How The Music Industry Predicts The Future — With Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Zack O'Malley Greenburg is a music journalist who's spent time with everyone from Katy Perry to Kanye West. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how the music industry seems to go through every major technology-driven shift before everyone else, including the decline of brick-and-mortar retail (see: Tower Records), to the rise of streaming content (Spotify), and even NFTs (WuTang's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin). Greenburg also discusses how he's applied lessons from some of the world's most successful musicians in his own career. You can follow Zack's book, We Are All Musicians Now, on Substack here: https://zogblog.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is Zack O'Malley-Greenburg. He's a longtime Forbes music editor who spent time with everyone from Justin Bieber to Kanye West, and is now writing a book about how we can see our future by looking at the music industry. And he's doing it entirely via email, something we're going to talk about. It's called "We Are All Musicians Now," which is a title I just absolutely love. Zack O'Malley-Greenburg, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. It's great having you, man. We've been friends for a long time, and you've brought me into Forbes, where I was a contributor for a couple of years. And you've written a number of books about Jay-Z and the music business.

• 2:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you did this amazing thing, which I was like, oh, where's Zack going to go next? And you just went independent and decided to write, you know, not only write for Substack, which is an email newsletter platform many of our listeners are familiar with, but you know, write a full book serialized on the email platform. And I think that's a fascinating move and maybe you've learned some lessons from the people that you cover in the media industry lessons about owning your own intellectual property and being in control of the work that you create. And I think that that's fascinating and a bold move. I haven't seen many of its kind. I haven't seen a book sent out via email newsletter before. So anyway, I'm so excited to have you on and to talk about not only the work that you're

• 2:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  doing in the music industry, but also your personal moves and what was the inspiration behind them?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And I think to sum it up really, I've spent my whole career chronicling the likes of Jay-Z and Diddy and Dr. Dre. And you know, these are all figures who got where they are today, which is to say, you know, billionaire status or near billionaire status by owning their work, owning their intellectual property. And you know, in many cases, having to fight to get it back. But you know, I think particularly when you look at hip hop, which is, you know, something very near and dear to my heart and what, you know, kind of got me off the ground at Forbes was writing these lists of the top earning rappers or the wealthiest hip hop

• 3:37Speaker 01

  acts. You know, I think that in the case of a lot of these guys, it was, you know, they didn't have a choice.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  They, you know, were in situations in the late eighties, early nineties where if they wanted to put out an album, record labels thought hip hop was too dangerous, you know? And so the only option was to start their own record labels and own their own masters and so forth. You know, a lot of them. You know, talking about Jay-Z and Diddy wanted to have their own, you know, clothes, but they didn't even think about having their own clothing lines until, you know, they went to an existing clothing company and pitched an endorsement and were laughed out of the room, basically. And so then they went and started their own clothing lines. So, you know, you know, these guys have had to overcome a lot of obstacles, obviously,

• 4:33Speaker 01

  that I haven't had to overcome this, you know, a white dude who grew up in, you know, in Manhattan and so forth. But that doesn't mean that there aren't lessons for everybody that, you know, that could be taken away. You know, I was lucky enough to have a lot of choices, you know, career-wise, coming up and to not have to overcome those obstacles. But after studying these guys for my entire career, the idea of finding a way to own my own work, finding a way to, you know, control the distribution and to, above all, have, you know, maximal creative control was just so enticing that I couldn't pass it up. And that's why I ultimately went to Substack, right?

• 5:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting that with the Substack stuff, that there is this quite a similar parallel, where you have people who've, you know, in some ways been forced to go independent because the mainstream doesn't really want to publish their views. And then other people who see that this is actually a good business opportunity, I think you and I probably fall into that latter category, but it does end up with the people that are doing the work, you know, owning the work that they're doing versus like, when you work for a publication, I know, like, you know, in places that I've worked for, like, I wrote the stories but never owned them. It was always, you know, the publication stories, which, you know, it seemed fair, they were paying me to do it. But on the other hand,

• 6:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  With a little more risk, I think something like a Substack where you're writing independent, you own your work and you're you're going to get paid by readers or maybe get paid by Substack in some way, or maybe get paid through advertising. It's it's a much better situation. So I think this is a good, I do want to get into that in the second half, but I do think this is like a good segue to get into the premise of this book that you're writing called We Are All Musicians Now. And it does seem that like the stuff that comes for the rest of the world does come for the music industry first. You and I have talked about this a bit. You say that, you know, the move to streaming content or move to the internet largely, you know, happened first with the music

• 6:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  industry and then and then, you know, with the rest of media like television and and movies and also that, you know, limited release records or single release records are quite like what we're seeing with NFTs right now. So I'm curious if you could just outline your thesis for the book and give some of the parallels that we've seen the music industry lead the charge and what might be coming for the rest of us.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think you I think you hit on it in the in the preamble there, you know, that that's pretty much the thesis, right? If we're all musicians now, right? If if everything kind of flows through music, it hits music first, it's almost like you can tell the future by watching what happens to musicians. So

• 7:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So what's what's hit music first?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would I would look at any number of trends. I mean, so for example, the shift from physical retail to digital, right? Who did that impact first? Tower Records.

• 7:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Tower Records.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  You know, and even before bookstores, even before, you know, any number, you know, even before everything was on Amazon, you were seeing Tower Records go out of business. Everything else was chugging along and nobody was sort of like We have to rethink our entire retail model, you know, even though the writing was on the wall. It wasn't for maybe another decade until, you know, uh, sort of like the, the, the real e-commerce thing uh, completely upended, you know, the way we buy and sell things, you know, to the point that it is today. Right? Um, so if you've been paying attention to music, you know, you probably could have seen that. Um, then it was the, the shift from, you know, digital ownership to streaming, right?

• 8:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh huh. So going from like buying a, a song through iTunes to like a subscription to Spotify where people used to buy maybe movies or something and now you subscribe to Netflix. Is that another thing that the music industry predicted, predicted?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, the, the rise of Netflix or Netflix and chill, uh, you know, that, that

• 8:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  phrase has only come about in, in, for the past couple of years, but you know, Spotify was, was hitting almost a decade ago. So, you know, again, that's another place where, you know, even if you had seen the way things were going in music and you had just bought a bunch of Netflix stock, you know, you'd, you'd be doing, uh, pretty well. Um, and then

• 9:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  I think as you mentioned, um, single release albums, uh, you know, kind of were the prophecy, uh, if you will, you know, to, to kind of lay the groundwork for NFTs. So one of my favorite stories that I ever reported at

• 9:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, these NFTs, before we get into it, the NFTs are these, uh, essentially JPGs are an image that you can buy ownership of on the internet. So, um, I guess there's this interest in them because they're scarce or because they're a good place to park your crypto winnings. Um, but you know, the, there's this nice part of it that it's one-off, you know, and it's original. And so, uh, so maybe, yeah, this limited release records sort of gave us a, I mean, I don't know, is it a bit of a stretch? But, um, tell the story and, and let me know, uh, how it connects.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, well, you you tell me if you think it's a stretch. I I don't. I I think the first N F T ever. Uh, it wasn't even called an N F T. It was this Wu-Tang album um that I broke the news of for Forbes uh back in twenty fourteen and. It was the strangest thing. I I got an email from some incomprehensible jumble of letters uh claiming. You know, to to be the producer of this Wu-Tang album that had been produced in secret over six years in Morocco. And it was so secret that even the group members didn't have access to it and they were gonna sell. One physical copy to and you know for millions of dollars. And and that would be it. And this person, whoever bought it, couldn't reproduce it. So it was gonna be like.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  You know, uh essentially a sculpture. Uh I ended up interviewing RZA, sort of the uh frontman of the Wu-Tang Clan, and he said. It's gonna be like the scepter of an Egyptian king. Um so, you know, it. The the the in-between of all of that was was pretty fascinating. Basically, I I thought they were kind of scamming me. I didn't think it was real. And so I I I made them have um RZA D M me from his, you know, verified Twitter account.

• 11:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  And he did. He said that, yes, we did this. I mean, it this it was Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. That's that's the album.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And.

• 11:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Have you listened to it?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I've listened to to parts of it anyway.

• 11:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Forbes sent me out to Morocco to to uh to.

• 11:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  No way.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Keep chasing the story and um.

• 11:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  It it was just this bizarre scenario. They had the album, you know, they they had this. Handcrafted silver and nickel box produced by a Moroccan art British Moroccan artisan named Yah Yah and, you know, he took me to his. Workshop and we saw how the box was made and they had the album itself. You know, in a like a private suite at this hotel where all the billionaires stay. It was it was just super over the top and. Eventually Martin Shkreli bought it, you know, the the uh.

• 11:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, the pharma bro.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  And

• 12:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pharma Bro Villain.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who's playing some games to make people's prescription coverages go through the roof and is in jail or prison now.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and ended up forfeiting the album.

• 12:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Who has the album now?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  So that's the latest mystery. The album was sold, was seized by the US government. And it was sold to an unknown buyer for at least $2 million.

• 12:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Zack, how does the US government seize an album like that and just sell it? With like, I didn't, I don't remember a public bidding process. Isn't this a little corrupt?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it's bizarre. And actually, a lot of the people, you know, one of the things that I wrote about on my Substack blog was that, you know, so I should clarify, there's the book, which comes out once a week, and that's for paid subscribers only, you know, so that's in installments, Dickens style. We're all musicians now. And the other one is the, you know, I call it the Zog Blog. It's once a week. Intersection of Music Media and Money. And it's all on zogblog.co and you can subscribe for free to the blog, or you can go and Facebook for the book. But, um, but yeah, the, um, you know, one of the things I wrote about was, in fact, that the government, you know, might have gotten ripped off. I think it was a bit of a hot potato. Like you say, you know, what does the government know from selling one of a kind hip hop albums

• 13:20Speaker 01

  that are maybe actually better described as NFTs? And so I think they were just like, you know, let's get rid of it. Let's settle this guy's debts and, and move on. You know, kind of like, you might sell, you know, like some incarcerated drug dealer's, you know, luxury car.

• 13:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Apparently.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Uh, it might, yeah, it might not be the, it might not be the best price, but you know, you're just getting it out of the government warehouse. So, um, yeah, you know, I, I, I think that, um, I think that they could have actually gotten 10 times that for, for the album. And that's what some of the crypto people I talked to.

• 13:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. Especially the way that, that money is right now. It's, money is crazy right now. So.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  People are spending money on dumb things like JPGs.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So this is an actual album.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Money, money is kind of weird right now. I think that was a, an Alex Cantor's quote. I really love that.

• 14:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Money is weird. Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, um, how, so how does this relate to an NFT? I guess NFTs are digital. I think that's what makes them unique. But like, haven't there been like limited sneaker releases for a long time? And all that stuff. So like creating some artificial scarcity or like what's the?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that's, it's in the same vein, right? Um, but you know, for the Wu-Tang album, what they were trying to do is to create scarcity for something that's theoretically infinitely reproducible. And that's what a NFT is, right? I mean, it's

• 14:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, great point. Okay.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  So

• 14:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  No longer a stretch, in my opinion.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Okay, good, good. Yeah. And I, and I think that they, I think that they achieved that, right? I mean, uh, you know, sure, there, there are clips now floating around the internet and Martin Shkreli did stream some of it on YouTube and, you know, you can dig out some stuff, but like in order to have the whole thing, you know, it almost doesn't really matter. Like if you have a YouTube clip of that album, you have a YouTube clip of, of, of that album of Martin Shkreli streaming. But, you know, it's kind of like if you have a, when I, when I was in, in ninth grade, I, I had this business. Um, I bought a copy of Babe Ruth's original copy, uh, uh, contract on eBay for 10 bucks or 20 bucks, maybe I think. And then, and then I just copied it with a copy machine and I sold it for 10 bucks.

• 15:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  You know, and 30, but, but whatever it was, 33 cents for shipping and envelopes. And, and, you know, I was making a nice, uh, profit until somebody else caught on and they bought my copy and started selling it for, you know, five bucks. And then the margins got too low and I lost interest. But, um, you know, but we knew it was, it was, yeah, it was a copy of a copy. Um, but that original Babe Ruth contract, you know, that's hard to fake, right? I mean, it's on some parchment scroll. I don't know. I mean, you know, maybe not a parchment scroll, but you can tell that it's an original and, and there's some certain

• 16:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Boston Red Sox rolled out a parchment scroll and a quilt to sign the multi-talented.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  It's all in town, hell from there.

• 16:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, it has. Although Shohei Ohtani, maybe, maybe we're back in, but anyway, uh, all right. So, um, and so NFT, so I, I, I now buy that argument. And then I guess the last thing is that we touched on it already was, um, Peoples move to own their own intellectual property. We're in a moment now where

• 16:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  creativity is a core part of many more jobs than it had been in the past. And so maybe the music industry had also like gone through this where like, do you go through a talent agency or a record, record label? Who owns the rights? And a lot of musicians found out the hard way that it's actually important to own your own stuff. And so maybe the rest of that's coming for the rest of us as well.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And, you know, the first chapter of We Are All Musicians Now, which is now complete and up there on, on Substack. But, you know, I, I dealt with the sort of first half of, or, you know, let's say the middle part of the 20th century in the music business. And really, back then, the default was, you know, you're just lucky to get anything for music. And, you know, they're going to give you an advance, a few thousand bucks. Maybe it's just a bottle of wine and a car. And, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna get your music put out. But they own all your rights. And that has evolved over the, the decades, you know, acts like Paul McCartney fighting to get their rights back.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  You know, acts like Jay-Z insisting on keeping their rights and so forth. To the point where I think the default in the music business is now, you know, even if you're an up and coming act, you would probably be, it would be like a split ownership of some kind. The default is no longer that the, the record company owns everything. And if you have a lot of leverage coming in, you know, if you're big on TikTok, or if you, you know, if you've, if you've been indie and long enough and kind of bootstrapped it as a musician. You can insist on owning your masters and owning your publishing rights and so forth. And, and you know, you, you can keep it from, from the get go.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You know, that's, that's a huge change and, and I think it's kind of crazy when you look at other businesses, right? How many different, I mean, certainly anything where you're creating, um, you know, if you, if you're inventing things or whatever, you know, company owns everything and even for journalists. Yeah, you know, they're paying you a salary, probably not a great salary, uh, to, to write.

• 19:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Journalism, that's for sure. Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, but they own, they own the words that are printed outright. And I think that's insane. I mean, how is that not even a split? Like, you know, if you, there are stories that I've written at Forbes that still, you know, that still generate. I mean, I, I, I haven't, you know, I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm sure, you know, tens of thousands of page views a year, maybe, maybe more. Just sitting there and, you know, those are, those are being monetized and, you know, that's fine and, uh, you know, I have no ill will there. That's just the model, but in, in music, you know, you get, you get royalties. You get royalties in your back catalog because you own, you know, you own a chunk of your own work.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So I think that, you know, that, that, that creators are going to be demanding that across other, you know, industries as well. And the ones that can figure out a way to have kind of a more of a collaborative partnership ahead of time. You know, I think they're going to save themselves a great loss of talent. You know, and I, frankly, I think that, um, news outlets right now, magazines and newspapers in particular,

• 20:11Speaker 01

  are, are, are trying to grab on to the rights more. They're trying, you know, be, because of the rise of things like Hulu and, and Netflix, everybody wants a taste of that next big, you know, docu-series. These, these publications are holding on even tighter to the copyrights and, you know, that's just not going to fly, um, as creators become more and more empowered.

• 20:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I want to get into that more in the second half. I guess, well, let's, let's come into an easy landing on this one. Why is it that music is so far ahead of everything else when it comes to things like streaming, things like NFTs, if we're gonna, you know, go with that, artists owning their own,

• 20:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, intellectual property, creatives owning their own work, and then, of course, the end of retail. Why did it happen to music so much faster than anything else?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  I think there's two main reasons that I look at, and one of them is very concrete, and the other one's not. And the first one is just file size. You know, MP3s or whatever music format you use, I mean, the file size is just, it's smaller than a, than a visual medium, right? The audio files are smaller. If there's video, it's gonna be a bigger file, plain and simple. And so I think that, you know, it, a lot of this stuff, a lot of the technological changes hit music first because the, the stuff was more easy to move, you know, you

• 21:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Easy to steal.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Can't really download a whole movie with a 56K modem, so easily.

• 21:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Especially when, you know, your mom is picking up and interrupting your connection.

• 21:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ah, try and steal a movie.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's one. And the other one is just hard to define, but you know, there's that ineffable coolness of, of musicians, of music, you know? What, what makes a rock star or a hip hop actor, you know, like a big pop singer cool? You know, it's very hard to define, but, but there's that, that charisma that, you know, that sort of je ne sais quoi that, that comes forth from music. And, you know, I think it's just so easily, when somebody has that, it's just instantaneous, and, and, and people want it.

• 22:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's going on in music now that we should be paying attention to? That's coming for the rest of us next?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, certainly crypto, uh, NFTs, you know, that has been a big focus. And, you know, you're seeing a lot of acts now doing limited edition album NFT drops. Maybe not one of one like the Wu-Tang Clan, but, you know, maybe like a few dozen albums or, um, you know, little bits of things.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  But I think that one thing that that people are talking a lot about right now in the music is the idea of the metaverse, um, and sort of like owning real estate in, you know, virtual worlds and so forth. And, um, you know, or, or the notion of, uh, like virtual performances. And I'm not talking just like live stream performances, but, um, you know, Travis Scott, who's one of the biggest hip hop acts in the world right now, did a concert, uh, within Fortnite and, you know, drew some incredible amount of virtual, you know, uh, observers, right?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  You know, he, he, he didn't have to do anything in terms of being there himself. He was just this sort of like giant, you know, like avatar of himself, um, that arrived in this video game, sort of like on a meteor and, you know, in a purple cloud, you know, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but, but, um, just so many people tuned into that. And he was also able to capitalize off of that physical world by tying, um, various merch drops to this performance. So, you know, I, I don't, I don't know yet quite, um, what the, you know, the, uh, the,

• 24:25Speaker 01

  you know, we see like Tim Cook doing, doing his next conference and, uh, you know, or product launch in, um, Fortnite. I don't, I don't know that that's gonna happen, but I think that, you know, those kinds of-

• 24:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll be spending more and more time in these video games to do non-video game stuff. You know, I have this, um, there's this one DJ I listen to and she's like, all right, I'm gonna do a concert. I'm like, oh, great. She's like, it's in Lego. Lego worlds. Like, wait, what? Like, you're actually gonna show up to, but yeah, she did. And, you know, it, uh, was a big draw. So it is amazing how this is gonna, um- I don't know. I mean, it does seem like like there's going to be more movement here, whether it becomes as big as people like Mark Zuckerberg are saying. I don't know. But there is, we've talked about on the show a bunch that people spend more time in Fortnite,

• 25:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  just hanging out mode than battle mode. And so more and more people will be hanging out in these combined spaces. And then there is actually a great place for musicians to hold concerts now. And we'll, we'll see if the rest of the rest of us follow.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think in this kind of mid pandemic world, there's definitely more movement that direction. But this stuff was starting, you know, way before COVID, even before Travis Scott, the DJ Marshmello did a Fortnite concert that broke all kinds of records.

• 25:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. How many people showed up to that thing?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  You know, I don't want to get my numbers wrong, but

• 25:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  ballpark.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  I want to say, I want to say it was millions.

• 26:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 26:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't have to.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  It seems insane.

• 26:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm not testing you on this stuff.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  That's what they're writing.

• 26:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, yeah, wild. Okay, cool. I want to hear a little bit more about your, what you've learned from these artists and put into play in your own career. So why don't we do that at the other side of this break? We'll be back here on the Big Technology Podcast right after this. We're talking with Zach O'Malley-Greenberg. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended

• 26:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. App Point, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to apppoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 27:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back on the Big Technology Podcast with Zack O'Malley-Greenburg. He is the author of a new book that's coming out every week on Substack. It's called "We Are All Musicians Now," and he decided to release it on Substack because... Okay, let's get into it. I want to hear the story. So Zack, I was reading, and we've spoken about this in the past, so I won't pretend like we haven't. I was reading your post about how, you know, you've even foreshadowed a little bit here. You know, you worked at Forbes for a while, you took a job at a rival publication, and then, over time, you decided that you just wanted to kind of own your own work and decided you were going to go it alone.

• 28:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think there's a great line in your intro post. You said, "I've spent my entire career profiling monumental figures like Jay-Z and Diddy, both of whom got to where they were, despite a vast array of obstacles, far more numerous and insidious than I have ever had to face. By maintaining ownership of their creations, I resolved to do the same." I mean, you hit on this in your first answer of our conversation. But it's interesting, like, I guess in some ways it's interesting it took you so long to do something like this. I haven't seen that with these folks. But like, what was the draw of, you know, releasing your book and writing your work, not with a publication and not with a publisher, but entirely via email on Substack?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, what took me so long? You know, it's a fair question. I had a really good gig at Forbes, and I was offered what I thought was an even better gig at a rival publication. So I said my goodbyes. You know, this is over a decade plus I'd been there at Forbes. And, you know, I signed my offer letter to go to the rival publication, and it's given all kinds of promises about how it would be even better and so forth, and took a few weeks off.

• 29:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you want to name the rival publication, or do you want to keep that under wraps?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Ah, well, you know...

• 29:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't want to cause any fights, but I have to ask you.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Gosh.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess it's out there on, you know, it, it, it's, it starts with the book and ends with the business insider.

• 29:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Kind of out there, yeah.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, you know, I, I took a few weeks off and I kind of, I don't know, wandered the woods and read some historical fiction and chilled out and, and just before I started, I got this like fifty page, you know, what seemed to be boilerplate document, but, you know, buried in there were all kinds of, you know, we own all your intellectual property type of stuff and, you know, I was surprised, say at least, because I thought I had signed whatever I had needed to sign and everything was all good to go. And so I, I brought in my literary agent and, you know,

• 30:26Speaker 01

  surely this is a mistake and, you know, you know, you know that I do outside books and, and, you know, TV and film type stuff and, and we tried to negotiate it into something, you know, more palatable. But, you know, they barely budged and, and, and finally they said, you know, look, this is our final offer. Take it or leave it. And I said, I said, I'll, I'll leave it. And they said, you know, do you, do you wanna take a night of sleep on it? And I said, no. So, you know, it, it felt, it felt good at the time and, and then I thought, gosh, all right, well,

• 31:05Speaker 01

  you know, this is interesting. So, you know, by that point, I already, I already had the book pitch for, We Are All Musicians Now. And I, I hadn't decided, you know, I was, I was about to start pitching it to traditional publishers and in fact was starting to talk to one who was really interested in it. And, but, you know, this experience of, of like the, the intellectual property grab,

• 31:36Speaker 01

  which, which I think, by the way, is like I alluded to earlier, increasing, right? It's, it's this idea that publications can get a, you know, get a, a piece of a Netflix or Hulu show and, you know, that can be tremendously lucrative.

• 31:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess to, to jump in, are publishers, like news publishers, now seeing that?

• 31:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Their reporters are turning into digital personalities, which opens up avenues for books and movies and documentaries and all that stuff.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's why you think it's increasing because they see that they have actually, and they're helping to build these personalities. Let's be, let's be honest about that, right? Like, the publications are helping increase the profile of the individual folks. And so are they, are they seeing that they're, they're helping open these doors and they want a cut of the proceeds? Is that what, what's going on?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but, you know, I mean, Instagram is, is helping build, you know, the Rocks empire, but Instagram is not trying to get a piece of his next movie. You know, I mean, I'm not saying I'm the Rock, but, uh, and to be fair.

• 32:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's okay. You could, you could say it here, man. I, I've seen you hit a baseball. It goes pretty far. So.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  You know, the, the gun show element is, is not quite there on, on my end, uh, as it is with, uh.

• 32:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mr. Johnson.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Johnson over there, but, no, you know, I, I think that that's, you know, my, my last book is called A List Angels and, and it, it dealt with how stars started investing in startups, Ashton Kutcher, Nas, Shaq, people like that, J Lo. Um, but, you know, it also dealt with this amount of, you know, I think a lot of social platforms felt, they did feel responsible for building, you know, a Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga or, you know, uh, uh, somebody like that who kind of came of age at the dawn of Facebook and Twitter. But, you know, on, on the other end, the stars are like, well, we built those platforms, you know? If it weren't for our creativity, nobody would be going there. So I think it depends on where you come down on it. Do you believe that it's the creators or the, or the platforms that are responsible for, for the, for the prosperity, right?

• 33:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. The difference is I think that the creators aren't taking salary. And so I do, and I do wonder if it's, I'll just like, um, let me articulate Business Insider's, you know, perspective here and then, you know, see what, see what, or what I think is their perspective and, you know, see, have you pushed back on it? But like, you know, they and other publications would say, you know, we're paying the salary and that, you know, it's like, if, if I pay you to help me build a house and you build a house and people live in it for 200 years, uh, you know, it's sort of like, well, you came in and you did your job. And just because people are living it in it for 200 years doesn't mean you lost anything. Um, you know, because of that. So like, I don't know. It is interesting to me like,

• 34:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  and and of course, this is something that I went through also where I was at BuzzFeed and they owned all my stories. And at age two owned all my stories. Um, and uh, you know, it felt like a fair trade for me. I was getting paid like decent decent salary and uh, I was uh, you know, getting a yeah, a chance to come in and do the work and I had coaching and all that stuff.

• 34:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, yeah. And then, but like for now, what I'm doing and what you're doing, like we're taking all the risk here where like we don't have a guaranteed, you know, uh, uh, income that's going to come in. It's sort of, it's subject to the whims of readers or advertisers. And because we're taking all that risk, we're, then we get a chance to own our work. So I guess like I, what I'm curious from you is like, hearing that, does the publications perspectives make a little bit more sense to you? Or um, you know, yeah, or or is it just that um, like, it seems like it's the best of both worlds. If you work for a publication and you own your rights and maybe a little bit too much for the worker to ask. But maybe I'm being too sympathetic to the company. So I'm curious what you think.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, look, no, and and at the end of the day, I mean, I I don't really, I don't have any ill will, you know, towards, you know, uh, any, any of these places. Um,

• 35:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  I just, I just think the model is broken. I mean, but I I do think that um, I do think it's unreasonable for them to want to own everything. Uh,

• 35:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Everything, yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  You know, I think that, and I think it's also not good business because if, you know, if you're saying like, I, the publication, am going to own one hundred percent of your intellectual property when it comes to, you know, articles being optioned for TV and film, um, and you will have no creative control either. Um, you know, if one of your stories does go that way, you know, that that's also like disincentivizing the writer from, you know, like, I don't know, uh, going out and shopping it or, you know, or or kind of like trying to get get involved. I mean, I I talked to to one um,

• 36:30Speaker 01

  editorial, uh, uh, person who'd been in editorial council, uh, you know, at a, at a big business publication and um, and the, the quote was like, you know, it's basically like, nobody's gonna.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Create this stuff if they're not getting paid, you know, like a hundred percent of zero is still zero, right?

• 36:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, not only that, who's gonna wanna work at one of these places if you don't share in any of the upside?

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the fact is that because journalism, the salaries are traditionally so low, you know, people are like, oh, my God, who's like a nice salary to go do the thing? Sure, you know, this pie in the sky movie thing or TV series or, you know, books, whatever, never gonna happen. But, you know, I think that might have been more the case in the past, right? Especially with with motion picture. It was very rare that anything was gonna get optioned and turned into a film, you know, or a TV series. But now that there are so many more different prospective buyers and they're so flush with cash, again, Netflix, Hulu, you know, it's a much bigger slice of the pie.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  And I think that's why publications are kind of hunkering down and, you know, and grabbing their pieces of it a little more strongly, right?

• 37:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think what we're hitting on here is a larger theme also, which is that there's a lot of competition for good compelling video content. Look at, like you mentioned Netflix, Hulu, the traditional networks, of sorts like Facebook. So they all want like good video stuff. There's competition for audio. Now that podcasting is burgeoning. And there's competition for good work because, you know, we've moved content largely online and and advertisers wanna be next to good stuff. And so there's all these publications. And all this demand puts, I guess, a tremendous amount of power in the hands of the people that are making the stuff and are good at it.

• 38:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'm curious if you, so I'm curious what you think about that A, and then B, are you, do you think we're seeing some sort of shift in power between, between, you know, going from the big organizations like the record labels or the publishers and to the talent?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think we're definitely, you know, in an era where things are shifting, but things have been shifting for decades. And I think that's, that's part of the we are all musicians now thesis, right? You know, musicians also, after getting screwed over for so many years, realize that they could start to take more control of things. And I don't think the creators in other industries have realized quite as much, you know, how important they are. And, and I think that that's kind of what we're seeing play out in, you know, especially traditionally lower paying worlds like media. And so it's, you know, it's going to be by studying musicians that creators can empower themselves and

• 39:34Speaker 01

  kind of, you know, get, get what they're, what they really do deserve.

• 39:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Zack, how's it going for you so far? Are you happy with the subscriber numbers that you have on the newsletter? You also mentioned to me before that you do a weekly 30 minute spot on Sirius, which is super cool, some other stuff, maybe some TV stuff. So, you know, you're a couple of months into this big jump. It all happened within the past few months. Do you feel happy to have made the transition? Or are you thinking, oh God, let me just get to another publication and sign away my stuff and, you know, be done with it?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  I don't want to go sign away all my stuff. No, I'm really happy with it. You know, it's just, there's so much freedom. And, you know, and I should say, I mean, there is, there is also support from Substack. I mean, you know, they, they did give me a grant to come over. And, you know, what happened basically was after I, yeah, I mean, I think I got to this point in the story, you know, a few minutes ago, but, you know, here I was and I had, I had just said my goodbyes at Forbes and I, and now I had walked away from, from this, you know, great offer, you know, and other offer. And so, and so I, you know, I ended up, I was kind of faced with a choice. Like, do I try to go back and go

• 40:52Speaker 01

  to another traditional publication? Or do I, or do I do this thing? And, you know, I ended up cold calling the founder of Substack, basically, and, and just telling him the story of what I, of what I just told you. And, you know, and saying, hey, you know, I have this book, I want to write this book, but... You know, I would, I would love to pursue putting it out on Substack because I think, I think that especially when you're talking about things like, you know, NFTs, crypto, metaverse, whatever, you're, you know, this stuff is changing, not even week by, week by week, it's day by day. Um, and so the idea of putting it out with a traditional publisher,

• 41:33Speaker 01

  where, you know, the, the most recent thing, um, that, you know, that will be in a book is something that happened nine months ago. Uh, you know, I mean, I just couldn't really envision doing that anyway. And so, you know, Substack being a startup was able to, to move quickly and nimbly and, um, you know, basically give me a grant to, to kind of, you know, compete with what I could have gotten at a, at a major publication or for a book advance. Um, and, you know, to, to kind of take on some of my risk. But, you know, I guess to kind of get back to your question of like, um, why didn't I do this before? Uh,

• 42:14Speaker 01

  frankly, it was a lot of risk, you know? Um, and I didn't want to give up, uh, uh, I, I, you know, let's say, I, I didn't want to take on all the risk myself. And, you know, I was fortunate that that Substack was able to shoulder a little bit of it, you know, in order to get me off the ground. So, um, you know, I think that was all I needed to really, to kind of, you know, take the, maybe a, it's not like I was pushed off the diving board, but I, you know, I had a little nudge. And so, and I was like, all right, I'm just gonna jump in, you know?

• 42:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you gonna keep doing this? Uh, let's say, you know, is it a one-year thing for you or are you gonna keep doing it for the next five, 10?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, I mean, five, we'll see. I'd love to keep doing it for the next five or 10. I'd love for this to be like my last job ever, you know, um, and just keep growing it.

• 43:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna, I, I will say that I'm astonished. I thought like maybe, I didn't even think this would be a thing. And I'm, you know, well into year two of this project right now and it continues to go and it's awesome. It's, uh, it's fun to do. So.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, and I think the trick, as you alluded to, is basically audience development, business development. How do you, how do you get people to, to find this stuff? And, you know, I know that there's an appetite, um, for what I write, you know, and the subscriber numbers are coming along, but you know, I know that there's orders in magnitude, more people out there who want to read my stuff because they did when I was Forbes and they, you know, they have, you know, from my books and I know the numbers there. Even if I could get to a fraction of those numbers within this first year, you know, it'll be awesome. But just, you know, the ability to, I don't know, to have like a more personal relationship with your audience. I guess people could always email you or find you on social media when you were at a publication, but you know,

• 43:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Even just in the, the sort of like the tone of the, of the stories, right? Like you don't have to write in the voice of publication.

• 44:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you had a great email just asking readers, hey, what should I write about? What are you interested in?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I, I have that, that goes out to everyone as soon as they sign up. Tell me what you're interested in. Tell me who you are. And people do respond and it's great to hear them, hear back from them. So.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Cause it's like the, the, you know, the reader is sort of your boss, right? If, if the reader isn't satisfied, if you're not putting out really compelling stuff that, you know, that is making the reader want to subscribe or want to tell their friends, then you know, you're not doing your job in the novel business. So.

• 44:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  You know, just, just the ability to do that and then to not have to worry about taking on some publication voice or preferences or publicities. That it's, it's just great. It's just really great.

• 44:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  It rules. Okay. I'm going to shout out the URL. zogblog.substack.com, Z O G B L O G dot substack.com. Let's take one more quick break. And then when we get back, Zack, if you're up for it, I would like to do a very quick lightning round talking, throwing out some musicians, some artists that you've come into contact with, and maybe you can share one business lesson or one interesting fact about them that, that we might not know readily. Okay. So let's do that when we get back here on the Big Technology Podcast. Stick around. We'll be back right after this.

• 45:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for one final segment with Zack O'Malley Greenburg. He's the author of We Are All Musicians. You can find it on Substack and also longtime Forbes editor of music that covered music. Zack, you've had so many cool experiences with different musicians. So let's go through a quick tour down memory lane and maybe you can share like one business lesson or one just life lesson that you learned from each one of them. We'll start with the big man himself, Justin Bieber.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Justin Bieber, what I learned from Justin Bieber. You know, I think that story, I did a cover story on him in about a decade ago. And he was one of the first big names I interviewed who was investing in startups. And at the time, he had just put some money into a little Scandinavian company called Spotify.

• 46:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  He was one of the early Spotify investors? Interesting.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  He was an early Spotify investor and, you know, I think that was kind of part of Spotify's charm offensive to win over the music industry was to make some equity available as they were launching in the US. Because it wasn't guaranteed that they were gonna, that they were gonna make it. So, but you know, I really attribute that to Scooter Braun. So that's his manager. And I guess there are two lessons there, which is, you know, one, have a good manager or employer. But the other one is, you know, to find a way to own a piece of, not only to own your own work, but to own the platform upon which it is created. And of course, that's not always possible for everybody.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Not everybody's Justin Bieber and they kind of just demand a piece of it. Like, but you know, if you drive Uber, you can go out and buy some Uber stock. I don't know. I mean, it might, it might give you more of a feeling of ownership. And, you know, I guess on the converse, I always buy stock of companies that, that I feel are overcharging me. Like, like my health insurance company.

• 47:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Because I figure if they're, if they're, I'm kind of hedging my bets. You know, it's like, basically if they're gonna be overcharging me, at least I'll be getting a piece of their.

• 48:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Some of the upside. Yeah. Okay, moving on, DJ Khalid. Let's go quickly through these.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Oh, quickly, okay.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  So DJ Khaled, uh, sort of a piece of advice for DJ Khaled.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Man, you know, um. I think the big thing from him is, you know, he, he didn't. Get huge, uh, you know, hugely famous until he was in his forties. He was a late bloomer. Um, and he just kept hustling and I, I think, I think that's the, that's the lesson. Just, just keep hustling.

• 48:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Katy Perry?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Um, I think the lesson from Katy Perry is just keep learning. Uh, Katy Perry never had a sort of traditional education. Um. I think she got her GED but never went to high school or college. Uh. Did a cover story for her, or on, on her for Forbes. Uh, I want to say it was twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. And we ended up doing the, the big cover interview in Rome. And, um. And she's, she, her people told me to meet her at the, at the Colosseum. And there's this whole sort of spy novel thing where I had to get in a decoy car and it was like, she was wearing this big hat. Anyway, but, um, that's what she does at all her offices and, and, and tours, you know, she, she goes and.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Soaks up whatever the local history is to fill in the gaps in her own knowledge. Um, so, you know, yeah, never, never stopped learning.

• 49:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nas?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Oh, man, Nas to me is all about the pivot. Um. Nas was somebody who came up, you know, he was always the guy who was only all about the music. And, and his peers Jay-Z and, uh, Puff Daddy and. Dr. Dre were, were getting into these, you know, business ventures. Um, and then later in his career, Nas pivoted, again, great manager, guy by the name of Anthony Sala. Got him into investing in startups. And so he got into, I think Casper, uh, was a big one. Um. You know, that, that was probably the biggest one, but he was in on Lyft. He was in on a bunch of different startups early.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Uh, so I'd say it's never too late to, to make a pivot. And now, you know, he's probably the most successful venture capitalist, uh, in, in hip hop.

• 50:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. What about Shaq?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Shaq.

• 50:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm fascinated by Shaq. I think that dude is, he's such a unique individual.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Shaq's, I think the lesson from Shaq is, you know, never get too comfortable.

• 50:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  And I'll just share an anecdote from when I interviewed him for my last book, A List Angels. And he's a big startup investor. So, you know, we're in there, we're in this like hotel room and he's in a tank top and it's the middle of summer. You know, Shaq is enormous.

• 51:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  How big is he in person?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Uh, I think he's listed at seven feet, three hundred pounds and in person, it's like he's nine feet tall and.

• 51:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  But no, I want to talk, tell, tell me about like the, yeah, the visceral experience of spending time with Shaq.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  He, he, uh, you know, like, like his shoes are, his, um, I mean, his biceps are bigger than my thighs, you know? I mean, like, his shoes are like, you could fit my shoes in his shoes. Uh, and so, you know, here we are talking and, and I said, I was really like, dude, you know, you, you're, why are you, why are you even, you know, you've made hundreds of millions of dollars in your career. Why are you even bothering getting into the startup stuff? And he, and he looked at me, you know, big old imposing Shaq, and he says, fear.

• 51:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fear.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  He says, fear. He's, and he basically, he's afraid of stagnation and he's afraid of going broke because, you know, the statistics of athletes going broke are off the charts. And so he's just constantly, um, trying to create new business opportunities for himself. Of course, without spending too extravagantly on it.

• 52:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  But, you know, never being complacent.

• 52:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Lady Gaga?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Lady Gaga, I've never interviewed. Um, but I did, uh, uh, have a glass of whiskey next to her at a bar one time at Grammy after party. So I don't have any personal lessons to impart from her.

• 52:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, okay.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  But, um, you know, I mean, I think that, I think that she's done a great job of. You know, never being afraid, you know, um, to be yourself.

• 52:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is for sure.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  And, and it, you know, and it's, it's not like being yourself, you know, you, you, you lose out on some commercial aspect. I mean, you know, um, authenticity is, is super valuable and, you know, frankly monetizable.

• 53:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Um, all right, let's wrap it up with two more. Diddy?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Diddy, man, um,

• 53:14Speaker 01

  I think that the, the phrase that comes to mind about Diddy is can't stop, won't stop.

• 53:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And, um, I've interviewed him a few times over the years and, and, you know, one of the things that, that really stuck in my mind about him, you know, and everybody knows Diddy, charisma and the lifestyle and all that, but, um,

• 53:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Can't stop, won't stop, but especially when it comes to customer service and the dude, the dude will go into Soho House and tell the bartender to put the Syrah vodka, which is, you know, his, it's not even technically vodka, but whatever, it's his, it's his drink, uh, to, to put it on the top shelf, you know, like you will get that granular with it. Uh, and what are you gonna do with the bartender if, if Diddy is telling you to put, you know, his?

• 53:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're putting it on that top shelf.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  You're gonna put it on the top shelf.

• 53:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. We've talked a lot of hip hop. Um, you've done some, uh, country tagalongs too. Is there a favorite one that sticks out in your memory?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, uh, the, the greatest country adventure was, uh, a cover I wrote about Toby Keith.

• 54:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I remember this one. Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  He was launching a mezcal line and, and, uh, you know, he, he basically, he poured me the, like a lot of old mezcal, like there'd be a worm at the bottom. So he poured me a red solo cup of it and basically dared me to drink the worm, um, which I did. And then I feel like it, it kind of opened up.

• 54:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  You drank the worm.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Drank the worm.

• 54:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Gross.

• 54:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, and then you wrote a book about Jay-Z and he didn't participate in the book, but then you met up with Jay-Z. How did that go? I don't know, Zack, were you planning to, oh, whatever, I'm just gonna ask it. If you don't want to tell the story on air.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  No, I'm happy to tell it.

• 54:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  You can, yeah, but this seems like a fun one to, so Jay would not participate, but then you and him come face to face. Let's hear the story.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my first book was about Jay-Z. It's called Empire State of Mind. Just released the billionaire edition over the summer, and so that's out now. But, you know, he, over the years, I mean, as I was first writing it, he, his people, you know, I reached out to them, tried to get him to, you know, talk for an interview, and there's like, oh, maybe, maybe, maybe, and then they said, well, maybe you should rip up your book deal and, and, you know, well, maybe he'll let you write his business book. And I was like, yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  We never said no, but he never said yes. So, you know, the book came out and I didn't talk to him. And, and then I was at a, his music festival, the Native American Music Festival in Philly, a couple of years after the book came out, and, and I was waiting for the, right, I guess I had, I was getting out of a porta potty, and I walked basically right into Jay-Z and Beyonce.

• 56:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God. I didn't, what, they were waiting for the porta potty? What was going on there?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not sure, but the porta potties were the same for the VIP section as they were for the media tent, which is, you know, unusual, because usually.

• 56:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, that doesn't happen so often.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Reporters are, you know, kind of squirreled away in somewhere undesirable, but, you know, there was maybe a little bit of space. So, you know, I, I just sort of said, I, I didn't, I just kind of improvised. I was like, hey, Jay, I'm the guy who wrote the book about you. And he pretended not to hear me, and he kind of sauntered off and. And then he, and then he, uh, he looked back over his shoulder and he said, "That book was horrible."

• 56:57Speaker 01

  And, and, and disappeared around the corner and, uh, and I immediately ran back to the media tent and I, I churned out a post, uh, which I titled Jay-Z's review of the book I wrote about him.

• 57:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  And I, and I essentially retold that, that, um,

• 57:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, the story. That's amazing.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  That's my Jay-Z story.

• 57:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that was, that was it. Do you think he actually didn't like it or was he just playing with you?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Uh, I think he was just playing with me. You know, I mean, I didn't, I didn't write it to, to please or displease him.

• 57:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, of course. It wasn't for him, but I'm actually curious like what the reaction was trying to convey.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I told this story. One time I was, uh, I was doing the panel with Diddy, uh, at South by it and, um, in the green room, I was like, I don't know, what do I talk to Diddy about? And so I, I told him the story and he laughed and he said, he said, "He's playing with you. He's a good cat." It's like, okay.

• 57:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Yeah. The book is We Are All Musicians Now. You can find it on Substack. That's zogblog.substack.com. The author is Zack O'Malley-Greenburg. Zack, thanks so much for joining us today. It was great talking with you.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Alex. Really appreciate it.

• 58:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Very interesting premise and, um, you are cranking and I've been enjoying reading the posts and I encourage everybody to go sign up. Thank you to Nate Guatney for editing and mastering, uh, the audio, especially as I get my new space set up here in Brooklyn. Uh, hopefully Nate, it'll be a little less work next time. Thanks to Red Circle for selling the ads, uh, and hosting the podcast and congrats on your new round of fundraising. Hopefully this, this party keeps going for a long while after this. And thanks most of all to you, the listeners. We'll be back next Wednesday with another show. Here on the Big Technology Podcast with the tech insider or outside agitator. We hope to see you then. Until then, take care.

• 59:06Speaker 02

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