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October 10, 2024 12 mins

Live, from Bloomberg Screentime, HYBE America CEO Scooter Braun sat down with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw to discuss his career ups and downs and what's to come. 

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Back to the main stage,
our Lucas Shaw up there on the stage, the CEO
of the American.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Division of HI. We're talking about Scooter Braun.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Let's listening. A lot has happened with you in the
last couple of years, and that's sort of where I
want to start.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Really.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, just a little bit, because there's been a lot
of coverage of Okay, all your clients are firing you.
We won't touch your personal life, but I know a
bun just happened there. You sold your company. You haven't
said a ton about it, and I'm curious, what is
your take? Did a bunch of your clients fire you

(00:39):
in the span of a couple of months, or what
happened with Arity three?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Fired me in the exact same day? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Now, what happened with Arianna with Justin with listen?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I actually a year after it happened.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I for contractual reasons, I wasn't allowed to say certain things,
but I wrote something called twenty three years I posted
on social media. It was my words, and I kind
of explained why I made a decision to not manage
musicians after twenty three years, and that it actually happened
about a year earlier, but you know, we're running a

(01:12):
big company and there's things that we needed to handle,
so I didn't feel like it was the right time.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And simply.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Twenty three years of my life, from nineteen years old
to into my forties, I only knew being a music manager.
Twenty four to seven, seven days a week, every vacation,
every holiday.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I was on call.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
And I wasn't on call to one big artist. I
was on call to a lot of big artists. And
for a large part of my life, I really loved it.
But then I had three kids and I went through
a divorce, and anyone who's been through a divorce with
children knows that.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
It is not an easy situation.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
And I really looked back at my life and realized that,
you know, you can point fingers in a divorce and say, oh,
this happened, This happened, but you play a role in it.
And that's why me and my ex wife are partners.
With these three children, we put them first, and my
role was I wasn't present. I was a manager twenty
four to seven, and even though I was home, I
wasn't being there the way I should and it led

(02:12):
to a divorce, and I realized I might have lost
the marriage. I wasn't going to lose my kids, and
I decided that I wanted to step away from it
and focus on other things. And now I have three
of the best clients in the world and that's my focus.
But then, yeah, there was a lot of noise because
no one actually thought you would want to step away
from that. But how did you communicate that to the

(02:35):
clients that you were working with. Well, one of them
I wrote about this. One of them approached me and said, Hey,
I think I want to try something new. And at
first I was kind of hurt because we've been through
so much together. But then I realized I was already
heading in this direction for the last couple of years anyway,
and I think you make plans and then the universe
kind of shows you what you need. And I realized

(02:56):
it was actually a gift and it wasn't about one client,
it was about all. So I started picking up the
phone and having the conversations and some went well, some
took a couple more conversations. But I'm grateful for all
those years. I lived a very unique life doing that.
I was a part of the journeys of the most
successful and incredibly talented people in the world, and now

(03:16):
I get to root from them in a different capacity.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
How does how does the relationship like, take someone like Beeber,
you take him from nothing. You guys are do the
whole ride up together? Like, how does that relationship work?

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Now root for each other?

Speaker 3 (03:29):
I mean it's you get to a point where you
just say, we built this legacy alongside each other.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
And now he's a father, he has.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
An opportunity to continue doing you know, the things he
loves to do, and I'm going to be rooting for
him for the.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Rest of his career.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
So, Hi, buy your company. About three years ago we
had the we had we had Bang here last year.
A lot of people, I think thought you would have
left by now, so did our chairman? Why have you
stuck around? I guess what are you doing now if
you are not managed artists?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
A couple of things.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
When Chairman Bang and I met, he's the chairman of
Hive and he's a very unique individual. This is someone
who was one of the biggest music producers in all
of Asia, and at the height of his career in Asia,
he came to the United States to have meetings with
A and RS and presidents of labels here to discuss
his ideas. And one of these meetings they had him
wait in the lobby for three hours and then told him,

(04:27):
I'm sorry, we have another meeting and canceled on him.
And instead of having an ego or getting upset, he goes,
you know, and I'm going to go back home and
I'm going to build this industry myself so that when
I come back here, I don't need to ask for
these meetings. And if you look at the groups, including
BTS that he was able to create and produce and
develop and continually do so, he's actually brilliant. And I

(04:50):
had admired his work for some time. He knew about
the stuff I had done, and he reached out to
me and said, can we have conversations, And the first
four conversations that's when the last one happened about the purchase.
He said that in the East, we have conversations about
what we're going to do. He goes, too many times
when I talk to people in the West, they talk
about just the transaction, just the deal, not what we're

(05:12):
going to do. He goes, all four conversations we've had
We've talked about culture, We've talked about philosophy, we've talked
about meditation, we've talked about music, we've talked about family.
He goes, I want to do this with you, and
no matter what we find, we'll go through it together.
We signed up and we did a five year deal.
And the reason I'm still here because you're right, and
those deals usually vest out at a certain point, and

(05:34):
my deal was pretty much upfront.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I gave my word, and I really enjoy him.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
I think he's a visionary and I think your words
should mean more than just the deal that you do
on paper. And I told him I'd be there for
five years, and I'm going to do that. And the
exciting part is we've developed such a relationship that now
we're talking about extending that and being there longer, and
I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
And is that being focused?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Like, are you because you're the CEO of hYP America, right,
how much of your time are you spending on taking
big Korean acts and bringing them here or bringing them
around the world, And how much of it are you
spending on developing acts here that have nothing to do
with Korea.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
It's about fifty to fifty.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
And also, you know, if you look at our strategy,
we purchased QC, which is, you know, the biggest independent
hip hop label in the country. We had big machine
from Ithaca when we brought it over. So we're going
to you know, go out and find other companies that
make sense for us and other assets that make sense.
We also launched High two point zero, which allows us

(06:32):
to create a distribution system for independent labels because of
our distribution deal with Universal, a ten year deal that
puts us a unique position.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
And then you know, you look at.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Weavers, which is our large platform for fan engagement for
super fans, which is the biggest in the world and
the biggest in Asia. A lot of people don't realize this,
but thirty percent of our revenue is actually from North America.
So you know, now we've introduced Ariana Grande to that platform.
We introduced kid Leroy this week. You know, you're starting
to see a lot of you know, acts from the
West joining and it makes sense because you see acts

(07:06):
from the East coming here and they're selling out arenas
day one and if everyone's asking why, and it's because
of that opportunity to talk directly to the fans on weavers.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Right, I'm curious setting aside reverse Like the last decade plus,
I feel like a lot of people were finding artists
on YouTube, then they're finding artists on TikTok. Where do
you or where do people you work with discover new
artists right now?

Speaker 3 (07:34):
So I can give the nice answer and you know,
but I'm going to give the real answer. You know,
when when we're talking to people, there's still A and rs,
there's still scouts. They're going out there and they're finding stuff.
There's still people looking on TikTok and on YouTube and
you might see something and you know, part of it is,
you know, true development, like we just did with our
group Cats Eye, which we developed them, we did a

(07:55):
show on Netflix and now we've launched them. But the
thing I'm most excited about is what's to come. And
the reason I say that is I'm forty three years old.
When I found Justin, I was twenty four about to
be twenty five. I was native to technology that was
around at that time.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
I was a young guy.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
I understood what my peers wanted, I understood what was
missing in the marketplace, and I understood how to use
the social media in a way that made sense to
my peers. So, for example, Twitter at the time was
just celebrities talking to other celebrities on the suggested user list,
and I was like, well, this feels very voyeuristic. You know,
I don't want to just watch someone talk to someone else.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
I want to engage.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
And Justin was the first person to cross a million
followers on Twitter that wasn't on the suggested user list
because we actually engaged with the fans. We created fame
groups like belieber Babes and bieber Army and all these
you know things.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
The names are amazing. I know, you guys can giggle,
It's okay.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
And actually a lot of the people who ran those
accounts are now executives in the music industry. Jackie Augustus
is a very big executive and she used to run
Bieber Army back in the day and when she was
like sixteen. So what I'm waiting for is that next kid,
that next kid who's in their twenties or even a

(09:12):
teenager who understands who's native to the technology and realizes
how to use that the AI that's coming all the
different things in a way that myself and Bang and
my peers just don't because it is a youth driven industry.
So when I meet people or their young artists, they go, hey,
what do you think I should do? My response is
usually stop worrying about getting to people like me. You

(09:32):
have all the resources to get to the audience directly,
and your peers develop with them. So when you say
how do we do it, it's going to be self discovery.
I just don't know how the next generation is going
to do it because for my dad it was vinyl,
you know, for me it was mixtapes for someone else,
who knows?

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Right?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Do you as a result of that, do you feel
the balance of power in the music industry has shifted
more to the artists than when you started.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
I think it's shifted to the artists, but there'll always
need to be those teams or people that give their
all in their heart alongside the artists to develop talent,
to understand the marketplace. And you know, that's what's exciting
because I kind of like where I am in my life.
I've never been so uncertain about what's gonna happen in

(10:22):
my life in the next five years. But I've never
felt so at ease with being uncertain and I think
the industry is in a very similar place.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well, I would imagine a lot of money helps with that.
But I'm I'm just the best. I'm curious if you
were starting a a a new company today management whatever,
I know you don't you don't wanna manage it anymore?
Is there who is an artist out there? Like if
you could just pick one and you I'm gonna build
around you, who would you pick?

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Ah?

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I don't know cause I haven't really been in that
space of like, you know, finding the next one.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well, it doesn't have to be the next one. It
can be it can be a huge star. Now, Like
who is someone now where you look at them and
they're already a star and you feel like their earnings
are over the next twenty thirty years or they're potential
of where they could go at their career is something that.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
You want to be involved with.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I'm gonna give you the sound but you're looking for
cause I just can't help myself and the PR team's
gonna be like what I think the artist that's you know,
it's one that you should always bet on and is
already a huge star and you can always bet on
because they want it all the time, and they they
do what it takes to be you know, present and
relative all the time. Is Taylor Swift, I.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Was actually not thinking you were gonna say that, but
it's it's an obvious answer, but I you.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Know, I I also love that what we're doing with
our group Cat's Eye. I love uh Teddy Swims. I
love great voices like that. I love like Benson Moone.
I saw him perform the other day and that was
really impressive. Zach Brian is doing incredible stuff. So there's
you know, the fun part about it is everyone you know,

(12:09):
there's a huge opportunity coming with AI and it's going
to change the music industry the same way pro tools.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Did.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
You know when pro tools came along, people said, what
is this? We need live instruments and you realize it's
a tool to create more music. And I think AI
is going to do the same thing. But there's always
going to be a need for both human emotion and
human error.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
You know, if we want to watch the Great.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
All right, that of course is our Lucas Shaw with
Scooter Ball and see you have the American division of HAIG.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
I'm guessing that Taylor Swift comment might make a few headlines.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Look on's Twitter right now, see who's chatting about it,
because yeah, lots of people following.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
These interviews from Bloomberg screen Time.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
You can see the latest at live Go on Bloomberg Terminal,
and also catch the latest at bloomberg dot com slash
screen Time
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