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November 7, 2024 131 mins

Majordomo of the Cornerstone Agency, Cornerstone Management, the Fader...

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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftshut Podcast. My guest
today is John Combe of Cornerstone and Fader. You have
like a giant enterprise. How many different divisions do you have?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It's first of all, nice to be here, Bob, Thank
you so much for having me on. We actually run
two separate companies, but they have very many tentacles, so
I could take you through a little bit of what
we do. Cornerstone is our agency and it's focused on
helping brand build platforms, advertising strategy around music and culture,

(00:46):
and we work in that business for Converse, Nike, Coca Cola,
Major League Soccer, and our specialty is really and we're
twenty eight years old. Our specialty is really helping brands
understand how to connect to music and culture. And sometimes
that's creating full service advertising creative. Sometimes that's purely music

(01:08):
specific strategy. Sometimes that's experiential on how they interact with
festivals and things of that nature. And then we have
a media company called The Fader, and The Fader started
twenty five years ago and it is a music platform.
Started as a print magazine. We gave artists like Kanye
and Cardi B and Kendrick Lamar and Drake and the Strokes,

(01:30):
the White Stripes, some of their first covers, some of
their first coverage in the press, and we really grew
it into a full service media platform. We've got great
social channels. We do a lot online. We have about
three thousand pieces of unique video across all of our
different video channels. We built a festival called Fader for

(01:51):
it and then attached to that business. We've got a
film and TV division called Fader Films, and we have
a music division which is Fader Label. It's our management
company and our publishing company. So it's a lot of entities,
but they're all very tightly connected.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Other than you, does anybody work for Cornerstone and also
work for Fader or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yes, there is some crossover. We've got an amazing team
and there's a lot of synergies between the two. We
absolutely want to keep the purity of editorials separate from
what we do on the commercial side. But our incredible COO,
Anthony Holland, touches every piece of that business and he

(02:35):
is the guy that keeps all the trends running on time.
You know. We have our back end services like accounting, legal,
things of that nature. They work across all the entities.
I mean, there's a lot of synergy by having so
many businesses. Robert English, who's been with us for twenty
five years, he's basically the de facto head of an
R across the entire entire company. So when we're looking

(02:58):
for music for a campaign, he is talking to all
the agencies and the managers and the labels. He's doing
the deals, and he'll do that for Fader, he'll do
that for Cornerstone, he'll do that across everything. And then
there's a music division which is headed up by a
young guy named Carson Oberg, who does an incredible job.
He oversees our management, he oversees the label team, he

(03:19):
oversees our publishing, so he's pretty much isolated in that world,
but he then gets to tap into some of those
back end resources to help power what we do on
the label side, so there is some crossover. It does
work really well together. When we explain this to people,
it's always overwhelming, and some people only know us by
one small segment of the company, and then others have

(03:41):
worked with us across the entire enterprise.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Okay, how many full time employees now.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
We are currently at thirty five full time employees. It's
the leanness we've been in a long time. At our peak,
we were as many as one hundred and ten employees,
and a lot of that scale is dictated sometimes by
the number of brand clients we have or what we're

(04:08):
doing on the media side. Clearly, you know, after Covid
there were challenges with media and certain components of the business.
So we made a decision to operate the company on
a much leaner level, and it's worked out really well
because it's given us a chance to focus on the
revenue streams and the aspects of the business that are

(04:29):
doing the best.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Okay, and you oversee everything, is there? Anybody tell me?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah? So I oversee the entire company, and I think
it's really important we start our conversation just to give
you some background on my partner in our history. The
companies were founded in partnership between myself and Rob Stone. Sadly,
Rob passed away this summer. He not only has been

(04:58):
an incredible partner for the last twenty eight years, Rob
started the Cornerstone side of the business himself. The story
is that Rob and I grew up together. We've been
best friends since seventh grade. We discovered music together. Not
only were we, you know, great friends growing up having

(05:18):
so many amazing life experiences, our love and passion for
music started when we were kids in junior high school
all the way on up to high school. I remember
discovering hip hop listening to run DMC with Rob Stone
on cassette. I remember every big album that would come out.
We would drive around in his car and listen to

(05:40):
music and discovering not only hip hop, but you two
so much music. And the bonds of our friendship led
us to enter the music industry, and Rob and I
started together at SBK. We worked under Daniel Glass. Rob
was ahead of mixed show and dance promotion. His job

(06:01):
was to really work with all the different DJs around
the country. I was working in the field. I was working,
you know, as a local promotion rep in the Northeast.
I started in video promotion work my way into the field,
and we worked together there and the seeds for our
company were born out of all of those conversations, all
of the time we spent loving music, and you know,

(06:25):
we basically saw this rise as young people in the
music industry and learned so much from so many people.
I went and left SBKA, I went to Columbia Records.
Rob left and he went to work for Clive Davis
at Arista Records. And when our respective contracts were coming up,
we started talking about the plans to start our own company.

(06:48):
And Rob's deal expired first in nineteen ninety six, he
stepped out and left Arista. At Arista, his claim to
fame was he is the person who was big eas
uguest confidant. He spent his time at Arista breaking notorious big.
He traveled around the country with him, He got his
music played on the radio. He was really the liaison

(07:11):
between you know, bad Boy and Arista, and he really
established himself, you know, in the world of hip hop
through those times. I was working in alternative promotion for
Columbia at the time. So Rob left first in ninety
six when his contract expired, and the idea was we
were going to start a music marketing company, and Cornerstone

(07:33):
was initially a place for artists, managers and labels to
hire us directly to help supplement what the labels weren't
doing enough of for their artists. It was our ability
to get records played on the radio, our ability to
help build the right marketing plan, to build some resources
to promote artists on college campuses, and we were wildly successful.

(07:55):
So Rob started in ninety six. My contract expired a
year later. Rob Rob started the company out of Loud Records.
Steve Rifkin was a great mentor to Rob and to
both of us. He gave Rob off of space and
was a partner in the initial start of Cornerstone. And
Rob was able to work with Steve and the power
of Loud and all he was doing in the hip

(08:18):
hop world to really cement Cornerstone's early success in the
hip hop world. I left, I joined him and I
started doing the alternative side of the business, and we
were working for every major label. We were talking directly
to so many artists. What was amazing about that time
in Cornerstone was that a lot of artists they wanted

(08:39):
to talk to somebody outside of the label system. They
wanted to hear other people's opinions. So, you know, people
like labeled like bad Boy would have us coming to
the studio. We would go here Outcasts Records before even
Arista had heard some of the music. You know, people
like John Silva were asking us to come here Beck Music.
We were working so closely with the labels and the

(09:01):
artists that we were making an impact because we were
helping use our knowledge of what we learned in the
music industry to help them make better decisions and help
use our relationships to break artists. Slowly we started making
these tools, like we made a mixtape SERI like every
month we put out a mixtape. Then eventually all of

(09:23):
the access we had to music led to Fader. Fader
was our way of documenting all of this access we
had to music early and brands started getting their hands
on all these materials. The head of Sprite was a
guy named Darryl Cobb, and he called Rob and I
up and said, Hey, I don't know who you guys are,
but I've seen some of your materials and your work.

(09:43):
We're trying to revolutionize Sprite and embrace the culture of
hip hop to market Sprite, and we need someone to
help guide us. Would you guys come down to Atlanta
and sit with us and our agencies and our team
to tell us a little bit more about music. I
was reluctant. I was like, Ah, that's sellout shit, you know,
like that is you know, like we're about the music.

(10:05):
Rob was like, I think we should listen to this guy.
He's really smart. He's really opened my mind. So Rob
convinced both of us to go down there, and two
things happen. Number One, we realized that these guys cared
more about the music and the culture of the music
than the labels at the time, and they had such

(10:26):
enormous budgets compared to what we were working with within
music that not only could we be more successful and
make more money, they were willing to put more money
into the marketing of all these artists. And that's when
the light bulb for Rob and I went off and
we realized, like, holy shit, we can have the best
of both worlds. We can really consult some of the

(10:47):
most powerful brands in the world in how they market themselves.
And then we can take that money and that power
and really strengthen our ties to the artists, to the managers,
so we can do more for them, and we can
enhance what artists can do outside of their normal record
deals and put some more power on their hands. At
the same time, we're building Fader as a way of

(11:11):
documenting all of this access we have in culture. So
number one, you know we wouldn't I wouldn't be here,
My business wouldn't be here without the incredible legend of
Rob Stone, and it's it's just sad to have this
conversation without him. He Rob loved reading your work, Bob.
We would often talk about various things that you write about.

(11:33):
And I feel horrible that we're not doing this interview
together because we had an incredible friendship that we've experienced
so much, an incredible partnership with so much success, and
the fact that you know, I'm talking about these things
without him, it just still doesn't feel real to me.
He was such a special person with such an incredible
career and the impact he had on our company. What

(11:57):
we've done together is something that it just it feels
really surreal to be doing it without them. So that's
the long Paull story of how we got to where
we are with the business. But we are proudly record
industry people. We are proudly born and raised in that system.
And for all the flaws and things that we didn't

(12:18):
love that led us to want to start our own business,
there's so many things that we do love and it's
still an incredible business and it's the reason we're successful
coming up in that business. The things that we learned
in our respective jobs gave us the platform to build
what we have. And it's almost like we have operated
someone under the radar. You know, we're still very close

(12:39):
to so many people in that business, but we kind
of live in a parallel universe, slightly under the radar.
But music is still the thread, that's the DNA for
every aspect of our business.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Okay, just focusing on Rob for a minute. When did
you find out he was ill?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
That he was ill in July of last summer, and
he kept his diagnosis very private. When we were kids,
Rob had cancer and was a survivor. He beat a
very serious case of Hodgkins and was incredible throughout that
journey when we were twenty and he's just he was

(13:21):
just a warrior as a person. And he got diagnosed
in July. He kept the diagnosis private, and I think
that's why so many of our friends and so many
in the industry were shocked. And he he just chose
to put the focus on his recovery and his family.
And you know, I was there along along with him

(13:41):
for the whole ride, and he and he faced it
and fought it bravely, and his hope was he was
going to continue to improve and let more people in
the circle. But unfortunately it just got out of control,
and you know, he lost the battle.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
So who owns cornerstone in the theater today?

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Right now? I own corners thrown out right with Rob's estate,
which will figure out the future of that.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
And that includes your saying, that includes everything. Yes, let's
go back to the beginning. You guys are from where exactly?

Speaker 2 (14:29):
We're from Long Island. So Rob and I were both
born in Brooklyn, and we grew up in Long Island,
went to junior high school and high school together.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
And what did let's focus on you what did your
parents do for a living.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
So my parents were in the retail business. Both of
our parents were hard working, you know, entrepreneurs. My dad
was in the leather goods business. He sold women's handbags
and accessories. He still does it at eighty four years
of age. And I worked in his business as a
kid and he's still working hard. Rob's dad was in

(15:04):
the trucking in warehouse business in Brooklyn, And we both
came from real working class families, and I think our
parents both instilled that work ethic and that hunger to
run our own businesses, you know in both of us,
and I think they both. They all had a real
effect on how we built this company.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
And do you have siblings.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
I do. I have a brother who lives in la
He runs a film and TV production company. He does
some work for us. He shoots some of our TV
commercials and content.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
He's just one brother, one brother. Yeah, Okay, So you
graduate from high school, you end up going to Syracuse.
Tell me about that choice.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Syracuse was incredible. I went to Syracuse really not sure
what I was going to study. I was in the
new House program there. I was also a business major,
but it was in new House, which is their communications school.
I started to learn that there was really an industry
behind music. I loved music. I'm a horrible guitar player,

(16:09):
as I could see behind me, Bob I was in bands,
but I knew I had no chance in hell of
having any success as a musician. But what I realized
through some great friends in college, is that there was
a real industry behind the business. And I just loved
researching and learning what I could about the business. And

(16:31):
that school, as you probably know, had an unbelievable alumni
that comes from our business. You know, there was so
many generations. There was you know, the Rob Lights and
Phil Q and John Syke's generation that all came out
of Syracuse, and I always looked up to them and
studied their stories. And then you know, I was there
with an unbelievable cast of current players in the industry,

(16:54):
whether it was Joel Klayman, who was the former GM
of Columbia Records, or David Sadlow who runs Lama Vista
and was at Aristo, or Jacquelin Saturn at virgin and
Syracuse really gave me the platform to understand more about
the music industry and and and a lot of different
aspects of our business. And it's it's a really amazing

(17:17):
school in the sense that they connect you to the
people in the real world. You don't just learn and
you know, take a bunch of things that anybody can
learn from a book. They they've got this network where
they really do a good job of connecting to people,
to the to the outside world so they can learn
first time.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
So how did you get connected such that you got
the job at SBK.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
So I was lucky enough to meet Charles Koppleman. His
daughter had attended Syracuse. She was a friend, and I
was able to become one of their first campus reps
up at Syracuse. So I was marketing all of their
music in the Northeast.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Just to be This was when SBK was all already
a label.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
This is when SBK was a publishing company. And then
it just got funding in this ridiculous, insane deal from
EMI to start a label on the master side, and
they had an unbelievab amount of funding. I went down
met them in person. I think I was a junior.
Really loved everybody I met there, and they gave me

(18:23):
a chance to intern over the summer and then be
a college rep on campus. And my job back then
was to hang posters of our artists, take inventory or
record stores, get artists played on the campus radio stations.
And I would go anywhere from the Albany region up
to Boston to cover stuff. And you know, SBK had

(18:45):
a very unique deal. They had a deal with EMI
that was based on gross revenue. So the idea was
for them to have as much success as possible, but
they didn't really have to worry about the bottom line.
They just wanted to gross as much revenue, so we
put out a lot of records. We were the home
of a lot of the big one hit wonders. Back
in those days, I worked on projects like Jesus Jones

(19:09):
and Wilson Phillips, and then as I when I graduated,
I went to work for them full time. The week
after I graduated, we had put out Vanilla Ice. That
summer arrested development. We had so many enormous artists, some
of them that really stuck around for one or two singles.
But it was an incredible time because they had this
unique deal where they were all about really trying to

(19:30):
rush and ramp up the success, and it was a
fun time in the music industry to be a young person.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Okay, I have to ask you. Know, at the beginning
of SBK, Monty was a regional promotion man and he
is arguably the most powerful and successful executive on the
recorded side of music today. Did you work with Monty?

Speaker 2 (19:51):
I did?

Speaker 1 (19:51):
What did you see? I mean, I knew Monty. It's
an amazing story. Did you see anything or were you surprised?
Give me your take.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yes. First of all, I love Monty, so not only
before Monty was thrown in the field he started. I
believe he'll kill me if I got this wrong, but
I think he was Neil Lasher's assistant. When I was
an intern, I would help them out, and I believe
Monty's first role there might have been helping Neil Lasher
and then they quickly realized how smart he was and

(20:20):
they sent him down to Atlanta. I knew Monty, and
this sounds cliche. I knew he was going to be
a huge success back then because he did two things.
Number One, he outworked everyone, but he had this calm
for a young person around him. But what I loved
the most about Monty, and I subsequently got to know
Avery really well to his brother, who he started Republic with.

(20:44):
What I loved about Monty is he was an A
and R guy. Even though they had him doing promotion,
Monty was always looking for what was going to be
next in music, and I really had this gut feeling
he was going to be a superstar, and for me
to have a front seat to watch him rise has
been an honor. Both Rob and I were still are

(21:06):
very close with Monty. I love him to death, and
you know, he really had everything that you knew you
needed to succeed in our business, and for a young
person back then to really think beyond his role. You
could tell he was going places. And I was lucky,
like at the talent of the SPKA days, I got

(21:26):
to see those two start Republic and they worked out
of this I live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
They started the label out of this really small, one
bedroom apartment three blocks from where I am right now,
and it was just so much fun to go over
to see that these two guys quit in the middle

(21:46):
of their height of their career. They could have made
fortune continuing to work on the corporate record side, but
they both had the balls to step out and start
something entrepreneurial. And it was just so much fun when
I would go knock the door of their apartment and
I'd see boxes of CDEs and they'd be shipping stuff
and they'd be running this business out of this really

(22:08):
small apartment and it you know, they gave Rob and
I a lot of confidence that, hey, you gotta be
gutsy and step away from what's safe to really make
an impact. So I have huge love and respect for Monty,
and you know, beyond Monty that the one thing that
Daniel doesn't get enough credit for is what a great
teacher he was. I mean, we had so many incredible

(22:29):
people that went on to big things in the music
industry that came under his tutelage of Charles and Marty too,
I mean they deserve tons of credit. I mean that
Trio had so many amazing people who are running such
big entities right now in our business that they deserve
a lot of credit for what they really started.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Okay, you started in video promotion. MTV was still very powerful.
Tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
So I was assisting Hillary shav at the time, who
was our head of video promotion, and our job was
to get our videos played on MTV. And and you know,
you talk about this a lot, is you know what's
missing in our industry today? There aren't big mass drivers.
And back then, the reason why we broke so many
superstars was you had big drivers, and none bigger of

(23:21):
a driver was there than MTV. I mean the power
that MTV had. When you got a video and what
they call buzz bin back then, or a video into
any form of rotation, you saw instant success, and not
just a little success. You essentially knew you were going
to break the artists. So our job was not only

(23:42):
to submit our videos, but it was to figure to
build relationships with that team at MTV and really figure
out what what was an artist place and what was
the best way to establish that artist. And we were
very successful. I mean, labels, if you remember, spent so
much money Bob on on making videos and the level
of production, and MTV had such few slots. I mean,

(24:05):
it was so hard to crack MTV. But if I
think of the industry back then versus the industry today,
MTV was a vehicle that just meant so much, and
I sometimes think about imagine there was something like that
equivalent to that where you had the Taylor Swifts and
the major pop stars of today have access to that.

(24:27):
I was thinking about that during the VMAs the other night,
and the VMA has felt slightly more relevant this year
than past. I mean, you probably have a better take
on it than I do. But that was our role.
Our role was not only to get our videos played,
but to find the right way to get artists on
one hundred and twenty minutes or then Unplugged came later,
and then you had the VMAs were basically the equivalent,

(24:51):
if not bigger than the Grammys back then, so it
was a really good first experience for me to learn
the ropes of breaking artists, how.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Did you end up in the field and radio promotion.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
So the next step was they needed bodies and people
to be out there, and I had built a really
good relationship with Daniel and Ken Lane, who is our
head of Top forty, and Neil l Asher, who I said
earlier out of Rock, and they felt that was a
good next step for me. I wanted to be more
of an A and R person or a marketer. I

(25:24):
didn't love the idea of promotion, but I knew it
was an important part of the business, and I felt
that it was a chance for me to work closely
with artists. I really cherished that part of my job
and working closely with artists. So they sent me to
the field and I was responsible for getting our records
played on stations like WBCN. And one of my claim

(25:47):
to fames in my career is this young new British
act was flying in to come to America for the
first time and they sent me to the airport. I'm like,
very new to the job. I'm literally on the job.
A couple months, not even and I go to pick
up this band called Blur, and I pile them with

(26:07):
all their gear into my car and I drive them
to WBCN and it's Damon and Graham and the whole
band and their tour manager and we go. We do
a great interview on WBCN. They do this great acoustic performance,
and we're leaving WBCN and it's pouring rain now and
I'm at a red light six weeks maybe into the job,

(26:31):
and it's my first big thing that the label's having
me to do. And Daniel nervous, He's like, how's it going?
Is it going all right? Like this is really important?
And I'm at a red light and a car skids
from behind me, hits my car. We get into a
total car wreck with Blur in the back and I
look over. I'm like, holy shit, I hope these guys

(26:52):
are okay, And thankfully they all start cracking up and
laughing at the whole situation. We get out of the car,
I get their gear, we go to their gear. Everything
goes well, and luckily, the next day WBCN adds the
first Blur record. But for a minute, my short lived
career in the field could have ended very quickly, and
I'm proud to say that I'm still you know, Dave,

(27:13):
I consider Damon one of my best friends in the
world to this day, and you know, from that minute
it was it was an example that I made the
right decision because it put me in the field and
allowed me to get close to so many amazing artists
and be part of so many moments. And I really
learned a lot from from being out in the field
and learning, you know, how to break artists. You know,

(27:34):
I think the lost art is it's not just getting
your records played on the radio. You're a part of
what happens live. You're a part of, you know, having
a relationship with the local press. Your job when you're
in that job, and it's sad that this role doesn't
really exist in today's record business. Your job is to
connect that band, those artists to everything possible on a

(27:55):
local level. And it's really changed a lot since then.
I still think there is an importance to that mentality,
but it's kind of gone from our business. Everything's so centralized.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Okay, you bear no specific responsibility, but Blur was gigantic
in the UK, blowing up the same time as Oasis.
Oasis in America on Columbia was nowhere near as big
as they were in the UK, but they did break.
Blur essentially never broke in America. Ultimately, Gorillas did. What

(28:29):
is your take why Blur didn't break in America?

Speaker 2 (28:33):
You know, I think it was a really exciting tie
and that you know, I'm very passionate about the UK
and British music and it's been a big part of
my career. And I think the difference between the bands
that have broken wide open and the bands that have it,
or the reason why Blur did have success in their

(28:53):
later years, they did sell out Medison Square Garden and
the reason that Gorilla has succeeded is because the band
that committed to touring and really doing laps around our
country are the ones who succeeded. Radio had succeeded because
they were a British band that really committed to doing
laps around America. Oasis did a fair level, a fair

(29:17):
amount of touring, you know, as chaotic as their world was,
and I was at the first Oasis gig in New York.
It was at Wetlands. I'll never forget it. I had
an SBK act actually opening and I stayed and watched them.
They put in the time and it's still the old
school fundamentals that are important today. It's touring and lure.

(29:40):
In those early years, they were frustrated with America. You know.
It was I worked with Suede when I was a Columbia,
another band that was so big. They could sell out
the two or huge arenas all over Europe, but when
it came to America, they could sell max Three four
thousand tickets. And I think the reason why the those
artists didn't break through in their early years, or the

(30:02):
reason why Blur didn't break through at the level, was
that touring commitment. They had success at home, and I
think they put in a little more time now. Damon too,
his credit started to fall in love with America. He
started to realize, Wow, this is an incredible place. He
took so much inspiration musically. He discovered hip hop himself,
which inspired Gorillas, and then when it came to Gorillas,

(30:25):
he really committed to putting in the time and touring
Gorillas and doing press and really spending more time here.
And I think that's a big part of the reason
why Oasis broke Blur didn't. But Gorillas did, and I
think that's a big reason what made those UK acts
stick around here and those that haven't.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Okay, how did you end up at Columbia and what
was that experience like?

Speaker 2 (30:56):
So? I was brought to Columbia by a great friend
named John who was formerly an Electra. He was the
VP of artist development there and he was looking to
change up the way they market alternative music. Donnie Ironer
was the president. We had a great team there. I
worked with some real characters, Jerry Blair, Charlie Walk. It

(31:18):
was a lot of fun being there, and I worked
with possibly the greatest artist I ever worked with in
my career. And I was lucky enough to work at
Columbia with Jeff Buckley. And Jeff Buckley is was so
brilliant and so talented and and so troubled. I mean
he was you know, when you met him, you knew
he was. There was an inherent sadness or something that

(31:41):
just was eating at him. And I think that's part
of that was part of his success. But Columbia was
was the major leagues. It was. It was a hard
place to work. Donnie was brilliant, but relentless and really
tough and He pushed us really hard. And you know,
when you went to that lake and they're working major

(32:02):
stars like Aerosmith and Springsteen and Mariah, there was no
patience or tolerance for anything less than hitting a home
run on everything he did. And it was hard, it
was high pressure. But I got a lot out of
being there. I learned a ton and the fact that
I was able to work with Jeff Buckley changed my life.

(32:23):
I mean, that is something that I don't I don't
think enough artists study or know who he is. And
I think the sad circumstance of his death and the
shortness of his career, he just he isn't on a
lot of people's radars. And I don't know what with
your experience with Jeff Buckley, like we were able.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
I was a fan of the father the album Happy Said.
I mean, Tim Buckley started out on one of Frank
Zappa's labels. He'd a lot of different things. But the
fact that his son, who really didn't grow up with him,
you know, I guess I'm not young enough to feel
that he's forgotten, because it still comes up in conversation
with people who were aware in that era. But staying

(33:08):
with this how big a step was it emotionally and
how difficult or easy was it to jump to go
to work with Rob.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
It's surprisingly it was easy. A lot of people said
that Rob and I were crazy. We were making really
good livings. We were in our mid twenties, doing really well,
on a really good path in the corporate music industry,
and a lot of our mentors and people said, hey,
you guys got to think through this, because you really
are both on a great track. And Rob stepped out first,

(33:41):
was doing well, not blowing it out to the point
where I was going to make the same living joining
him that I was at Columbia, and I had just
had a kid, so I had it added responsibility and
I had to make sure that I was making a move.
But both of us had this mentality that if it
didn't work out out, we were good at our jobs,

(34:01):
we probably would be able to step back in and
get a job in the corporate record industry again. And
I also didn't, you know, love working for anyone. I mean,
Donnie was a hard driving guy, Daniel was a hard
driving guy, and I think they both taught me well,
and I'm grateful for the time I had with them,
But They both made me realize, like, wow, I want
to be my own boss. I want to call the shots,

(34:23):
and there are very few people on our industry that
will put their money where their mouth is. And Rob
and I both did that and we never looked back.
We got lucky, but our mentality was if this fails,
we are both good at what we do, we'll find
our way back in. I was I think I was
twenty six or twenty seven when Rob and I partnered up.

(34:44):
He was twenty six when he broke out of Arista
or twenty maybe we were twenty five and twenty six.
I don't remember exactly, but somewhere in that range. So
you know, I was lucky to start early in the
record industry. I was eighteen or nineteen when I started,
you know, doing all that college work, and I had
spent a lot of time there, so I had some
good relationships to build our business on. It wasn't like

(35:07):
I was a year into a career. I was still young,
but I had spent so much time that we had
a good base to start the business.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, tell me about getting married and having a kid,
because you have another person involved in your married who
may or may not agree with your choices. Support you.
This is a twenty four to seven business. You get
a kid, you have to bring in the money. Tell
me about all that.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
That was a lot of pressure. The amazing thing is
I have an incredible wife, Aaron Cohen, and I met
her at SBKA Records. She was Daniel Glasses as Distant
and I met her when she first started there. I
knew I was going to marry her. I just you know.
We had this incredible friendship and relationship at work, and

(35:57):
the best part of my job was I Hadtone at
one end of the hall, my best friend in the world,
and on the other end of the hall, I had
the woman that I was going to marry, and it
was a great time to have those two people there
on a personal level. Coming up in this exciting time
in the music industry was incredible. And I think one
of the things that really helped me start my business

(36:19):
and have the confidence is I had a wife who
came from the business and had a really good understanding
and she was very supportive. She was totally calm and
chill about what I was doing. And I think the
fact that she put in some time in our business
gave her an understanding that this was going to be okay.

(36:41):
And here we are twenty eight, twenty nine years into Cornerstone,
let alone my career. She has this amazing patience and
respect and love for what I do. You know, she
she'll come on the road with me. You know, she'll
come to festival. She's she's not deep in it. She
she definitely only goes to what she likes. But she

(37:02):
has this understanding and respect and that gave me the
confidence that I can do it. But there was pressure.
I mean when you have a newborn. I got married
very young. I got married at twenty four years old,
and you know it wasn't a new relationship. But having
a new kid changes everything. And you know this, Bob,
I mean, you our business. You're out late at night,
and if you're if you're not out and you're not

(37:24):
in the scene, you are out of mind. You are
not in the mix. So the hardest part, and this
is why I love my kids so much, is that
I wasn't around as much as a young father. Because
here I am in my early twenties. I had my
son when I was like thirty, I think, or my
late twenties, and I am on the road I'm not around.

(37:45):
I have to go visit clients. I have to go
visit you know, artists. I am traveling, you know, to festivals.
And to my kid's credit, they I made up for
it as they got older and they learned to appreciate
what I did. And we're a very tight knit family.
And they had a real patience for me, because you're
trying to be a parent and do all the hard

(38:05):
things of parenthood, but you're also trying to be committed
to your business, and it's a very delicate balance, especially
as a young parent. And hopefully, you know, it all
worked out the way it should have, and they seem
like great kids and they're happy, and they have such
love for what I do. And my son actually works

(38:25):
in the music industry. He works for an agency called
well Or Media Agency where he does he helps run
live nations, TikTok and does a lot of social media
work within the business, so he has an appreciation for it.
And my daughter works for the Infatuation, which is the
food and restaurant, you know, content business, and you know
they've done really well, but you know, it was a

(38:47):
really big decision in terms of family and knowing that
I wasn't going to be able to be around quite
as much as your typical parent.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Okay, what year do you go to work with Rob been?
How old are you exactly?

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Then?

Speaker 2 (39:02):
I think, if I'm remembering it correct, Rob stepped out
in June of ninety six. I resigned that September and
told them, hey, guys, I'm not going to renew my deal,
but I will stay here as long as you'd like.
So I told whoever, Jim Burris, I think I'm what

(39:23):
I told. And I three days later, I get a
call on a Sunday, We're going to send all your
stuff home. You don't need to come into work. And
they basically paid me out of my deal and just
you know, honored the deal and let me go. And
then Rob and I joined forces sometime in early ninety seven.

(39:44):
I believe I was twenty seven years old at the time.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Okay, when you go to work with Rob, what is
he doing? And what's the first thing you do?

Speaker 2 (39:58):
So Rob is already working a lot of hip hop records.
He's getting hired directly by labels to help the marketing
of hip hop records. I am starting a companion business
in the alternative space. So my job is to get
all the major labels, the independent labels, the managers to realize, hey,

(40:19):
we are a resource to hire us one of the
first records. I think I got it. I don't remember
all the timelines on this stuff, so don't hold me
to all the specifics. It's a little big, but like
I remember Jeff quant It's calling me and saying, I
have this new band, Limp Biscuit, I want you to
hear it, and he played me Limp Biscuits, like, I
want to hire you to help us break this band,

(40:41):
Limp Biscuit. I remember Silva getting me involved in Beck Records.
I remember, you know, a lot of label people like
friends like Ross Apen hiring us for whatever Geffen was
working at the time, even Columbia. I mean, you know,
I ended up working for a lot of labels that
I was with, and we had a lot of success.
I mean they wanted to hear not just They didn't

(41:01):
want just our relationships to help get people to support
their music. They wanted our opinion. How should we roll
this out? What do you think of this single? And
so Rob was building the hip hop side, I'm building
the alternative side. And then together we are brainstorming, Okay,
what tools can we create? How do we build some
new ways of marketing music. So we started the Cornerstone Mixtape.

(41:25):
Then we started what was called the Cornerstone Player. These
were compilations where obviously we live in a streaming world,
they're kind of irrelevant, but there were compilations where we
would get big name DJs to mix the best current music.
So we would get a young Mark Ronson, for example,
who we were friends with, who was a great, smart,
young kid New York DJ, and we would get him

(41:48):
to do a mix of whatever current songs. Or one
time we did a jay Z mixtape with Mark Ronson,
which I think you could find on eBay for like
a thousand dollars, where we would have Ronson great this compilation.
We'd get the rights from the labels to say, hey,
we can do it. We eventually even started selling those
opportunities for the labels to put music on these, and
we would send that mixtape out to like five thousand

(42:11):
people and every major DJ, hotel manager, restaurant gatekeeper that
could break music. We would want them to have our
mixtapes so they can hear what's next in music. On
the Alternative mixtape. One of the first songs that we
really broke that we were a big part of was
Coldplay Yellow. You know, like where Kevin Weatherley or Mark

(42:33):
Hamilton in Portland would hear some of the music on
our different mixtapes as a way to turn them onto
what was next, and then we would get a call
and say, hey, tell me a little bit about this band,
and if we were working the record, we would help.
If not, we would connect them to the label so
they can get more information about what was on those mixtapes.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Okay, when you started, were you beating the bushes or
was it very soon people were calling you? And how
did you establish what the price was?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
So we were charging a flat fee per project. We
set our pricing very expensive because our goal was we
didn't want to be like some of the other promotion
entities out there. We wanted to work for a handful
of the best artists and labels like we wanted to.
We said no to a lot of projects and we

(43:26):
were beating the bush just to introduce what we were doing.
But we had so many relationships and people we knew
that that came kind of easy. And then then it
was a lot of what's beautiful about our business. It
just became very inbound. We didn't have to chase people,
and Rob and I had the mentality that we wanted
to be expensive, and we wanted to work just a

(43:46):
handful of projects at a time, and we wanted to
be involved for the long haul. We didn't want to
keep plugging and playing like if someone committed to a project.
If RCA wanted us to work this new bands, we
wanted to know that we were going to be a
part of what they were doing to break food Fighters
for the long haul. So we would get hired by

(44:08):
Dave Gottlieb, who was the marketing person at the time,
and Ron Forr who was the promotion person at the time,
and Silva who was managing at the time. We'd be
working for all of those entities, and they'd be talking
us to us directly because they would want to know
the pulse of what we were getting back. And then
our job was to fill in the blanks and help

(44:28):
the label do all the things that they were already
doing and anything that they weren't doing. So it was
can you help us get on the radio? Who would MTV?
Do you know? Can you help us with can you
get in Lewis Largency here about this. Can you talk
to this? You know, who do you have in the
field that can talk to whatever retail they have managers
with are their DJs that can support this? That That

(44:51):
was the way. You know, That's something Daniel taught us
really well, is that you know, artists broke from so
many different directions. Even though I comment on having mass
drivers in the industry, and this is still true today
in today's business, is that artist development is the amalgamation.
It's the total of a lot of little arts. And

(45:11):
that's what I think Rob and I really excelled at
is we built the system of smart young people that
had their ear to the ground, that were plugged in
and we knew Rob and I had the relationships on
the math level. But then we had all these kids
around the country, around the world for that matter, that
knew who the cool kids were that could turn the
right people onto music. And I think that's why we

(45:33):
were successful in the early days of the promotion and
marketing business.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Okay, you said you were expensive, what was the price?
And you talk about all these people in the field,
were they on the payroll? And how many people were working.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
So at that time, maybe we had ten people in
the company and I want to guess, and we had
a mixture department, a bunch of guys that just called
DJs all day long, and they would just ask DJs
what they like, what they're listening to, Hey, could you
listen to this? Could check this out? We had college reps.
So once we started Fader, which was in nineteen ninety nine,

(46:17):
to distribute Fader, we couldn't get magazine distribution. We had
no fucking clue what we were doing in the media business.
So we built our own infrastructure and to market Fader.
We built what we called the farm team, and these
are college reps. In every campus. We would hire one
or two kids at Columbus Ohio, a kid at NYU,

(46:38):
a kid at Syracuse, a kid in Michigan, a kid
in la and they would just give the Fader away
for free. You know, if they could get us on
a newstand, that would sell it great. But they're Our
mission to them was, We're going to send you one
hundred copies of Fader. Make sure one hundred of the
coolest people in that city get a copy of it.
And we started hiring those kids to do all the

(46:59):
more marketing in the field. They would hang up posters,
would they would give out twelve inches to local DJs.
They would drive the right people to see the artists
at early on, so they would know the local radio,
the local press, the freelance writers. Eventually, over time we
started moving into digital direction, so they would know all

(47:20):
the people that were doing the right things online. Years later,
but we basically were a full service artist development company,
and we would charge anywhere from ten grand to twenty
five thousand dollars a month, pending how many of those
services you wanted and what kind of tools we were making,
and it started becoming really successful. But the key transition

(47:42):
is when the brand started calling us. Then that's when
everything switched, because then we could be really selective and
only pick the best of the best music and put
our focus on working some of the brand projects.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
What came first, the brands are the Faeder.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
The brand stuff came first before or maybe just as
we're starting Fader. So companies started ninety six, you know,
I would say the first brand stuff started coming in
ninety eight, and then we started Fader in ninety nine,
and Coca Cola was the first big breakthrough on the
brand side. A few years later, we got to we

(48:22):
signed these crazy NDAs from a company called Microsoft, and
we were worried, like, these MDAs are crazy, what the
hell is this? And they made us fly out to
meet with them, and they told us about this secret
note new video game system called Xbox they were launching,
and they needed an agency to really help use music

(48:45):
in college campuses to help establish it. They then came
to our offices. They realized that our whole company was
operating on Max, and they were appalled that we were
willing to take on the business. And they said, hey,
we're going to pay for this, but we need you
all to switch to MAX. And Rob and I said,
switched to switch to Windows. I'm sorry, switch switch to

(49:06):
Windows computers. And Rob and I said that's a non starter. Me.
Rob and Anthony, our CEO, said, hey, we want your business.
We are so excited about this video game system. I
don't even know if it was called Xbox, yet we
want to be in business with you. We're not willing
to change from you know, our MAX setup, which is
so key and inherent's our business. So we said no,

(49:27):
we call their bluff, and thankfully they still hired us
and uh, but yeah. So that's how the brand stuff
started evolving. And then you know, we were doing Nike work.
Nike started discovering what we're.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
a little bit slower. The first is Sprite, which is
a Coca Cola brand. You go for the meeting, go
for the meeting in Atlanta. What is the ultimate agreement?
Ultimate work?

Speaker 2 (49:53):
The ultimate work is that they were building some campaigns
around right connected to hip hop. They had already done
something with five call quests that they were on the
right track, and they're like, we want to go bigger,
So they hired us to build this campaign. It was
called five Deadly Women, where they were using the culture

(50:16):
of martial arts and hip hop and we help them decide, Okay,
these are the radio stations and the media platforms where
we think you should spend your money. These are the
artists that you should lean towards. These are the different
ways to market this. So they hired us to consult
them and it was exploded. It was really successful. It

(50:39):
led to us getting hired for this new energy drink
they were launching. They eventually hired us to work on
Coke Base brand, so it went from that one consulting
project to really working across the portfolio. And here we
are twenty eight years later, we're still work or twenty
six years later. Since then we're working for coke stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Okay, so first come Coke. What is the next brand
and how do they come to you when you come
to them?

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I think the next brand was this internet startup called
Boo dot Com. I don't know if you remember this.
It was like the first big internet retailer that was
a total bus but they spent like so many millions
of dollars. They hired us to consult on that launch.
From there, Nike hit us up. We started doing work.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
For Okay, you're sitting in the office, you get an
email or a phone call. Hey, we're Nike, would like to.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Meet We We had started Fader and we actually this
was Rob the idea. It was brilliant. We had no
advertisers in the first couple issues of Fader, and Rob's like,
we've got to show that we have something going on.
We can't just put this magazine out without anything. And

(51:52):
we started cop photo copying and putting Nike ads in
our magazine and Nike's agency winding case and he said, Hey,
what the fuck, like, who told who said to run
this ad? Where did this ad come from? And we
kind of played dumb, and they knew that we were
taking ads, and we did that because we wanted to
show that Fader had some muscle and it was making

(52:15):
an impact. And the Nike people actually called us and
they reached out and we got a meeting with Nike
because they thought that they liked what they saw on Fader.
They thought it was a ball the interesting move that
we wanted to do it, and that led to us
having some early meetings and conversations with Nike and we
started doing some work for Nike Basketball. It eventually led

(52:36):
to us doing a campaign a few years later that
celebrated the twenty fifth anniversary of Air Force one. Air
Force one is Nike's iconic sneaker, and they put us
in a pitch where it was Cornerstone and Fader. We
consider ourselves one entity for that versus Widening, Kennedy and
all these other big agencies. And they briefed us, they say,

(52:58):
it's the twenty fifth anniversary of Air Force one. We
want to make history. We want to do something non traditional.
Here are the parameters here's the rough budget perimeters. And
our idea was, don't do an advertising campaign, Let's make
an original song. And we went to Rick Rubin. I
called Rick, who we had covered in Fader, and luckily

(53:18):
he was cool and always was a bit of a
friend and listened to me. Rick Rick signed on to
produce a Air Force one twenty fifth anniversary track. Kanye
was the lead artist. We got Kanye on board, we
got KRS one, we got rock Kim, and then we
got Nas and we had the four of those artists

(53:40):
on a Rick Rubin produced track. The budgets were enormous
bomb I don't even remember the money. So we were
able to entice all these legends because we had good money.
They also had a lot of faith because they knew
us from the hip hop space, they knew us from
the years in the music industry. And Rick co wrote
the song with Kanye. They produced an incredible track. I'll

(54:04):
send you the link when we're done later so you
can check it out. And we got DJ Premier from
Gang Starter do a remix. And then we built a
video and a whole platform around this campaign for Nike,
and instead of it being a TV commercial to celebrate
the twenty fifth anniversary of Air Force one. It was

(54:25):
a song that had a whole marketing campaign around the sneaker.
We did an event in New York City. Not only
did all the artists come and perform, but Nike invited
every one of their marquee athletes that we worked with
them to produce. And the earned media and the viral
nature of the song was so much more impactful than
any paid media that they could buy, and it was

(54:48):
an enormous success, and the pinnacle was we decided to
work with them to submit the song to the Grammys
and everyone's like, Ah, you're crazy, this will never do anything.
And it was the first time a brand campaign ever
got a Grammy nomination. And it didn't win, but it
was nominated for Best Hip Hop Performance that year. I

(55:09):
think it lost to another Kanye record, ironically, but it
was an example of the type of evolution of our
business and the way we could use our roots in
music and our creativity to do things outside of music
to help brand really make history. And from those moments,
like those early moments, we were off to the races.

(55:30):
The floodgates open. Then a lot of people started wanting
to hear ideas and we started shedding the music work.
We said, you know what, we don't need to be
a hired hand for music. Let's focus solely on using
our brand relationships and budgets and platform to do good
for music, to do really good creative things with artists.

(55:51):
And that's when the agency business really transformed to become
more of a full service ad agency.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Okay, what is the status of the agency today?

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Agency is still going strong. The agency business has changed
quite a bit. Major League Soccer and one of our
biggest clients, Coke, is still an enormous client. We help
Coke with a lot of their music strategy. We help
them negotiate their festival partnerships a bunch of years ago

(56:25):
with Coachella and Lolla Clues and ACL and Live Nation AG.
We help them with their talent selection and certain campaigns.
You know, at Major League Soccer, we do all of
their strategy in general advertising. So not only are we
doing all the TV creative and the billboards and at
a home you see, but like we help them with

(56:46):
their All Star Game and their finals and not licensing
music for their campaigns. The you know, we help work
with Apple, who's their media partner. And building and developing
and maintaining that relationship. But the agency business has changed
a bit. Marketers are no longer anywhere near as brave
as they were in the heyday of our company. You know,

(57:09):
they are much more conservative and how they spend everything
was so successful back in the day because brands operate
good brands, not all brands. Brands operated on gut. Nike
was a brave marketer. They didn't give a shit about
what the metrics or the measurement or what the CPM
value was. It was are we doing something that's going

(57:31):
to change culture and lead culture. Now we live in
a world where even Nike, the biggest brands in the world,
are so measured and so conservative, and they're so you know,
brands are so caught up in you know, are we
getting maximum value? And I think it's hurting a lot
of brands. I think, you know, the best most iconic

(57:53):
brands in the world, the Apple, the Nikes, they always
operated on gut. They were never guided on what the
numbers said. And I think we live in such a
measured world that, in my opinion, not just the agency business,
the whole marketing business is really shattered and it's a
reason you're seeing a lot of smaller, more niche brands

(58:14):
rise because they're being a little braver and boulder, and
a lot of young consumers don't lionize, you know, some
of these big iconic brands the same way. The playing
field is leveling, and it's because a lot of these brands,
whether it's change in management or they're publicly traded companies
with more pressure to maintain the stock price. I think

(58:36):
they've lost their way, and I think I hope we're
going to see a change for the better over the
coming years where brands are going to get brave again,
because right now, from my perspective, I believe the agency brand,
you know side, it's just agencies can't do great work
if they don't have the budgets and the support and

(58:57):
the courage of brands. So I think that business has
changed the lot.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Okay, are you a full service agency? Most of this
shit has moved online, but there's television, radio. If I
go with you, you can service me across the board.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
We can in Major League Soccer, we play that role.
Our wish is, you know, we want to we want
to control as much as we can within reason. Our
specialty is music, our specialty is creating non traditional platforms
and ideas. But when it comes to a client that
is really aligned with our thinking and they want the

(59:35):
full service, like we have with Major League Soccer, we're
all in and we've got a amazing pool of outside
contributors that if a brand requires a specialty that we
can find the resources. And we've got this amazing team
of in house talent that knows how to keep building
on what a brand needs. But I would say more

(59:55):
often than not, our specialty is still going to be
culture and music or so than being full service. Full
service is a blessing and a curse. It can be
very lucrative and very powerful, but it could also be
so crippling because you have to hire so many people.
You know, Like the biggest client we've ever had in
the history of our company was Converse, which is the

(01:00:17):
Nike owned sneaker brand, and at the peak of our
Converse work, at one point we had fifty people working
on the Converse business and we were doing incredible work.
I mean work that I am so proud of, campaigns
that are historical. But the problem is eventually there's a
change in management and that goes away and then you
have these amazing fifty people or you know, forty five

(01:00:41):
people or whoever's working on the business, and you don't
have the money to maintain the scale and the size
of the staff. So you know, the blessing is you
ramp up, you build this enormous business, the billing's great,
the level works great, and then eventually it all ends.
So being full service is pricky. I think at our
core we want to stay rooted in music and culture.

(01:01:03):
But when we can grow with the company like we
did Converse or our Major League soccer, of course we're
all in to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Okay, this is a business is consolidation. WPP owns a
lot of iconic brands. There are other bigger companies. Has
anyone approached you about buying the Cornerstone Agency and do
you have a philosophy about that, like we're never going
to sell out, or if the price is right or
we need certain controls.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yeah, we have been approached constantly over the years, and
you know, we've rob and I were always fiercely independent.
It's not that we wouldn't sell or take on an investor.
We are just so proud of our independence. It's been
a blessing and a curse. The blessing is it enabled

(01:01:59):
us to stay true to the music and culture and
what we love and what we do, and stay true
to our staff. The curse is when you go through
tough times like a COVID or or you want to
invest and grow a business, it's inefficient to grow certain
divisions of the company out of the profits of another
division of the company. And when you hit a COVID

(01:02:20):
and big, you know, complicated, you know, life changing moments
and a business, you know, it's sometimes is really nice
to have a deep pocketed parent company. So yes, to
answer your question, We've been approached a lot by a
lot of the major agency. We've been approached by a
lot of the big media players, and have had amazing

(01:02:42):
conversations with so many great people in the music industry.
We've even talked to a lot of the majors about
becoming a division of some of the majors because our
services could really help exploit that. And it's not that
I'm opposed to doing a deal at at some point,
but I think we want to stay true through our

(01:03:04):
mission and we're just somewhat selective. What I don't love
about some of the advertising holding companies is the types
of deals they do. You're essentially borrowing your own money.
Some of these deals are earnouts, where essentially you're just
getting multiple on your own success and in essence you're

(01:03:24):
literally borrowing your future earnings to get a check up front.
And I don't think that's the kind of deal that
we would want to do. I think if we're ever
going to do something, I would want to do it
with a great music player. You know, music is in
the DNA and it's the through line and the threat
of every aspect of the company, and the best partners
for us out there would be someone that is really

(01:03:47):
true to building something great or has been building something
great music And it's you know, when you work twenty
eight years and now when I'm in this weird position
that I'm in sole control of the company, these are
really hard decisions to make. And you know, we came close.
We came close to private equity, we came close to

(01:04:09):
selling to some major music players, and ultimately we just
never pulled the trigger. But at some point I think
we would do something. It's just got to be the
right people. I think people, not the deal or what's
going to guide who we do something with. It's got
to be people that really share our vision and believe
in music and believe in artists and believe in what

(01:04:29):
we do. And that's kind of what I'm looking for
in a potential partner.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Okay, let's go back to your earlier point about brands
or gunshine. You mentioned that there's a change in regime.
How much also is change in culture, cancelation culture, what's
going on on x formally Twitter? How much has to
do with the landscape as opposed to management.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
That affects everything. Sadly, of the riving force for us
at a brand is always the CMO, the chief marketing officer,
And I think that is just like you know, how
the heads of labels eventually, you know, expire, and there's

(01:05:17):
a change in management constantly in our in our side
of the music industry, That's kind of how the marketing
side works, except the timetables even shorter. You know, it's
no different than an NFL football coach. There is just
constant turnover. And usually when you get hired at these brands,
your strength of the relationship and success is the partnership

(01:05:37):
you have with the CMO and his or her team
on down. And that's really you know, usually when we
change clients, it's because of a change in management. And
what happens is you get in a great groove with
whoever you're working with, and then teams change and that
person wants to build and bring in their own team.
But to your point about you know, the Internet and culture,

(01:06:01):
everything that's out there that affects all these brands, I think, yes,
that has made certain brands more conservative. I think brands
are definitely more calculated because of the messaging out there.
I think brands are a lot more thoughtful because they
want to manage public perception and they're really concerned. They're
concerned that, hey, I'm building a ten million dollar campaign

(01:06:22):
with an artist that God forbid this artist does something
wrong or steps out of mound. We're liable, we have
a lot at stake, And I think you're right. The
Internet magnifies so many problems that I truly believe that
you know, that is what contributes to some of these
brands being gunshy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Okay, this may be below your pay grade, but in
terms of corporations in sponsorship now it used to be
for long to all, we'll get to get a sponsor.
Then the sponsors felt that they weren't getting value for money.
I hear you, what is this status of brands being

(01:07:03):
involved with individual acts, with tours, with festivals or really
do they want to play on a much grander level
that is opposed to tying themselves to one of.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Those great question. You know. The reason why we were
successful with all of our cornerstone work and the reason
why I think we're really important is when we do
things with music, we don't want it to be transactional.
And there's so many brands that have come out of
the woodwork to spend money in music, whether it's sponsoring

(01:07:33):
something or paying an artists, and it's when the partnership
is truly about elevating the art or enhancing how that
artist can make something for his or her fans. I
think that's when the partnership succeeds. When the partnership is
purely an exchange of money where you're paying a big

(01:07:56):
name artist to endorse or support your product, it fails
and it's just transactional and the artist is being pushed
by the brand or the agency to check off all
the contractual obligations, and the artists feel badgered by you know,
having to shill or sell for for the brand they
just took this enormous check from. And I think that's

(01:08:18):
where a lot of these things fail. You Now, it's
different in the festival, in the concert space because sometimes
that's signage, or you're buying real estate, or you're buying
you know, hospitality set up. But when it comes to
an artist partnership, in my opinion, the most successful partnerships
is when the decision makers, not just the agency, not

(01:08:39):
just me and my team, but the actual CMO and
the people at the brand get to sit with the
artists and get to ask each other questions and look
each other in the eye and say, hey, does this
feel good to you? Is this a non starter for you?
What's important to you? What's going to turn you off?
That's when these partnerships succeed and they fail, and more

(01:09:00):
so lately, they fail because it's just the monetary exchange.
And I don't blame artists or management for taking the money,
but I do blame brands for not doing their due
diligence and really taking the time to speak and get
to know the artists as they do this. And I
think it's a very delicate dance between a successful partnership

(01:09:23):
and just the paid transaction. And the good news is
a lot of artists in our business have been able
to succeed outside the economic downturn of aspects of the business.
You know, there is non traditional money out there for
certain acts. The bad news is it really only affects
the upper middle to high tier of the industry. Developing

(01:09:45):
artists just don't have as much opportunity on the brand side.
There's just not as much out there because they just
don't move the needle as much. So it's tricky.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Can you give me a specific example of the relationship
with a brand and a music tea, a band, or
an individual act that is not transactional that you think works.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
You know, we created a series for Converse called Three Artists,
One Song, and Converse was celebrating their one hundredth anniversary.
They did some research. Jeff Kottrell, who's the CMO, brilliant guy,
he was a gut guy. He was such a good
mentor someone I learned so much from and really brilliant

(01:10:28):
market probably one of the Hall of Fame cmos out there.
And he said he did some research and he found
that the one hundredth anniversary was spoke to old people.
You know, it didn't speak to kids. Kids didn't give
a shit. But they needed to do something to at
least celebrate the moment. So they came up with a
platform which connected music icons and influential icons that organically

(01:10:55):
wore a Converse by their feet. You ever see paper dolls,
how they're out and their connected paper dolls are connected
by their hands. Well, they worked with anomally their creative interest.
They created this platform to connect people by their feet.
And our feeling was that's good. It's gonna be a
striking visual. And if you think about Converse, the Ramones
were Converse, Elvis wore Converse, Nwa were Converse. The Nirvana

(01:11:20):
Kurt Cobain, you know, sadly died in Converse, and Converse
has always been a music icon. And what we said
to them is, guys, your DNA is music. If you
think of Nike as the performance brand, your your your
parent company. They own running and sports and golf and
tennis blah blah blah. Converse owns music. You organically, the

(01:11:44):
Strokes are wearing Converse in the height of their career,
you're organically there. So they built this platform off of
that insight to connect people as paper dolls from their feet,
and we said, to celebrate this, we're going to build
a platform, and to con versus credit, they gave us
Sideenttle budgets. We're going to build a platform based on

(01:12:05):
the diversity of how much music embraces your brand. And
we create a platform called Three Artists, One Song, and
the idea was to bring three disparate artists that would
never work together. Whereas my ninety examples the kings of
hip hop, this idea was, how do we bring three
people that normally would never work together, where their labels

(01:12:25):
would never have the budget to give them to do
something like this, and we would envision giving them budget
to make a music video that the industry couldn't afford
to do anymore, and we would make a song collaboration
with three disparate artists. The first one we did, we
took Pharrell, We took Julian Casablancas from The Strokes at

(01:12:46):
the height of the Strokes success, and we took Santy Gold,
who was at the time a really buzzing, you know,
great up and comer, and we had the three of them.
We had this happened in my office. I had Julian
and Farrell meet in my office for the first time.
They had a lot of mutual respect for each other,
didn't know that much about each other. And then subsequently

(01:13:06):
Santy came and got to meet them as well, and
they agreed. We paid them all for their participation, and
they agreed to work on a collaboration and Forarrell and
Santi and Julian wrote the lyrics and the track. Forrell
produced the track. Julian played some instruments on the track,
so out at Santy, and then we made We gave
them an enormous budget. I think the budget was like

(01:13:28):
half a million dollars for a music video, this beautifully animated,
really cool music video. And instead of making a TV commercial,
Converse would cut segments of the music video and they
would run it during the VMA's. They would run it digitally.
They would We made billboards of the three of them
connected by their feet, and we put these iconic images

(01:13:50):
of Farrell and I'll send you all the stuff so
you can look at it after our call as well, Farrell,
Julian and Santi. And it exploded because it blew people's mind.
They're like number one. They're like, what the fuck are
three of these artists coming together? How the hell did
Converse pull this off? And to Converse's credit, it was
so successful they went on their gut. They then funded

(01:14:11):
us to do it for eight more years, and every
single season when they had new product come out, we
would do another three artist one song. We did one
with Frank Ocean, which is one of the very few
brand deals Frank's ever done, Dip Low and the two
surviving members of The Clash, Paul simmon In and Mick Jones,
and they all collaborated on a track which was incredible,

(01:14:35):
and we made you know again the same image of
all of those artists, and we put that on billboards
in Hiccadilly Circus and on Sunset Boulevard and in Times Square.
So we were moving the needle where we looked the
artists in the face and said, hey, what would you
want to do if you had almost endless budget and

(01:14:56):
total creative control. And we did nine of them. We
did Kid Cutty, Rostam from Vampire Weekend and Best Coast.
We did we did so I'll send you the list
of all of them. And we did Bernard Sumner from
New Order and Hot Chip did one, and then we
started doing them with regional appeal. We did an early

(01:15:19):
version of a K pop one, you know, for just
the Korean market. So that's an example of when you
get people aligned creatively of what it could succeed. I'm
trying to think of a failure example, but I don't
have one on the spot for you, But there are
a lot of those.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
These are creatively tens. Do these brands then say, you
know something like Coke, it's a giant company and these
are image campaigns. Do these companies want to see a
direct impact on sales?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
They do, they don't. They have a patience. This is
not driven solely about hey, we run the spot, are
we seeing product? They want to see a rye in
their brand heat, they want to see that they're being
organically spoken about in social media, They're being organically spoken
about in a lot of different you know press, lifestyle press,

(01:16:16):
and ultimately they do want to see a correlation to sales.
But I think what these campaigns do first and foremost
is they start getting their younger consumer excited and talking
about the brand, and then the hope is eventually it
makes a sales connection. A lot of our stuff always
has a retail call to action. So if we were

(01:16:37):
doing these three artists one song collaborations, you would go
into a Journey's store in the mall, or you would
go into foot locker and then you would see that
display and you'd see a connection through the campaign in there.
But the best marketers are again, they're not making the
future success of these campaigns solely based on a scent

(01:17:00):
rise in sales. When they do that, they don't allow
it the time to flourish. A lot of these campaigns
succeed because we repeated them. We did it consistently for five, six, seven, eight,
nine years, and a lot of brands right now will
do these campaigns as a one off, but they don't
build any momentum. And if you don't build any momentum,

(01:17:20):
you're really not going to see the sales reaction. So yes,
there is a form of measurement eventually that's needed, but
it's not as black and white as hey, we need
to see a ten percent rise in sales or we're
not doing this again.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Okay, when you deal with acts, Eil Young famously wrote
a song and won't take any money from people. He
still means something in today's marketplace. You can go back
and look at people who took the money. They don't
mean as much. The issue of credibility now in the business,
and a lot of these people are percent people say, oh,

(01:18:02):
the customer doesn't care. You know, you can sell out,
it's no big deal. What is the status of the
impact on one of these clients, And would you say
every client there's a musician, there's a way to do
a brand deal. Or should certain acts still not do
brand deals?

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think it's a blanket,
black and white answer. I don't think the consumer cares
anywhere near as much as they used to, you know,
like back in the day, if Nirvana did a brand
deal in the height of their success, I think it
would have been a complete failure and gone against everything
they stand for. There are certain acts that I think

(01:18:43):
have to tread slowly and take their time, But the
consumer is a lot more accepting, even embracing. I mean,
we live in a social world where, especially in hip
hop and certain genres, you know, the right brand association
really elevates an artist's status, you know, and it shows

(01:19:03):
that you know, whether it's high fashion that embraces a
lot of music, you know, or the right car brand.
There are situations where brands can elevate the consumer perception.
I do think consumers are much more forgiving and accepting.
They're not as critical as maybe they were back in
the day. But there are certain artists that have to

(01:19:24):
have a high filter. You can't just take every check.
You know, I have approached I'm not going to name names,
but I've talked to I've spoken with, you know, and
talked to some of the biggest superstars in the business
on behalf of some of the biggest brands in the world,
and they have cited certain corporate policies and issues for

(01:19:48):
the reason that they're not going to work there. So
brands do artists have a very high filter. They have
a lot of social conscience. They're not just out for
the biggest check. And I think the best artists will
always evaluate brand partnerships based on not just the finances,
but what is the best for them, their fans, and

(01:20:09):
how it's going to be perceived.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
Okay, let's switch gears. Tell me about starting the Fader.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
So Fader started in the summer of nineteen ninety nine,
and it was a guy named Lee Harrison, who was
heading up a lot of marketing for Rob and I brilliant,
smart guy. I worked with him at Columbia. He was
the guy that came up with so many really great
ideas for us, and he was the young guy on
our team that just always had his foot on the

(01:20:39):
pulse of every great new artist, what was going on culturally.
And the idea was we were going to start Fader,
and a fader is the mixer. It's it's the way
that DJ blends records. So it's the way a DJ
is going from one record to another record and on

(01:21:00):
the mixing console of his DJ gear. And the idea
was to start a small, you know, publication focus on
what's next in music, to turn the same people who
were giving those mixtapes to that I was describing, to
turn those people onto what's next in music, to document
the access we had to hearing all this early music

(01:21:21):
and using some really great photography, writing some great stories
to turn DJ's influencers just people that could help break artists.
And the first issue. Rob was the one who pushed us.
He's like, I'm so fucking sick of hearing of this
idea we're getting in a room right now, and we're
making this thing. And it was a team of like

(01:21:42):
six or seven of us. Our CEO, Anthony Holland, was
one of those one of those guys who just get
you come up with an idea, he figures out how
to do it. And Rob was the muscle and the
energy to get us to all to stay in the
office for a week straight and just figure it out.
And Rob and I wrote a lot of the early
pieces to get We hired some freelancers, We had some friends.

(01:22:04):
We had this incredible guy named Jonathan Manyon who was
an up and coming respected hip hop photographer, and he
came in and got the first few covers for us,
and Anthony hired some young designers that did the layout.
In designing, eventually we met a young guy named Jeff
Staple who has a very successful clothing company, big designer

(01:22:26):
and in the clothing space and super successful entrepreneur. Jeff
Staple came in and became our first real designer to
help lay out the designs of all the early issues
of Fader, and we just scrapped together the ability to
make this magazine. The first one had funk Master Flex,
a big New York DJ from Hot ninety seven on
the cover and it was almost like a pamphlet. And

(01:22:47):
then the second one thanks to a great young girl
who worked for us for years, Sarah Nwkirk. She most
recently she manages Raging against the Machine now to this day.
But Sarah was able to get us Zach Dala Roche
from Rage, Rob was able to get Run from Run
DMC and Premiere from Gangstar and we put the three

(01:23:08):
of them on the cover of Fader. Again, here we
are Bob men, melting genres, bringing really disparate genres together,
and we get the three of them to be on
the cover of Fader. And it was the caption the
title on the cover was three Kings and people's heads
exploded when we put the three of them on the cover.

(01:23:28):
People started noticing, holy shit, what the hell is Fader?
Who's behind this? And how did they get those three
artists together on the cover. And from there it exploded
because every young photographer saw that we were making Fader
on this really heavy paper stock. We were breaking all
the rules. We were allowing young photographers, not the legends

(01:23:51):
have their first shot to shoot covers. We were giving
shots to artists that were really young in the evolution
in their career, and we went from that Three King's
cover to getting Beck and D'Angelo together on a cover,
and then we had the idea that we were never
going to sell the ad space on the back cover,
but we were always going to do two covers. So
the idea was, how do we take all of our

(01:24:14):
history and the alternative rock space, the dance electronics space,
and our history in the hip hop space and have
a truly diverse magazine that represented everything in culture. And
it was modeled after the Face like. We saw that
the UK was doing things in magazines and media so

(01:24:34):
much better than the US. Spin and Rolling Stone at
the time had gotten stale. They were moving in a
much more pop direction. And our whole mandate was, let's
break the rules, Let's start putting relatively unknown artists on
these covers. Let's do two covers of every issue. And
it really exploded, and we went from selling the ads

(01:24:54):
ourselves and writing stuff to building a team and bringing
in some expertise, and with every every issue it got
bigger and bigger. The bet d'andelo issue led to us
having outcasts on the cover. Outcast led to us having
thanks to the help of Paul Rosenberg, a young eminem
who was just starting out and putting EM and M
on the cover. And then then the world started just

(01:25:16):
noticing what we're doing, and everything was inbound. Everybody was
pitching us their ideas and stories. I think fader Though,
really came to life when we started doing events, and
when we started celebrating every issue with an issue release party.
It really started to all the right people, whether we

(01:25:37):
were in New York or la or London, all the
right people would come out and come to our parties
and our performances. We did an event in New York
in the Round. We got Red Striped the beer company
to give us some money and we had this virtually
unknown artist named Mia play in the Round in New
York City and it was her first New York City

(01:25:58):
performance ever think and it was like moments like that
where everyone knew that we were playing a big role
in introducing new things in culture. We eventually would go
on to start fader Ford. Fader Fort was our festival
property that was almost like counter programming to different things

(01:26:20):
that would happen in a city. We did it in
New York City during CMJ or the VMAs. We did
it in Austin during south By Southwest, and it was
our way of bringing the editorial of Fader to life
in a physical sense. Fader Ford in Austin. It's one
of the first shows Amy Winehouse did down there. You know,
she did like a handful of shows. You know, she

(01:26:42):
chose to play our events as a young artist. Fader
Fort was the place where so many established and young
acts would come and perform, and they'd use Fader as
a platform. We did events with. You know, Travis Scott
played fader Ford at a at a very early stage
of his career, both in New York and in Austin.

(01:27:02):
Eventually Kanye would headline Fader for It, Drake would headline
Fader for It. Bony Ver, a young nineteen seventy five,
open Fader for It when they were just starting out.
So we built this editorial platform that was focused on
telling the stories of who was next in music. And
we're so proud of the artists that we were part of.
Pharrell and Chad Hugo when they were the Neptunes were

(01:27:25):
on the cover the White Stripes. But then we brought
it to life in a physical sense for creating our
own festival property, and it really exploded because we were
doing things differently.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Okay, when you started the Fader, what were the goals?
Was there an economic goal, like this is a business?
Was it just spreading the word? What was the goal
at the advent?

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
The advent and the goal was to turn more people
onto new music. We felt there was a hole in
the media space in the US that nobody was talking
about what's next in music anymore, you know, like I said,
spinning Rolling Stone, we're covering whatever. Mainstream pop stars they
were trying to become bigger, broader, and only the UK
publications were really digging in on new stuff. So the

(01:28:15):
goal was to create a vehicle, a tool to turn
people onto new music and culture, and that would help us.
It would help, you know, really just build a better
network of relationships that could help all the other aspects
of the business. Eventually, Yes, we hoped to turn it
into a profitable business, but the Fader in its early
years it lost money. I mean, we were lucky that

(01:28:36):
we had an agency and other businesses that we could
pour that money into funding the start of Fader. We
always wanted to keep a clear separation of church and
state between the agency and Fader, but they did help
each other out. Fader opened up a lot of doors
for us to get a lot of meetings on the
agency side, and then Cornerstone got us the brand relationships

(01:28:57):
where we could go to these brands and said, hey,
help us meet your advertising people. We need your help
to support this great new media property we're starting. So
both businesses did help each other out, and then probably
a couple of years in, we started becoming profitable and
it became a great standalone business.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
You know, we had so many magazines of going on
a business or stopped in print. What was the history
of Fader as the Internet came along? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
It was the Internet was exciting our editorial team, you know,
really was discovering what was then known as blogging and
that world. And we hired this great young guy, Nick
Cash Dubbs, who is a Trax partner right now on
more on the record side, but he was our initial

(01:29:44):
Fader dot com editor. We brought him on board. He
was running his own blog, and he and our editorial
team really built the first version of Fader dot com
and it was really successful. You know, we started with
writing our stories online. We never wanted to stop printing
the magazine and the Internet really was a great evolution

(01:30:05):
of Fader. It opened us up to so many worlds.
Eventually we started spending more and more money on video
and short form documentaries. We you know, really we're telling
great stories both in a video sense. That would lead
to us starting some podcasts, you know. A couple of
years ago, during COVID, we started a partnership with Mark
Ronson and we started a podcast with Mark we call

(01:30:27):
a Fader Uncovered, so in between him producing whatever massive album,
he would interview the who's who of icons and music.
So we started using the podcasting platform. We still do
a lot of social video obviously now everything is on
Instagram and TikTok. Unfortunately, we haven't printed the magazine since
COVID because it just doesn't make financial success, you know sense.

(01:30:50):
But we're we're really trying to reactivate print. I do
want to bring it back and maybe do two issues
a year. But the media business is true, and you know,
you and I were talking about this in in London
a few months ago. The media business is so challenging.
Dollars have moved away from media, dollars are from from brands,

(01:31:12):
are being spent again on social media and measured platforms.
And it's been a really really challenging period for Fader
and any media business. You know, it's it's as a business,
it's become really really hard to figure out what is
the path forward of media. And I think, you know,
we're not alone. A lot of media properties are in

(01:31:35):
this business. It's it's the film and TV world going
through it, it's the it's the content business is going
through it. Every business in media is really in a struggle. Luckily,
we we really doubled down on Fader label and building
a whole music division, and that through through the success
of streaming, has been an enormously profitable business and been

(01:31:58):
a really strong component. But the media business is something
that we're challenged with to figure out what is the
way forward. And we're experimenting with a lot of new
things on a lot of new approaches, but it is
not easy.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
So tell me about the elements of the music division.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
So music division started in the early two thousands because
a lot of artists that we met through Fader, New
Rob and I came from the music industry. They knew
we had a lot of expertise and they would ask
for our help and we didn't want to charge them.
We didn't want to open up a music marketing division again.

(01:32:35):
So we said, you know what, we want to help
you guys. Let's become partners. We'll put up the money,
we'll do the work in the marketing, you'll be the artist,
and we'll create what is now a pretty modern deal
structure that the whole industry is embrace. I'm not saying
we started it, but we wanted to be early to
create a true fifty to fifty partnership with artists. So

(01:32:55):
we met tons of artists through Fader. They would always
be in our office, they always play us Munick. Some
were on majors, some were disenchanted with that system. They
wanted options and help with their career. And it started
with this brilliant artist who we still work with to
this day named Saul Williams, whose first record was produced
by Rick Rubmin. Came out on Columbia on Rick Rubin's label,

(01:33:17):
and then we eventually signed him over to management and
signed him to Fader label. We then got Trent Reznor
to work with him on the second record. Saul was
on tour with Trent and they made the album together
and Saul's what really got us started, and from Saul,
we then signed this amazing duo named Matt and Kim.
They had an offer from Warners and Colombia, all the majors.

(01:33:40):
They just were an indie band all the way, and
we just fell in love with each other. They were
this brilliant duo who toured relentlessly and they had excellent music.
They had played me Daylight, which would become their career
head and they were managed by Kevin Patrick, who to
this day is a great friend who is an A
and R guy at Columbia who I worked with, and

(01:34:02):
just a really smart, brilliant guy. And he always knew
that the major label system were going to eat them up,
and we partnered on that and our label just really
started that way. It started organically was profitable, but as
we entered the twenty ten to twenty fifteen era, it
was a tough time to make money in the music business,

(01:34:23):
so we were very conservative about how we signed acts
and what we went after. And all of a sudden,
we started looking at our catalog circa twenty sixteen seventeen,
and the revenue that we saw coming in from streaming
was enormous. It started to really make sense. We had
built this great catalog, and all of a sudden, the

(01:34:47):
third small component of our business was becoming one of
the most profitable and most efficient by virtue of the
success of streaming. And it was at that point that
we said we got to double down on this business
and reinvest in it. And I met Carson Oberg who
was a young manager who's managing a few artists, and
we brought him in to head up the label. He

(01:35:08):
was in his early twenties and really really smart beyond
his years and or in his mid twenties, and he, uh,
he really transformed the label. We we then I met Claro.
We signed Claro, who you know, is an absolutely brilliant artist.
We then parlayed the success of Claro and and and

(01:35:29):
grew the label roster from what was about six artists
to about thirty five artists right now. We built a
publishing entity that goes through Cobalt. The label is solely
owned by us, but it's distributed by Virgin And then
we have a management company that Carson heads up. And
we worked with this, you know, brilliant roster of artists.

(01:35:50):
Dell water Gap is our biggest success on that side.
He is an incredible artists, the hardest working artist I've
ever seen in my thirty seven years of music. He
is so committed to what he is. He is everything
that an artist needs to do in today's climate. But

(01:36:12):
it's a challenging business for independent labels and it's a
challenging business for young artists. We're doing really well with everything,
but as you and I have talked about in the past,
is it is so hard to break through in today's business.
The opportunity is there for so many. The problem is
to have real success and to make a living and
sustain for independent artists and independent labels, it's really challenging.

(01:36:35):
And you know, by having a catalog, we're able to
continue to invest in new artists and that's our mission.
Our mandate with Fader Label is to sign career artists,
whether it's to management or label, and really put in
the time to have a five to ten year plan
or horizon. You know, I remember you and I talking

(01:36:55):
about it. It's so many artists don't make it because
they don't have the perseverance they they they just they
can't either survive financially, which is difficult, or they just
can't take the years of lack of progress. And it's
the name of the game for independent artists right now.

(01:37:16):
It's it's you've got to be a great songwriter, you
got to tour like crazy, but most importantly, you've got
to have perseverance and time in the game. It's all
about how much time you know you're willing to put
to gradually establish your career. Now, yeah, some people do
get lucky, they have a TikTok hit, they have some moment,
but at the end of the day, it takes artists

(01:37:39):
a long time to establish themselves. And that's that's our
mentality of fat or Label is that we want to
really partner with artists that want to stay in the
game and our career artists. We're not looking to sign
quick hitting songs. You know, obviously if they come along,
it's nice because it will fund the next wave of signings.
But our our rosters what we see as a bunch

(01:38:02):
of career artists.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
Okay, how many of your artists are both on the
label and also managed.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
There are four artists on the management roster, three of
them we work with on the label side, Dell Water
Gap as signed to Mom and Pop. We don't force
that issue at all. We use our label as an
option and our publishing entity as an option if a
managed artist likes the control and wants it as a solution.

(01:38:32):
We never commission the master side if we're managing them,
so we keep that revenue stream separate. And we also
can control the type of deal structures. So as an
artist get bigger, if we build them on the label,
we then have the option to go sign to a
bigger label, another indie major if it's moreranted. So it

(01:38:52):
gives us a lot of flexibility and I think where
that used to be taboo in the business, I think
you're seeing more and more or that artists and managers
like the control. Doing everything under one roof enables you
to call all the shots and makes the make the decisions.
That's not taking anything away from you know. Partnering with
another good label like Mom and Pop on the Dell

(01:39:15):
water Gap side have been incredible partners. Love working with them.
They're smart, they they spend money the right way and
we'll invest heavily in our project and they work really hard.
So that's an example of where it works. Sometimes you
go to a major it doesn't always work, or another
label it doesn't work, So we like the flex to

(01:39:37):
have the ability to do both.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
Okay, is Fader label a farm team for the majors
or is it a competitor to the majors.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
I like to say it's a competitor. I do not
want to do their bidding and their dirty work. And
you know, sometimes it fucking sucks being in our position, Bob,
I don't have their budget. Claro is a great example.
I don't you know. I don't have the ability to
sign mega deals to keep some of these artists. And

(01:40:19):
we give these artists such fair deal structures where the
reason we beat a lot of majors to sign them
is because our deal structure is very competitive. Unfortunately, that
eventually puts you in a vulnerable position. And you know,
when your deal structure is so artist friendly, you run
the risk of someone coming along with a bigger check

(01:40:41):
and a bigger opportunity. So we do see ourselves as
competitors to the majors. Clearly, I don't have the catalog,
or the budgets or the muscle that they have, but
I do have an incredible young team who really live it,
and they are so all of them are so good
at their jobs, and they have such passion for what

(01:41:02):
they do, and our artists work so closely with them,
and we have a label head who's a manager first,
and when artists come to Fader label, even if we
don't manage them, we act as a second management team.
We are there to supplement and help the existing management
team on any aspect of the project. So, yes, we
compete with the majors. And it's a really stricky business

(01:41:26):
for us because a lot of times, after we do
a couple albums we get an artist to the next level,
we often do lose them because there's a big advance
or something waiting. Occasionally they come back to us. We
lost Matt and Kim to Harvest and Capital for an
album and luckily, you know, after that didn't you know,
hit the expectations they want. They came back. So occasionally

(01:41:48):
that happens, and you know, we don't get bitter when
we when we lose an artist or an artist moves on.
We actually set up our deals knowing that that inevitably
can is going to happen to us. The hope is
if we do our job really well, everybody wins they
want to continue with us.

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
Let's say I make a deal with you, you're going
to give me fifty percent of the net? Am I
going to own the album?

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
We do license deals, so yes, eventually, when I am
long gone, you are going to own your masters again.
And we try to do long term license deals, but
not they're not like ridiculous when it's not like the
artist is going to get it back when they're you know,
seventy years old. They're they're very fair license deals, and

(01:42:38):
you know, we need to give ourselves enough runway to
recoup and get ourselves in a position to make the
money we invest. But the artists will own their masters
with fate or label. We don't do perpetuity deals.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
Okay. We have a couple of examples Matt and Kim
Claro who are on majors and came back. Yep. I
don't want to focus on those specifically. I want to
ask the question, if somebody comes to you and you
are not the only option, they are talking to other people,
what is the pitch for the Feeder label? Why should
they sign with you?

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
They should sign with us because we have all of
the infrastructure of a big label, Because we run a
very vast corporation. We understand the brand partnership. We have
a lot of creative resources across the entire company that
we can tap, and we have a small, nimble team

(01:43:34):
that is going to pay a lot more attention to
that particular artist for release because we're only putting out
a handful of records a year. I mean, we are
not you know, we're not in a system that you're
competing with you know, ten other priorities at any given time.
We try to slot every one of our releases, so
that is getting the sole attention of our label. So

(01:43:58):
really good, strong, diverse infrastructure, excellent relationships where we can
parlay all the relationships across the history of this company
to talk to agents and festivals and all the key
partners and music and the driving force is this amazing
young team we have. You know, I you know what

(01:44:18):
I learned really on in my career, it's that that
young generation that drive our business. It's kind it's kind
of what's broken in our business if you think about it.
And I'm putting all the power of Fader label into
sal our. A and R guy who is a former
Fader writer who we made an A and R guy
Carson who's a young manager who's now running a label
as well, Sophia who heads up marketing, Rita who's our

(01:44:41):
head of digital and project management. These are young people,
all thirty or younger, that live, eat, and breathe the
culture of what we're building around our roster, and I
think there's something to be said about that energy and
that hunger and that work ethic because they're peers of
these artists and they're going to kill for them, and

(01:45:04):
they are just as much as we're trying to establish
the artist's career, I'm trying to establish their careers. I'm
trying to teach them and mentor them the same way
that I was mentored. And the idea is, you know,
how we can make them really excel at their jobs
and successful just as much as their artists, because if
they become more powerful and more skilled and build better relationships,

(01:45:25):
that's going to rub off on the success of our artists.
So I think that's why people should should consider us
as an option. It's we're a very different company than
what's out there, even even the other indies we're competing with.
We're just we come from a different mentality.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):
You were saying that it's broken with young employees. What
were you referencing.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
I, you know, our industry is a little broken. I
think there's you know, this was This is an industry
that I think the youth has to be empowered. You're
starting to see that transition. We'll see how it works.
And I'm not saying that older execus negatives should be out,
but I think the older generation like myself and older

(01:46:04):
executives have to do a better job of teaching and
mentoring young talent, and then the industry has to start
to empower the younger generation to take over. I think,
you know, it's not just about the next TikTok. It's
about people that are willing to go out and get
their hands dirty and do the work. You know. I

(01:46:25):
was with you, Bob in London and we were at
Nile Horn, and the one thing that really blew me
away is I love seeing you at two o'clock in
the morning. We are there at Niles after party. It's
the last show the tour, and you're still there and
you're talking to people and you're engaging, and that to
me is still in It may sound flippant, flippant or stupid,

(01:46:48):
that is inherently what is most important in our business.
It's being out and listening and seeing music and talking
to people and engaging with people. And we need a
general that isn't tired and is still willing to do that,
because that's where the fundamental is. This business doesn't change.
And we live in a world where everyone's on their

(01:47:09):
phones and they're so quick to think that they can
stay plugged in because they're watching TikTok and social media.
And you know, I watched you in that room. You
and I were two of the older dudes there. We
were the last men standing. And I think that is
a lost art in our business. People have gotten tired
or they've gotten complacent with how digital things have become.

(01:47:31):
And to me, in the music industry is all about
being present and being out there and being immersed in
the culture. And that's what I pride myself on doing
and leading by example. That's what I'm trying to push
our staff to do. And it's hard. It's harder. Even
young people are a little tired of doing it. But
I think that's what makes the big successes separate of

(01:47:53):
those people that are having moderate success and they're in
the scene, they're willing to to stay out there and
they're curious and they're asking the questions and meeting people
and watching with their own eyes, not on their on
their cell phones.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
Okay, you say that the Fader label has a relationship
with Virgin, What does that look like and does Virgin
have the right to sort of pick up on artists
you have success with or is it straight distribution or
are they providing any other services.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
They are a straight distributor, so we fund everything ourselves,
We own everything out right. They take a percentage of
our gross revenue. They help us with DSPs and placement
of the songs. They will help us sometimes will upstream
certain marketing services. We don't upstream records to them, but

(01:48:43):
we will, you know, use some of their services if
we need some help either globally in other areas. And
it's hard, I mean, Virgin is part of a major
label system and they've just merged the company with three
other companies. And my fear with all of the indie distributors,
not just Virgin, is that they're so consolidated and we're

(01:49:06):
competing with so many other releases, and we're competing for attention,
and there is not a true indie focused system out
there right now, and it's really it's concerning for me.
I mean, Virgin has been a great partner, They've done
great work. I think as they complete the merger of
these other companies that they merge with, they're going to
get stronger and better. But my concern is that there

(01:49:28):
are not a true indie distribution resource. It is a
conglomerate of a lot of different companies that are all
merged into one, and all of a sudden, we find
ourselves competing with tons of releases for attention. And I
think our philosophy is we got to try to become

(01:49:49):
as self sufficient as we can and take what's best
out of that system and really rely on ourselves for
everything else. But because the major label system is it's
at a real cross at least when it comes to indies.
They're all these labels are in more of the artist's business.
They are doing as many direct deals with the artists themselves.

(01:50:09):
They're giving artists bigger percentages of their revenue, They're fronting
them cash. THEA walls of the world are doing a
great job of it. Virgins starting to do more of this,
and my fear is they want to be as direct,
thus becoming competitors to our model, and it's a concern
to us. And you know, I believe that there's a

(01:50:30):
role for us within these systems. But I'm trying to
figure out what is that way forward.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
Okay, traditional labels, the three majors in their different divisions,
they are really at this laid date heavily focused on radio. Radio.
Terrestrial radio has a smaller share of mind share than
ever before. It's kind of like people advertising on network television. Yes,

(01:50:56):
fewer viewers, but it's got more mass than others. You
own a label, ay, what is your view on radio?
What is your view on where the majors are putting
the reference and where you're putting your reference.

Speaker 2 (01:51:14):
You know, I used to work radio. I still listen
and get turned on to a lot of music via radio.
I love listening to six Music. I love listening to
Zane Lowe's show on Apple Music. I love Sirius XMU
on Sirius. I mean radio for me, if you find
the right sources have always been really useful in a

(01:51:34):
great way to keep me in the no. But radio
is completely irrelevant to a young generation right now, and
it's radio's own fault. Radio didn't evolve. Radio basically latched
onto this older demographic and played the ratings game when
they could have really rebuilt and rebranded themselves. And now

(01:51:56):
you're faced with a generation that just doesn't care. They
are not listening to radio at all. They're listening to
Spotify or Apple Music, or they're finding music on TikTok,
they're finding music on reels, YouTube, YouTube shorts, and I
think radio is really only capturing a much older audience.

(01:52:17):
Pop radio maybe has more impact than some of the
other formats. Maybe specialty shows and mix shows make some impact,
but I don't think radio as a driver for commerce
to develop new artists has anywhere the same impact. I
do think there are offshoots of radio that can can

(01:52:37):
be helpful and useful, but I think the major labels
play that game. We don't invest in it. You know,
we invested in it with Claro back in the day.
Occasionally we'll take a shot. We don't really see en
up tick in our streams that's commensurate to the amount
of money you just spent. It will help touring, it
will help awareness. I just don't think radio isn't a

(01:52:59):
good place right now. And I think they they could
have reinvented themselves in so many ways, and you know
I didn't. I don't root for radio's failure. I'd love
to see radio turning around. But radio's gotta just get innovatives,
and right now there's no innovation with the way they're
they're going about their business.

Speaker 1 (01:53:18):
Okay, so let's say I sign to you, what are
you gonna do for me?

Speaker 2 (01:53:25):
We are going to build a strategy that includes the
follow up number number one, We're gonna get the music right.
First thing we're gonna do is hear what your vision
is for your music. You know, what do you like,
who do you respect, what kind of music you want
to make. Let's find the right sessions and get you

(01:53:46):
in the studio to get you some experience. Let's get
you know, Bob a session with so and so and
see how it goes, See what you can learn from
that session, and let's start to make some early music.
Would probably start by putting out a handful of singles
or mapping out a few EP projects before we speed
for racing to build an album. And then the most

(01:54:07):
important thing is as we're doing that and we're developing
your craft and your writing, we are working on making
sure you can perform live the biggest lost art in music,
and the one constant that hasn't changed in all the
years I've been doing this is you have to be
a great songwriter and you really have to play live
and be willing to do the work to tour. And

(01:54:27):
I don't care if we start you playing to fifty
people all night. We've got to start to establish you
as a live act. As that's happening, We're then working
on the imagery's let's hear your creative vision. What's your
look and feel? How do we want to style you?
What do you want the photos to look. How do
we help rebuild and work with you on your social channels?
What message can we convey about you and who you are,

(01:54:51):
where you come from? What inspire you on your social channels?
How are we using TikTok verse Instagram? How are we
you know, bang the right content and shooting the right
content within a reasonable budget. So over the course of
these next six months to a year, we're parceling out
content at a regular cadence. It's probably too soon for

(01:55:12):
a new artist to have brand partnerships, but I want
to get an idea of what a what are your brands?
What do you like what do you what do you
like fashion wise? What sneakers do you wear? What do
you drink? Where are you from? How do we tell
a story about where you're from and the influence of
that market that's around you? And then who are the
artists that are in your periphery. The best way to

(01:55:33):
break a young artist right now is collaboration or getting
the uplift from another artist. If I think back to Clara,
you know, she was incredible because she she had such
good taste, She had such an amazing frame of reference
for a young kid. You know, she was a music historian,
and artists started seeking her out. They would find her online,

(01:55:56):
they would see what she was listening to or posting
or playing, and she would get you call dms from
incredible artists because they liked her taste, they liked the
way she established herself. And as I got to know her,
I was like, Wow, the DNA of her is not
only what a great songwriter she is, or what a
great performer she is, or the fact that she wanted

(01:56:16):
to learn and play as many instruments as herself, but
it was her frame of history. She knew so much
about music. Does not get enough credit for what a
great music mind she has, and what a student she
is of music. She names her dog Joni, after Joni Mitchell.
And if I'm pointing to the things that make her successful,
it's all of those combined. She was a student of

(01:56:39):
music and really knew her history, and really pushed herself
to listen to a lot of things. And I'm not
just talking current peers, but really did the work. Was
always writing songs, always doing sessions, and then to her credit,
pushed herself so hard on the road to the point
that she really exhausted herself. If I think of Dell

(01:56:59):
wa and why, ten years into our career, he is
so successful in doing what he's doing, He's like the
next one. He is so on the verge, Bob of
being our industry's next big artist. It's because he bled
and did the hard work for ten years. This kid
has toured, relentlessly, paid money out of his own success,

(01:57:23):
like the money that he should be living off, to
downsize his lifestyle, to reinvest in touring, to write, to
do sessions. So if to answer your question about what
I'm going to do for you, it's can I instill
that work ethic in you? Can I inspire you and
help give you the tools to be a good writer.
But more importantly, can we establish that live act and

(01:57:43):
can we give you a little bit of that experience
and frame of reference so you really have the basis
to build, you know, the career that you want, and
it just takes time. Then from there, it's lots of
little steps. It's you know, I have so many artists
that the p and ls don't look great, that the
growth is slow, but lots of little things add up

(01:58:06):
and then you know, you know, then you then you
break through to a Clara, then you start seeing the
success of Adull Water Gap. It happens, but it's time
in the game. It's like I said earlier, you gotta
you gotta keep in the game. And over time, if
you're just making that little progress, you're going to start
to break through.

Speaker 1 (01:58:23):
Okay, the majors are focused on pop and hip hop.
What is the status of rock and what is the
status of other genres?

Speaker 2 (01:58:34):
You know, I think rock music is way healthier than
anyone gives it credit. You know, I mean I love
reading all your stuff. You're you're really I love your
take on on this how it comes up every few years.
But if you look at careers right now, there are
so many careers in rock music. Maybe if you're going

(01:58:57):
to measure the success relative to Chapel Rowan or Taylor Swift,
it doesn't look the same. But if you look at
Fontane's DC, Bob right now signed to Excel Records, Irish
band like they are, They're a rock band that is
really succeeding. It's not about radio. It's about the fact

(01:59:17):
that they toured like crazy. They've got lots of press
love for whatever that means. I'm not quite sure how
much it moves the needle. You know, we've talked about that,
you've written about that. They've done all the little things,
but most importantly, they've built a direct pipeline to fans
through touring. And Fontane's DC is a rock band that
is really succeeding and breaking through in a big way.

(01:59:40):
And I think I think rock music. You know, you
look at Noah Com, you look at Zach Bryan, country rock,
whatever you want to call them, Like, there are plenty
of artists. You look at McGee right now. I don't
know if you know this kid McGee. You know he's
playing New York tonight, But like he comes from Dejon's camp,
great guitar player, like very modest streaming numbers, but he's

(02:00:03):
he's selling out Terminal five tonight. He sold out the
Brooklyn Paramount on Sunday. These are rock based artists that
are so under the industry's radar, and we all talk
about the death of rock. Rock is dead, and these
are young kids coming to see them. They're selling tickets,
they're streaming, they have buzz and they have These aren't
just moments, these are gonna be careers. And I really

(02:00:26):
think rock is in the best place it's been in
a long time. I think that pop music has become
an amalgamation of lots of genres. You know, noa con
of pop artists. But he's really a folky rock artist
at heart. And I think even Taylor Swift, as pop
as she is, she's a songwriter, singer songwriter. At the

(02:00:49):
core of what she does is pop, folk leaning country music.
And I think rock is in a strong place. I
think hip hop's in a more of a transitionary place.
I think hip hop is it's it's the passing of
a torch to a new generation. And it's the question
with hip hop is who are going to be the
new stars. You know, Kendrick's clearly the leader right now,

(02:01:11):
and he's an icon, and he's amazing, and he's doing
good things and he's saying good things, and I love
that he's doing the super Bowl. But the question in
hip hop is, Okay, who's the next you know, who
are the next leaders? You know, there are plenty of
really good young hip hop acts, but are they going
to be the heir to the Drake Kendrick throne. You know,

(02:01:32):
Playboy Cardi doing really well, but he's he going to
be that that major hip hop icon. I think music's
in a good place, though, The question becomes, you know,
does rock music continue this run? Because I think rock
music is really in a better place than it's been
in years.

Speaker 1 (02:01:52):
Okay, let's talk about music in general. In the sixties,
FM and before that, AM where everything you want to
know what was going on in the world. He turned
on the radio. That grew into the seventies and the eighties.
We had MTV. We have the explosion of television with
the Sopranos in nineteen ninety nine, so we have this

(02:02:14):
burgeoning streaming television, We have social media, and we have music.
Where does music fit into the cultural world. Let me
set it up. A lot of people in this business
will say, same as it ever was, you know, the
young people feel the same way, it's as good as

(02:02:34):
it ever was. I believe that's patently untrue. Listen, I
lived through the Beatles. Whatever Taylor Swift is and it's big,
it's not the Beatles. Okay, So we're is music today
and what might music change to further its place in
the firmament.

Speaker 2 (02:02:56):
Yeah, I'm more aligned with your thinking. We don't have
the Beatles. We don't have Heyday peak Michael Jackson. We
don't have Heyday peak Springsteen. You know, like I think
we have stars they're doing well. We have kids that
are growing up with passion for music. The problem with

(02:03:16):
the media landscape when it relates to the establishing music,
it is so quick and disposable. We live in a
forty second clip world or a fifteen second clip world.
Like kids are so passionate about a song, but then
it goes away. I mean, you know, like there are
so many big moments. The question is are they going

(02:03:39):
to be lasting moments? You know, Like I think you know,
the question is the medium that's delivering a lot of
these kids, the exposure to this music. It's it's not
set up to resonate from a career standpoint. Even the festivals,
which you know they're in a transitionary period, are being

(02:04:00):
programmed more with that mentality. The festival lineups are being
built around more of a TikTok mentality, and you have
kids winding up for one artist for one moment in
one song, and then that song comes and then they're
moving to the next one. You know, Chapaaran's kind of
transcended all that. She's proven like, maybe I can be
an artist that broke that moment, but I got the

(02:04:23):
kids paying attention to everything I'm doing. But I think
we're in a very precarious position to establish the next
Beatles or the next wave of superstars, because right now
media is in this mentality. However, you know, you did
your whole round about super fans and super fandom and
how that insight was gotten wrong by Universal. I do

(02:04:44):
think that there is a hunger from the music consumer
to be a super fan. That is there. Maybe on
a business level, a lot of the major players are
getting that wrong, and I do agree with your take
on that, But I do think and I see it
Man del Water Gap. I see it from working with
Clara all these past years, and I went to her
show the other night, which was absolutely fucking incredible. There

(02:05:07):
is a passion that artists have for the artists they love,
and a willingness to go so much deeper into into
that artist. And that's something that I think today's media
landscape is helping. And if we can make fans want
to go deeper and learn more about those artists and
buy more merchant and buy vinyl and buy tickets, I

(02:05:29):
do think we're going to head to a place where
we may never have a Beatles again, but we're going
to have career artists. You know. Noah CON's got that,
Charlie FCX, at least in the major cities. I don't
know if it's working in the Midwest, but I know
like in New York she played MSG this week and
it was one of the hottest tickets of the year
in New York City, Like, you could not get a ticket,

(02:05:51):
you know, even even industry people struggle to get, you know,
tickets that so, you know, and that's a ten year
plus career of the making. Maybe I think she started
in twenty twelve, So I do think that media has
made it a lot harder, and kids attention span is
a little more disposable and they're not going as deep.

(02:06:12):
But the few people that latch onto an act and
fall in love with that favorite act are going deeper.
The problem is how big can can those acts become?
You know, Taylor Swift an anomaly. You know you're not
gonna have many of those. I find it pretty mind
blowing that the buzziest tour of twenty twenty four the

(02:06:35):
Oasis reading. I mean, the the mania for that. And
it's not just old britpop fans like me or British people.
I mean, there are so many kids asking me for
tickets or are curious. And you know that's the Internet
driving that, that's TikTok driving that. That is there is

(02:06:55):
a curiosity. The problem is it moves so fast. And
what's beautiful all about the Beatle and a lot of
stuff that you and I grew up listening to and
how we discovered music. We had to work for it,
and you had to take your time, and you had
to put a piece of vinyl on the turntable or
go to the record store buy it, or you had
to line up for a ticket. I'm not saying we

(02:07:16):
should go backwards to that, but when you had to
put in that kind of commitment and you've got to
slow the process down, it made that connection to that
music so much deeper. There's got to be a version
of that connection that comes from all of the new
media evolution. It's just a question of will it be

(02:07:38):
lasting or is it gonna even get quicker, or is
AI going to even fuck it up more? Or our
algorithm is gonna take us so much further that that's
still I'm sorry to not have a conclusive answer.

Speaker 1 (02:07:49):
No, No, that that's a good answer, better answer than most.
Let me ask you this, is there a number where
you'd sell move on, sit on the each or are
you going to be eighty five years old? So, man,
I just heard a great record. You know, let's get
the team together.

Speaker 2 (02:08:10):
I want to do it till I'm I'm eighty five
years old, but I got to be I have to
be realistic. I'm in a business that they don't want
to hear from me at my age anymore. I need
to be the strategist and the advisor, and I need
to have the ego, the humility and not have the
ego to put the business in the young people's hands.

(02:08:34):
That that's the downfall of so many in our business.
You know, I think I want to stay involved forever.
I'm not tired. I love what I do. I love
the music. My favorite thing is being with our artists,
you know. I love, you know, being on the road
with Dell water Gap this past year, touring with him
and watching his evolution is one of the most enjoyable

(02:08:57):
things I get to do in my job and my career.
I love when Damon Albarne calls me up and asks
me to come here what he's working on for Gorillas.
I love going to say I declare even though we
don't work together on this new current project. Going backstage
and seeing her face after she just played ten sold
out residency dates in New York and LA and seeing

(02:09:19):
how happy she is with the react That means the
world to me. The stuff that drives me nuts. The
reason I have all this gray hair is the business
is hard. It's challenging as fuck. And the agency business,
the media business. I want to see them thrive, and
it's it's been relentlessly hard to keep them even going

(02:09:39):
at the levels that we are. So I have to
be realistic about where all these businesses are going and
what to do. But I want to keep doing it forever.
I don't want to bail, but at some point I
want to make sure I empower the youth of our
company and the future is set up because it's a
young people's business, and I think the best people in
our business really empower that next generation and support them,

(02:10:04):
and that's what I need to do.

Speaker 1 (02:10:06):
John, this has been wonderful. Thanks so much for spending
this time with my audience, with the history and the insight.
I certainly really appreciate it. I'm sure the listeners will too.

Speaker 2 (02:10:18):
Yeah, Bob, thanks for having me. It was great to
spend a couple hours with you, and congrats on all
you do. Keep it going. I want you doing it
to your one hundred too. I want to keep reading
what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:10:29):
Oh, believe me, I'm going to do it till I die.

Speaker 2 (02:10:31):
All right, I'll see you. I'll see you in London
against you.

Speaker 1 (02:10:34):
Right till next time. This is Bob left six
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Bob Lefsetz

Bob Lefsetz

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