places that have certain expertise, but a lot of managers are really self-sufficient now and are very smart. And there's a lot of tools in which you could conquer or you can accomplish, um, a lot of that you might not have been able to do five years ago, definitely not 10. So don't you find this really interesting that the record labels have evolved? Like, you know, I've watched all the busy documentaries about, you know, big bands and artist managers and stuff back in the day.

46:21And it felt like the manager signs to the label, the label does all the heavy lifting and does all the movements. And the manager just makes sure that they're not going to fuck it up. And they just sort of like, you know, work on the edges and inspire the team and whatever. But all the heavy lifting is done by the label. and then I feel like if I've got a chart and I'm looking at the kind of jobs that an artist manager has had to do over the last 30 years, it's probably slid over from the label piece by piece to the manager, piece by piece of the manager. Now you're in charge of content. Now you're in charge of this.

46:55Now you're in charge of this, whatever. And it's just like it's gotten to the point where labels are largely, there's always exceptions to the rules, but largely they are the bank and the distribution um and managers are now everything else and yes the label might help with the video clips or whatever but the manager is still leading a lot of that and doing a lot of heavy lifting so the manager's job description has maybe 100x over the last 30 years and the way that they are remunerated is exactly the same how do you feel that that affects the i guess professional development the ability to retain good managers like what how do you think that affects the management industry as a whole well i think if you want to make your profession a music manager you're kind of a little bit crazy um why because it's music yeah and there's a lot of career paths out there that don't involve music stuff you know um whether it's being in a nightclub until 5 a.m.

48:03or dealing with someone's feelings and emotions constantly, whatever it is. I think that the inheriting of the – inheriting the responsibility of partner companies from managers is maybe more of a newer trend in today's environment than it was X amount of years ago. From what I know, I think there's a lot of managers that are now doing both roles. Maybe there's a manager who has a distribution deal that can distribute an actor developing, whatever, and they can take on the burden of the other parts of process for their artists or artists. So you're talking about there have been evolutions where managers have been able to be the distributor or earn a piece of the distribution if they're doing the distribution work as well as the management commissions?

48:53Is that what you're saying? They just have solutions that, And they have more solutions now because of the growth of the sort of the growth of economy around music. And depending on the size or how clever they might be, they have solutions to sort of address a problem quickly and execute sort of their vision fairly quickly. I think a lot of the managers that you might be referencing that are taking on, that are onboarding a lot of the work of a record company, whether it's marketing, promotion, PR, the tone in which, you know, that particular project spoken about, et cetera. I think those guys are probably functioning as labels as well as purely management as well.

49:40I think, you know, there's, I don't think that's necessarily the rule though. I think there's a lot of managers out there who are very happy to have partners of big record companies because they're touring experts. Or some of them are just experts in big pop, right? Like they understand how to maintain and they understand how to create and or maintain a large scale sort of global act and identity. which there's a lot of things at major record companies. They're good with that. You know, like I don't know how to get someone on the a block of the today show. Um, and that plays a key role for certain acts.

50:23Right. So it just kind of depends. It's become a, I don't know. Music's really big now. You know what I mean? It's like a very, and it's very, um, it's a very broad based business now. You know, it's like, there's a lot of acts where I'm like, I don't know if they'll make, you know, And there are a lot of big acts. I'm like, I'm not sure if they'll be making records into their 50s. Like, maybe they'll just do a cosmetic line or open a chain of restaurants or something. You know what I mean? Rihanna hasn't released music in forever and she's a billionaire. Yeah, yeah. Was it Fenty, right? Oh, I don't know what the brand is, but she's crushing it.

50:59It's like lingerie and cosmetics. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That's always a good rumor out of LA. Like, Rihanna's doing a writing session. Like, oh, yeah, cool. so if i look at your skill sets you are obviously exceptional at building worlds around an artist and the and the yes the music is good there's a lot of artists with good music but it was a bit the world building around the artist that actually separated you and diplo from everyone else and as we progress further into this digital world and we get closer to ai music and And, you know, we're kind of like away from the physical world and old school radio as much.

51:39And we're about to hit this AI world. We're kind of still in this middle area here, I think. And while we're in this middle area, there's a lot less gatekeepers, if any. And that skill set of building brand and strategy and making the Toadie Hawk of music is now the only strategy that can work. obviously in smaller smaller smaller like versions of it sure but if you're not like you know getting a high rotation on radio it's not gonna not gonna make you sell out arenas anymore you know like alone so my question is like you've got this perfect skill set for this perfect time in in music right now um are you are you actively managing are you are you looking to build a roster like where is your head at because i feel like you you're sitting on gold and you just got to start digging no no like i mean i would i guess i guess i would but i don't know if i have i have a client and it's he's a young guy who who benefited greatly from sort of the digital era yeah he had an enormous tiktok song you don't say his name oh sorry his name yeah sorry his name's suburban yeah um but like the guy he like kept knocking on my door I didn't really, I was, you know, and he also, you know, it's a really, he's a really interesting, it's been really interesting working with someone like that.

53:07He's 26. So I got time on him. But, you know, the first song he released has went over a billion. Crazy. The first song, he was 19 years old when he wrote it. I think it came out right when he turned 20. Yeah. So he's never really experienced an environment that wasn't. Successful. big or viral or very like phone phone adjacent you know what i mean like his that's been his entire experience so far um so it's really interesting working with someone that's generationally removed and then the tools they had were wildly different yeah to what i'm used to so you're still in the game a little bit and you don't want to be a lot in the game?

53:57I don't know. It, it, it would depend on what, it would depend on circumstance and what happened. I'm not, I'm definitely not against it. I love music. Um, and over the past couple of years I've consulted and done advisory stuff. Um, but I'm, I'm sort of, I'm an avid music enthusiast. Um, and it's the thing I know the best. Um, I don't, I mean, I wouldn't say no, but I'm not like, you're not actively, I live in East Melbourne and a very quiet suburb that actually feels more like a village. Yeah. So, you know, uh, that's kind of what I've been, that's what I've been doing. So you, you know, you're no longer at the company you founded, you no longer manage Diplo.

54:40How did, how did those relationships end? I, so I definitely walked away from the management side of the business years ago, years. Um, it just was a lot. It was a lot to do it was a lot of work it was it was uh it was not without its challenges and and sort of its demands um there were a lot of clients there were a lot of employees um but uh but yeah that's yeah sorry what was the what was the what was the cost of of that work what was the personal cost to you my hair and so what do you what do you think so what was keeping you up at night you said you had a lot of employees how many you the the workload was crazy when we had the tour when we had the festival touring going we probably had slightly under a hundred with road crew and things like that crazy um at any given I think there were like maybe 30 some odd employees of like my when my peak was mmm something like that between the West Coast East Coast and then we had an office in England.

55:44Yeah. And you just burnt out and said, Hey, I'm done. Yeah, it was a combination. It was, it was a lot of things, but you know, it was, it was a lot of things when I, it wasn't like a drug problem or anything like that. No, I know. When I hear that you, the way you, you say you built Diplo with all these different partners and here and here and whatever, it sounds like the best way to build a career, but also the most exhausting way, because having that many partners and that many different things is like so much coordination and so much alignment i would say like clients themselves are not without their own difficulties and when and i just got i just i did get burnt from the amount of roles that we had determined we had wanted to in-house um and it was just a lot i mean i think it's a symptom of great ambition which is has positive aspects and it has negative aspects.

56:40And I think when, I think with Diplo specifically, since we've been talking about him with Wes, Wes and I's ambition met at exactly the right time. Like you couldn't, it was almost, it would, if it would be, if I were looking at it from the outside, I might go, well, that's pretty magical because we had, we had the same drive and the same ambition it was within the same orbit the goals were sort of different when it comes down to like what we wanted for our lives but it was we wanted it all and it was just a unbelievable pairing while it lasted and while we did it and i'm really i'm grateful for it and then his ambition remained and yours was like hey man we've i've i've got to tap out it was just our goals started they just weren't aligned anymore um and creatively because i'm seeing him online talking about how ai music is the best thing since sliced bread okay is that was it that seems like a dove like that seems like a new idea that is in his spirit right now it i don't think 15 years ago diplo would have thought that is my guess i've never met the guy oh i don't know where's where's a sharp guy um i get sent clips and sometimes i look at him sometimes i don't um which one or which which thing are you talking about that did it piss a lot of people off or something yeah so he's covering a lot of criticism right now for his view i'm not even saying i necessarily disagree with him but his view is that people don't give a fuck if the song sounds good it sounds good and if it's ai it's ai if it's a real person it's a real person it doesn't matter so i'm a dj i'm gonna pick whatever sounds good why the hell would i get a vocalist who's gonna give me a headache when i in two seconds i can get the exact vocal i want on my track and it's done and people won't care i think i've seen this one is this one with the kid or with somebody else i don't know maybe i'm paraphrasing or whatever but that's the sentiment of his view um i think something on i think something to understand about wes is that i guess whether or not you agree with him or not he is probably five times more active than some of the most active people you know active being hard working being involved in whatever's going on in culture he wants to be a part of it and he's active he's always doing an event or a club night or something um so he's probably getting i would think some of the input and maybe some of what you're hearing are based on the last lunch he had with whomever i mean he might be an investor is he an investor in suno i don't know I don't know.

59:43Probably. I would assume so. But I think anchoring any ire to Diplo or to Wes around AI and the comments he makes around AI music is misdirected. Because it's probably just you don't like – you don't A, like the messenger, B, you never like the messenger, or C, that you completely disagree. And it could be all three. um i'm not sure which one was it you said suno i'm not sure i don't know enough about like it's ui how it how have you ever used suno you never used it no do you know how good it is no i mean i never use this oh my god i gotta show you something all right so i i was gonna interview the the founder of suno they just raised 400 million dollars they are on fire right i know about the optics of their business, which sound, it's a, what is it?

1:00:43It's something like a, it's over$5 billion valuation and they're in like a D round or something. Yeah. Something like that. So I got to imagine how many paid customers do they have? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just off the top of my head. I got to imagine, I know they have a lot of customers and just understanding the, understanding the logistics of the software itself and the computing. I would imagine whatever they're making in revenue is short because they can't keep up with the computation costs of the actual product itself. So you're saying they're losing money on every customer? Probably.

1:01:22Okay. And I'm basing this purely on – I don't – it's hard to disagree. It's probably true. I'm just basing this on what I know about computation, about the carrying costs of companies like this work within software like this. Yeah. I would imagine if the music community is suspect of sort of a speculative player and an untested and really unknown technology platform or tool or whatever you want to call it, it's probably rightful. however it's unclear whether or not these companies survive and become something that is everywhere all the time at our fingertips because i don't think a casual i think the casual user of if i'm again i'm saying this without i don't i've genuinely i don't know a lot about like the what the thing is.

1:02:24I know people who are on the board, I've had, and I've read things, but like, if I just think about a customer, let's say they have a million customers, right? Spotify probably has a couple hundred million customers. So you're very far away from a goal. I think the average person and their interaction with music is probably very ambient by way of like the average person, like here's music in a shopping center or on a radio, or I like that song, or they see it on a event special for television or something. So the idea that hundreds of millions of people will start creating music, maybe it's right, but I doubt it.

1:03:13I think what they would do is like, I want to make my Uncle Gary a birthday song. I'm going to make my cousin. So you're talking about the viability of the Suno business, which I think personally, who gives a fuck? If they succeed, if they fail, it doesn't matter. What does matter is the technology and the implications of how good it is. So I will – let me finish, right? Sure. So I contacted Mikey, who's the founder of Suno. I said, hey, I'm going to be in New York. I want to interview you about your tech. He goes, great, let's do it. And we're going back and forth for a few weeks, set it up. Then I was like, oh, I actually should probably use this thing before the interview.

1:03:55So I downloaded it and I could not believe how good it was. Like within 15 seconds, I'll play you a song, right, that I made in 15 seconds. Do you know there's this rapper called Connor Price who I like, right? I just copied and pasted his lyrics. I put it in the system and I put in this prompt that was like, Turn this into a blues song Okay 15 seconds This is the song that was made

1:04:23I may have made the song fast, but shit man, can't fucking find it.

1:05:00So this song emulates what Connor Price made? Just his lyrics. The whole genre is completely different. I can play the original for comparison, but it's unrecognizable with difference. I just stole the lyrics because I didn't want to write my own lyrics. Okay. but um so wait so i i get i get i understand it right so so in 15 seconds i turn that's the song this is the original right okay i think i've heard this song yeah i didn't feed it the original sure i just pasted the lyrics in i said make me an old school 60s blues version and it outputted that it's pretty like a pretty remarkable 15 second effort okay right so if you are and then i went down a rabbit hole i started playing a little more whatever and i started to think about this what's the end game of this right where you know this is the worst it's ever going to be right now right and you just said most people are ambient listeners right so if i can make songs that are as good as anything diplo's ever made or as anything maybe maybe i don't know i want to mention an artist's name but better than most artists can make maybe you won't you won't be able to touch the greats you won't be able to touch the tony hawks but you'll get to you'll be able to do most artists make then there's going to be a large percentage of the billboard 100 which are mostly ai music eventually and that's already started ai music is already in the billboard 100 complete AI artists are in there right now.

1:06:37Okay. Right? So everybody got - I know one of the guys who's signing them. There you go, right? So it's starting. Like this is the lowest and the worst it's ever going to be. Yeah. And so if we play this out, we had Spotify piss off the artists for quote unquote underpaying them. Again, which I disagree with, but that was everyone was pissed off about it. Everyone protested it. Taylor Swift said, I'm taking my songs down. It was a whole thing. didn't fucking matter. Spotify still won. Everyone's streaming now. Everyone got really angry at Live Nation for their monopoly powers. Whatever. They're still crushing it on the ASX even despite all the lawsuits.

1:07:15You've got Pirate Bay who stole from artists and they are. Is that Kim.com? Or no, he's Mega Upload. What's that? I thought that Kim.com was the, he changed his name to Kim.com. He lives in New Zealand, I think. Oh, I don't know. He had the website Mega Upload where you could like, you know, it was a peer-to-peer. LimeWire, Pirate Bay, all these guys. They stole from artists, right? All of these things that the music industry really hated and protested against, one, it didn't stop them. They still fucking crushed it. But two, those things relied on artists to succeed. So Spotify needed, if you believe that Spotify are underpaying you, which I don't, but if you believe Spotify are underpaying you, they still need artists to underpay.

1:07:56Live Nation still need artists to create their monopoly, if you believe that there's a monopoly. Pirate Bay still needed artists to steal from. to be a business. Suno is the first technology and the first disruptor in the music industry which is out to replace artists, not undervalue them. And forget Suno. Talking about the technology, there's going to be open source models which will do this for no money. So I think that at its essence communication technology Technology is made up of – these are not my words. These are the words of someone much smarter than me. But communication technology is three things.

1:08:43It's a structure of interest, so what we think about. It's the character of symbols, so what we think with, and the nature of community. That's how our thoughts develop. So I think to me, when I hear you talk about it, I think those would need to be addressed first. or not addressed, but you would need to have an understanding of those, a very ingrained one. And I'm talking one where like you understand the implications of the Gutenberg press up until today right now. You know, movable type changed our perception of childhood. And what? What is that? Movable type? Yeah. Like, you know, the printing press.

1:09:25Oh, okay. Yes. But the printing press fundamentally changed our social view of a created childhood in a lot of ways. Before that, it was like, Luke, go grab a shovel. You look like you can hold it now. Yeah. So we're – I'm not sure we've even reconciled with that completely. But I think those things are something to think about if you want to provide a vision of the future that includes Asuna or whatever. I'm not sure it is – I don't – I genuinely don't think – I'm not against AI and I'm not – I'm resoundingly in the middle. because I'm not sure that it changes the outcome for human beings in a negative way or a positive way.

1:10:20I don't really know. I don't know if one particular product that's probably not covered. Like I don't think that one particular product today is going to dramatically change the landscape of music. It's – or dramatically change our relationship to it currently. Maybe it does, right? Maybe it doesn't. In the maybe-it-does category, maybe it's that they end up buying the rights, the master rights or whatever, from all the private equity that's been buying rights, music rights, and they buy it, and they make it more equitable back to the originator because of X, Y, and Z, and they figure out a way to go, no, we can attribute this to X, Y, and Z.

1:11:09Maybe they just become another record label. maybe they become part of a much larger economic infrastructure that's digitally based. So maybe their aim is to not take over music, but it's to be the audio solution for Roblox. I think Roblox does something. But then that still will cut all the sync revenue massively. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it doesn't, though. I don't think it has stopped from what I can tell this is all relative how old is it? like 3 years old? yeah maybe someone there told me who I really like and he was like Kevin when's the last time a song came out and was like hey check out my new beat I made it in Fruity Loops I was like oh yeah never no one's ever said that to me ever like hey check out my new song I programmed it in Ableton never one time has that happened yeah um so that's where my sort of optimism leans into i think all the producers are using it whether they're not whether it's they're being vocally in front of it the way wes is um i think a lot of professional music producers songwriters are likely using it in some capacity i 100 % agree But where I think it's going to change is I think sync revenue will go down.

1:12:36I think, and I think that the type of artist that is going to be successful in the future is not going to be a, not necessarily going to be a good musician. It's going to be somebody with the skill of Rick Rubin, who I know that you worked for. And I want to ask you about, it's going to be someone like Diplo and major laser, who is a brand, an IP, a character that releases music. I don't think it's going to be the proper John Mayer, like student of the art. It's not necessarily because anyone can make music now. So we're going to have this huge glut of music. So it's going to be about the brand moving forward rather than the true craftsman, craftswoman.

1:13:22I think you're right. However, I'm not sure that's what we'll call it making music. We might have to come up with new vocabulary for it, number one. And number two. It would just be content creation? Possibly. I just don't know how it affects what I know people enjoy about music in general. Not like just in general. Whether it's a friend of mine got married last year. He had a, what was the count? I think I counted 18. 18 people live band for his wedding band. It was incredible. Everyone had the best time. Truly the best time. And these guys ripped. They were killer. I think there were five singers.

1:14:16It was the whole works. and I just don't see a you know a little you know a little thing no live music I actually think will go up so live music is different to the recorded music industry when we're talking about here but I and I but I think that has to do with like having a vision for the future in which you can adapt around or to and having a vision for whatever it is you're doing um within the media arts that sort of, uh, that utilize technology to do it the way you want to do it. And there's a version where it, it makes, it creates a lot more opportunity that didn't exist prior. And then there's a version to your point where it closes off opportunity that did exist prior.

1:15:08So I don't, I certainly don't think the sky is falling. Um, and I, I don't know. I have no idea of what the future might be if you're five years old today and you decide to take a swing at being a professional musical artist. And how we define that for generations to come is completely sort of unknown. So I think it's pretty difficult to say. Like, for instance, when we got Major Lazer into Fortnite as a character, the Unreal Engine followed commands from a human. You know, there's this – I asked my friend Ilva, who's a friend of my wife's. I said, hey, you know, we need to do these things that are called emotes.

1:16:04And I sent her videos of them. I was like, you're an incredible, unique dancer. She's an artist. she's she's a it's like it's a really like whoa i didn't know people i know you would think a computer made this person yeah um but i was like hey can you do a bunch of them can you do a bunch of short dances and she did i don't know i think maybe she did like 15 and then they put it on real and they mapped her body and they and they created the emote from it but it was with a person you know so and maybe you won't need that moving forward in the future however i it would feel very isolating in a lot of ways to never have to work with a person again.

1:16:42Um, so I don't really know, but I do think it, I think it's a, I don't think it, I think whether it's a technology that in a button you can make, you copy and paste some lyrics and make a, you know, a blues record from a rap song um i don't think i think that's like it's cute but i'm not sure what impact that has to the way that either a high tier music enthusiast feels or even a casual so i absolutely agree with what you're saying and i think it sounds like we're disagreeing but we're not i'm just i think two things are true at the same time so my view is yes you're right the music industry is going to change.

1:17:26I think the 18-piece live band, the super incredible musician is going to make more money from live music than ever before because people are going to crave that more because they're not going to know what's real and what's not online. They're going to be even more, they're going to admire that even more. And it'll be a rarer skill. If you can create incredible music with touch of a button, it's going to be less people motivated to actually learn the guitar. So I think they're going to do great. I think the, I can't see a world having worked in media for seven years or whatever. I can't see a world where a brand is going to pay absolute top dollar for an indie artist's master when they can create a very similar one with slightly different or more appropriate lyrics, touch the button and have it for free.

1:18:07So I think Sync is going to be cut significantly. Not 100%, but it'll be cut significantly. And look, I advise for startups. And I walked into an office on one of the startups I was advising and they were blasting this music that was like it was kind of old 60s blues music and it was very vulgar lyrics about stop being a bitch ass hoe and whatever right and they're all laughing and they're enjoying it and whatever and i go guys you know this is ai music and they were like yeah we're gonna give a fuck it's mad and they listened to ai music for three hours or however long i was there okay and so yes they did it because it was funny or whatever or but there'll be another reason Like it'll be someone like Tony Hawk who might make his own music for, you know, if that was in his heyday, he might make his own album based on his own taste and whatever.

1:19:01Suddenly everyone's listening to that AI music. And so there will be a certain percentage of listening time that will be taken away from real artists or artists that make their own music to AI versions of music. And so whatever percentage that is, the value of those masters are going to go down by that percentage. And so I think there is going to be a huge destruction in the value of masters over the next 10 years as AI gets better for the lack of listening, like the reduction in listening to those masters in a place for AI and the sinks. But I also think you're right. There's going to be new opportunities and you're going to have to adapt and there'll be a new type of artist that comes along.

1:19:43the next Rick Rubin who instead of sitting with Jay-Z for three months is actually just going to make his own Jay-Z record and will have his own story and narrative about it and make his own cartoon shows like Major Lazer and do all of that. I think there will be crazy opportunities like that. And two things can be true at the same time. But I do think some people are going to get fucked up. Probably. Yeah. So this was the realisation that I came to when I was about to interview Mikey in New York, right? Okay. And I was like, I'm not a journalist. I'm a freaking business guy that likes to talk to other executives and talented operators.

1:20:19So I'm like, I don't want to blindside the guy with my views here, so I'm going to write all of my thoughts out. I'm just going to write as if it's an article I'm going to publish. And I wrote it all out and I put it as a draft on my sub stack and I sent it to him before the podcast. And I went, hey, man, just want you to know where my head's at here. I don't want to blindside you and I'm happy to talk about it. Tell me I'm an idiot. Tell me I'm wrong. Even if you want to just publish this, give me a quote. whatever um but i just wanted to be up front with my views at the moment and let's see if they change on the podcast or whatever just completely ghosted just never heard from him again like that was the end of it he got he got i think he got a bit upset but i'm um i'm i don't think the industry i mean maybe the majors do because they're the ones doing deals with these guys but i don't think the industry truly understands the level of disruption i don't think there's going to be a bigger technology that has disrupted the industry more than this one more than spotify pirate bay i don't know i would i would i think that partly it's assuming that the big record companies are run by people who aren't thinking about this stuff already which i think is a mistake no i think they're the exception i think they know i think it's everybody else see i think this is where this is where i agree and disagree with you kind of like where like i think i think the 20 whatever year old who's got our label and is very savvy with TikTok, social media.

1:21:43They understand the dialogue of being online. They're the mod of a discord, whatever. I think they do understand what it is. And I think they'll probably be the first to determine how it's really used. It probably won't be the investor DJ or whomever, right? So I think time will tell. I think if we're, I think if you're getting into music to own valuable rights, that's why you're making music. That's probably not what you should be doing anyway. I agree with that completely. And I'm sure someone, whether we know them or not, will utilize it correctly. I saw, what did I read? I read this thing.

1:22:35What's that guy? Charlie Puth. I read a transcript from a Charlie Puth interview and he was talking about how Glenn Campbell had suffered a stroke, but they were able to utilize AI to emulate his voice so that his voice could be on a recording again. And I think you, you know, there's some nightmare version scenario where it's like, fuck man, like Madonna's like, it's been 150 years. Madonna's still putting out records yeah yeah um so in that instance super cool use case yeah that's it's it's super cool for a ton of different reasons yeah um also the source is an incredibly prolific musician in his own right and then he had his own career so that's something that's and it's also like he had a true physical ailment that didn't allow him to utilize his voice so That's really interesting.

1:23:31Yeah. I'm sure it won't all be that. Also, translations. I'd love to hear those massive Arabic hits in English. You know? I think that would be so cool as that starts happening. Yeah. Does it translate well? No, Arabic and English translates very poorly, but I reckon there's a way to do it where it would be cool. I've got some ideas about it. But I think that the translation use of AI would be really sick. Yeah. I like what AI is – I mean, weren't we calling AI deep learning like five years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like this shit's been around a while anyway. Yep. So I kind of – I find the future exciting.

1:24:11Yep. And I don't – I think if you're resisting it, something that's very obviously affecting the results for human in various ways, you might be left behind you know even using it just for self-organization it's pretty great totally you know yeah i'm all i reckon i spent about the equivalent of because i'm on subscriptions about 43 000 worth of tokens last month geez yeah it's um i'm both so i have this weird relationship with it where i am all in and i'm probably a top one percent user okay but i am so pessimistic about it at the same time so like it's uh it's just a weird dynamic i have but it would solve i mean if you were into adventuring right like and you could upload every state park park map yeah any book you'd read about like explorers you i don't know maybe you discover like some lost civilization or something i mean there's like implications way beyond a blues song made from a rap song yeah yeah and yeah like that staff might be listening to it now i don't know it's it's so unknown that i can't i wouldn't say with any certainty i would have a even remotely good view on what it becomes yeah all right so you're sitting in your office blank whiteboard okay and you're trying to work out where the next opportunity is for music right now you've got the money you've got the will you've got the time you now kevin are going to get back into the music industry in a big way and you're going to whiteboard all night and you're going to look for the best opportunity in music and the most exciting opportunity music where do you think you would end up after a session like that and i it's today like i know everything i know yeah you don't know anything else and it has to be it's a music company yeah where is the opportunity in music right now in 2026 i'm picturing a whiteboard i don't know i i'm not sure i have that great of an imagination i think it would be if i could take the time to pursue greatness and someone who held greatness, that's what I would look for.

1:26:38So find another Diplo. Someone that inhabits greatness and someone whose agenda is for greatness. Not for fame, not for riches, but for like pure play greatness. Define greatness. to me in music it would be some someone who is solely focused on like reaching the essence of what music does to other people and has the effect that it has on them to have them pursue that because they want to give that to an audience or a listener or whatever that's what I would focus on I wouldn't even focus on genre. You know, that, those people with that drive, that kind of drive and intention inspire many, many things.

1:27:35And I think unique ability like that can carry, despite technological interference, you know? there's certain things that I wouldn't know how to, like, if I stumbled on the next, if I stumbled, if I stumbled on someone who had the voice of Celine Dion, I probably, I think I'd know what I did, you would have to do, but I don't necessarily know what you'd need to do. But like, I think about her as an example, sometimes when it comes to greatness, because I think about someone who an enormous singing career, enormous recorded music career, enormous performance career. And then they have some neurological issue, right?

1:28:17That keeps them away. And they come and sing an Edith Piaf song that was written in the 50s on the Eiffel Tower for the opening of the Olympics. And it sort of, it kind of moved the world and like captivated the world. And I think that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. And you need a lot of time and experience. Now, that's far away from the whiteboard. But I think that's sort of the essence of what I mean by greatness, where it transcends genre, it transcends... Borders. Yeah, it transcends... It does. It transcends everything. And it captivates people. And it's a short period of time. The song's...

1:28:59Maybe she sang for three minutes or something. but like it really, it was greatly impactful. So I would, yeah, I would try to look for an artist that, or an artist I think inhabits that. If it were a company, I don't know. I think it would be fun. I am always surprised that there's not more challenger streaming services. I think in the, in the, when I got involved in music, there were lots of record stores and several national chains and global chains um i think that would be maybe there's a cap on what you can earn but i think there is a a customer for it and i think there's a lot how would you say what what could you offer as an alternative streaming service right now um i don't know i'm sorry sorry i'm thinking about a white board and like what would you offer a customer yeah i think you would offer the customer something well that a music community craves sorry what a music community craves and what they're saying is missing is like, there's not enough human touch.

1:30:03Right. So it's, maybe it's filled with people and people who are experts in very specific genres and niches or whatever. Um, I, I, I do, I really like using Apple a lot. I think the radio, uh, component of it is really lends itself to like, it, it's cool. You know, like I was really surprised they, um, you know, Estelle has a radio show on Apple. Um, and I, I don't know what, I don't know why I ended up there, but I went to her playlist and it was, it was, it's all this dance hall, all these dance hall records and it's fucking great. It's not even good. It's great. It's like a great, great listen.

1:30:44And I was like, oh, this is awesome. Like you, and you don't get that from an algorithmically made, made an algorithmically made playlist. Um, but you get it from someone who's just selecting records and you're like, damn, this is great. Like old stuff, new stuff, intriguing stuff. It was just, it's awesome. But yeah, I think, you know, I think there's room for a lot. I mean, there's a lot of automobile companies coming up and new people making, you know, cars, companies making cars all the time. We have enough cars. Like we certainly have enough cars. There's enough motors. The whole thing, the old ones still probably work.

1:31:24You know what I mean? but people are still making new car companies. So I haven't, I don't know, just for the sake of that, that's a question. Hey, so I know you don't do many interviews. I'm so grateful that you've spent all this time today, Kevin. I'm so inspired by hearing your story and understanding how you think and how much you love music. That comes across so clear, which is really, really awesome to hear. Before we go, I know that you worked for Rick Rubin. He was your mentor. Is that right? Yeah. I want to know what you learned from him, what impact that had on you. Tell me about that time in your life and let's finish with that.

1:32:01Sure. Yeah, I started. Rick Rubin hired me to work at Columbia Records. I was 27 years old. So that was 20 years ago. I would say it deeply influenced my life in a lot of ways and in a lot of directions. And I don't know, it was really inspirational. is really interesting to be around someone like that who's done so much within music and outside of it but i know like i've seen the memes and shit like i get it like they're funny whatever but it in a i've spent a lot of time around him and you know in proximity um i it's hard to explain but I really understand why sort of a musician opts in to his framework and they fit into his world.

1:32:54You know, maybe the best way to put it was extremely illuminating and had a really profound effect on, like, my life. You know, I was 27. Like I said, I was 27. Like what was the biggest change or thing that you took from him? Going in, I was just like a kid. And I, you know, the funny part was I had turned down a job from Columbia Records, like almost a year to the date prior that he got in touch, maybe a little bit over. But yeah, like he, look, man, like he, this is 2007. So it just, overnight, almost, it felt like overnight, but like almost immediately people knew who I was. So I had like access to stuff that I just didn't have before.

1:33:38Because you worked for Rick Rubin. Just because I worked for Rick, right? Crazy. Because, like, I could make a phone call, and I had to work on his projects that he had signed. But it was just sort of like I was somewhat of a conduit to him. And then, yeah, it just opened a lot of doors. Just like it would be if you were an agent in the 80s and Michael Ovitz hired you. You're all the map. Yeah, all of a sudden you being an agent changed from like you being an agent to like you're a player or something. Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, it really influenced me. I mean being around someone like that a lot is – and who's older than you, you know what I mean?

1:34:21You just gain a lot from it. I just kind of – to be honest, I shut the fuck up and I look around a lot and I just like pay attention. So what was something you observed? What sits with you? How do you mean? Well, if I think about my mentors that I've learned from, one of my mentors, Sam Benjamin, he has a saying that I always just think about. He goes, you can't change how people treat you. You can only change how you treat them. So it doesn't matter how bad they treat you. You can't control that. You can only control how you respond and how you treat them. And so you've always just got to do the right thing.

1:34:59Regardless of what people do to you, you've got to do the right thing. And so that's one thing that sits with me. And I always think about that when I'm in a huge situation of conflict. Michael Taylor, who died recently, was an A &R at Universal. And he said to me, and I didn't believe him at the time, but I've sat with me and I've since adopted this as I've gotten older, where he says, you know, you've got to make sure that everybody wins in a deal. You can't just be the only one that wins. You can't just take everything out of the deal. And he gave me that advice while I was negotiating with him and I'd only just met him.

1:35:33And I was a young kid and I thought, ah, you're just trying to fucking make me get back down. You know, but I've since learned, you do got to leave food on the table for everyone. Like even if you can get an extra dollar out of a deal, you shouldn't. You don't necessarily have to take it. You got to make sure everyone can win. And so there's just these things that I've taken from my mentor. So I'm just saying if there's anything like that that sits with you from that time you spent with Rick. I think probably most importantly, I learned how to listen. Yeah. And maybe not to other people, but I definitely learned how to listen to music and to really absorb it.

1:36:12And I'm nowhere near what he is or does, but I feel pretty strongly that it encouraged me to really listen. I'd be shocked. I remember I've spent a lot of time. Like I said, you're young. I'm in my late 20s. I don't know shit. But he'd be like, oh, let's go listen to this. He'd come over, we're going to listen to stuff. We'd sit there for hours and listen. And not like get to the right after the first – we wouldn't get to the first chorus and then be like, all right. We would listen to everything. And like, oh, let's listen to the mixes. Let's listen to this A mix and B mix. And it really changed – it definitely changed how I listened.

1:37:00and what I was – I had to figure out. I was probably too shy at the time and intimidated maybe to go like, what are you listening for? But he would do this thing. But you appreciated the patience and actually like really sitting with it. I mean, dude, the guy, like he was – I mean, it was pretty fucking incredible. You're like, hey, what do you want to meet me for? And he's sitting there and he's like – I remember the first meeting with him because maybe 20 minutes into the meeting he kept saying we. and i was like what the is happening um with somebody else what's that you're the first time i met him and he was like i guess seeing if i wanted the job oh yeah he kept saying we and i was like whoa okay i guess i i think this is happening yeah um but he used to do this thing it was a it was a really good tendency that i got used to which was he was like you never know who's going to give you the best result for the material.

1:37:57So he would get, let's say you have a finished recording, but he would get say three different mixers and he would title the mixes A, B, and C. And you would just blind listen to the mixes. You wouldn't, and it was, the results were always varying and there was always, there was invariably always a surprise, either with the artist who thought they wanted mix A, but they really liked mix B. And it was the thing that on paper, they, I hate that, you know? Um, and it really, um, I adopted that habit and I really onboarded that because it was extremely helpful in figuring out what the best thing was for the material.

1:38:39And what I, I think probably the, the thing I took away from that experience the most was, it is what's best for the material because the material conveys what happens to everything else it was a it was a extremely valuable lesson for what i do for work and for how i enjoy music in general and it made me like over time too it's been a while right but like over time it's made me enjoy music even more um yeah i can really feel how much you enjoy music the way you talk Kevin, time just flew and I'm so grateful for coming on the Black Hoodie thank you so much

1:39:21Kevin Kusatsu:absolutely, thanks for having me thanks man