Jimmy Iovine on AI: “The Great Artists Will Show the World How to Use It”

This is our full interview with Jimmy Iovine. We discuss why he and Dr. Dre started a school at USC, how they built Beats into the world's biggest headphone company, what he learned from Steve Jobs, why software companies struggle to build great hardware, how AI will transform music, what's broken about Spotify and streaming, and more. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/ Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Up next, we have Jimmy Iovine in person.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Nice to see you.

• 0:03John Coogan?

  He is the co-founder of Interscope Records.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  How you doing, man?

• 0:06John Coogan?

  We're doing fantastically. How are you?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Good, good. Yeah.

• 0:08John Coogan?

  Thank you so much for coming on down.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Hey, it wasn't easy. You're far from my house, but it's cool.

• 0:14Jordi Hays?

  Coming in from, uh...

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Uh, Malibu.

• 0:17Jordi Hays?

  There we go. I do that drive. I do that drive every day, too.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Are you a Mal...?

• 0:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Senra, me, Huberman, you know, we got a little podcast dynasty out there.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Oh, great, great. I'll give you my number. We're out there. Me and my family. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:33Jordi Hays?

  And Ben, too. Ben Taff.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Really?

• 0:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Fantastic. That's great.

• 0:37Jordi Hays?

  We're all out there.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 0:38John Coogan?

  How are things going at USC?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Uh, well, you know, uh, we started this, we started the school, you know, it's called IYA. And it's really a school of innovation. What happened was, uh... In 2014, we sold Beats headphones to, uh, and Beats Music to Apple.

• 1:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  And at Beats, we had a similar experience where we couldn't find people that could collaborate the way Dre and I wanted them to collaborate. Collaborate the way Dre and I wanted them to collaborate, you know, so... We kinda got into that. I just, we would, it was very, very difficult. Either you're an engineer, design, business, it just... They couldn't speak the same language. They didn't understand the why of the other person. So, when we went to Apple, it was that on steroids for us, you know? They're a great company, the best company, you know, but we found that at every company we went to.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  That everything was very siloed and communication, understanding was siloed. Not some, not just people, but understanding. And, um, so, one day I woke up and I just called Dre. I said, "Dre, you know, the problems that we're having." You know, Dre and I really didn't go to school much, you know? And, um, I said, "But I got a feeling that this is a problem in education. People are learning in a siloed way." You see, 19 to 25 and 26, I don't know about you guys, but that puts a big imprint on your life.

• 2:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, you learn a lot in the formative years. Those are really important. They were very important for me. And I guess that's kinda why the age of college.

• 2:27John Coogan?

  And getting like varied experiences, I feel, is so important. When I think about my era from 20, from 19 to 26, I studied economics, I learned to program, I started a business, I filmed videos, did marketing. I, it blend, it helps to blend all these things together.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  How old are you?

• 2:44John Coogan?

  I'm 37.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you, you are, you're, you're young enough to grow up in a really multidisciplinary environment.

• 2:53John Coogan?

  But importantly, like, a lot of that was on my own. I just had to go learn. Yeah, I had to do it myself.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  That's my point. So now, when you come out of high school, they silo you.

• 3:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Okay, you're gonna go work with 60 engineers every day. You're gonna go with, go to Wharton, but you're gonna be with 45 accountants every day.

• 3:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  And, um, there's something wrong with that.

• 3:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  So, you know, we stepped in, went to USC and, uh...

• 3:20John Coogan?

  How do you map that to, or match that with this idea of putting on the blinders? Why does a racehorse wear blinders, right?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Well, um, because every, we live in a world now, it's worse than ever with social media. Everyone cares so much about what somebody else thinks.

• 3:37John Coogan?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I mean, you guys, we have people just, all day, "What do they think of my post? What do they think of my ar...? What do they think of my orange juice? Who cares?" You know what I mean? Would you go to a grocery store and ask everybody what they think, you know? So, anyway, I'm an older guy, so it doesn't make any sense to me. But, you know, but that's the blinders. The blinders are very simple. Run your own race.

• 4:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  But, enter that race with the understanding and the empathy of other disciplines.

• 4:12John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  We all have that problem in any company you have. The extreme tech side and the extreme design side have trouble communicating.

• 4:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Maybe not everyone at every company, but most people at most companies. And then when you, you know, remember, we brought 300 people from the creative business into Apple, basically, you know? And, uh, Apple's an incredible company, but... It's, um, and it's the best of them, by the way, by the way. But it's all somewhat siloed, all these companies.

• 4:49Jordi Hays?

  Do you think entrepreneurial people know that they're entrepreneurial for the most part? And I ask that because do you find with the school, there's people that maybe, that, that aren't applying to be a part of the program, but you actually wanna go and find those people? Or, or generally, are these people like self-selecting and they, and they just know they wanna be a part of it?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  They, they know that there aren't many schools that fit who they are, right? And a lot, we get a lot of applicants, and that's because we fit, we're speaking their language, you know? And think about this, we started this in 2012. Now, a lot of schools are saying, "Okay, we offer multidisciplinary..." You know, they say, "Okay, you're in an engineering school, but you could go take one course across the hall and say..." You know, that's not the joke. The, what it is, is what companies want. Actually, we did research, uh, at USC to find what, um, what type of students they want.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Number one came back collaborative innovation.

• 5:55John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  And that's the foundation. You know, our school is really Ivy Young Academy for Innovation. We put, in the beginning, tech, design, and I'll show you much of it, because we wanted to explain it. We wanted to make it literal, like, you know, rock to the forehead kind of, uh, you know, messaging. So, but now, it's fundamentally the Ivy Young Academy of Innovation. And because people can't, you need to collaborate to innovate. And, you know, look, I'll give you an example. People say, "How do you know there are problems at, at these companies like this?" Well, I've been to a lot of them, but I have proof. Here's my proof.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Why is it that so few, I wanna be generous, so few software companies have built successful commercial hardware, consumer electronics? Why is that?

• 6:53John Coogan?

  No founders in the seats?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  They...

• 6:56John Coogan?

  Run by committee?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Because, no, they can't collaborate.

• 6:58John Coogan?

  Can't collaborate.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  They can't collaborate.

• 7:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  You know, you, now, you know, I mean, Meta's gotten this, this piece of hardware out there right now, but they went to, I mean, it looks like, it looks like they went to Ray-Ban, you know? I mean, and it's cool, it'll do okay, you know, do fine, whatever. They're a great company. But none of these companies can make hardware, and they all have hardware envy.

• 7:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 7:23John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  You know, and, um, so there's a reason for that. And my, and my thesis, and mine and Dre's thesis is that this is why.

• 7:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Because what was so great about, what is so great about Apple, because it's still in their DNA, is they had Steve Jobs. He was the ultimate cross-disciplinary human being. That was his, in his DNA, where tech meets liberal arts. And when I went, the first time I went up there in 2003, I got it in 30 seconds. Cause I had gone to five other companies before that, talked to them about piracy and all that stuff. I was on a, a kick about that, you know? And I was, the minute I had hello, I met him in ADQ, I said, "Okay, this is where the party is."

• 8:17Speaker 01

  You know, and I just went back. I told the people at, Doug Morris at Universal, who was in charge of the place, I said, "License this guy." Because they, they know a lot more about this than anybody in our business, and they have feel. Okay, so, this, this, this school is truly designed behind that meeting. I know it sounds simple, but with, look, we had an idea. I woke up one day and I called Dre. I said, "Dre, what about, what about starting a school like this?" Hell yeah, you know, by the way, he really talks like that. So, we wrote a check for seventy million dollars in a month. We're just on one line, knowing nothing about education. And we built what I consider a fabulous school.

• 9:03John Coogan?

  Do you think that there is a, there is a trap to be avoided with the school around students becoming tracked? Like, they've done the interdisciplinary work and they see this as the best way to get a job at Apple? Or the best way to get a job at a startup? And in fact, they should be sort of laying back and watching opportunity come to them during this period?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, they're twenty-two years old. They can go get a job at Apple and still go change the world.

• 9:29John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  You know, Steve, Steve Jobs had a job.

• 9:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  For Apple, right? So, you know, nothing wrong with getting experience. Uh, I, I think it's actually good.

• 9:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  But, it's more important, I mean, look, even the engineering degree, you could see is trying to expand. They get it, you know what I mean?

• 9:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  You can't just, it's really not a good environment to work where people just don't understand each other fundamentally. It's, it's empathy.

• 9:59John Coogan?

  Do you think that as technology grows and technology progresses, that is creating like a natural widening force? Because it used to be, the, the instrument was technology, but it was understandable by an artist? And now, the technology might be seven layers deep in some AI thing? That's so abstract and so obscure that that creates.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Look, in two thousand twelve, I couldn't spell AI.

• 10:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  You know, so, I had no idea, but it's, we built a school that's perfect for it.

• 10:33John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  You know? And, um, because it's what, it, it makes so much common sense.

• 10:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Inside these companies, if you understand the why of the other discipline.

• 10:45John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Otherwise, you're walking, it's a crash.

• 10:48John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  You know, and, um, that's why Apple can still make great software and great hardware.

• 10:54John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  That, that DNA is in those people. It's in Tim Cook, it's in Eddie Q, you know? And now, I don't know this fellow, John, but I'm sure he was brought up in the same school.

• 11:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, I know, he's been there a long time.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  But, that's a question that should be.

• 11:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Asked, and will probably never be answered, but why do software companies fail when they go to make hardware?

• 11:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's tricky, a lot of them have tried, a lot of them have tried.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Are you kidding?

• 11:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:23John Coogan?

  Basically, all of them.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  But there has to be a reason, right?

• 11:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So, my reason's better than anybody else, or they, maybe somebody else come up with a better idea. But my reason is very convenient for my school.

• 11:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So.

• 11:33John Coogan?

  That's good.

• 11:34Jordi Hays?

  Uh, do you think, do you think more entrepreneurs should go back to the, to the university that, that they graduated from and teach a course? Like, something that's, uh, uh, there's so many lessons that I didn't learn in school? And, uh, I, I won't claim to be an expert on, on many things, but if I even had to put together like ninety minutes, I feel like I could, uh, save my younger self a lot of time. And it's maybe.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Of course, they should, everyone should give back. I mean, I, I think a lot of people do. I see it at UC all the time. I mean, they have, um, they have alumni giving hundreds of millions of dollars to these schools, you know? Uh, and I sure, I'm sure they go back and talk to them and everything. I spend a lot of time at the school. I try to, uh, be very involved, you know, uh, I do.

• 12:19Jordi Hays?

  Do you think you would have dropped out of your own school? Like, the younger version of your.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  You know, uh, here's the thing. Uh, if there was, I have to go for a lot of therapy on dealing with dyslexia first.

• 12:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  You know, I had a lot of trouble reading, uh, and, and paying attention. So, I don't know what they call that, is a, there's a names for them, you know? But, uh, I don't know, maybe if there was a lot of Prozac back then, maybe I could have focused, but. No, I got into, I, I, I just, what I got into is I got into, I loved music, right? So, I got into music and engineering, which is sort of technology side, right? So, I started as a recording engineer.

• 13:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  So, you have to understand the basic principles of, uh, technology in order to run a console and.

• 13:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  You know, fix microphones and do whatever you have to do, you know? So, I got lucky. I didn't know, I didn't know I was doing that then, but, um, you know, I don't know. That not everybody can do that. So, school is a great thing, but only if you're in an environment that's gonna enhance your creativity and who you are, and not take one part of it and put it in a box.

• 13:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the funny thing for me is I, it took me until I was an adult to realize that I was creative, because I remember my, like, pretty formative experience was, was in early, early school, when I'd be in an art class and I'd be told, "Draw this," or "Do that," or whatever. I just was not good at drawing. I never was good at drawing. And in my head, like, creativity and art was all about drawing.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:55Jordi Hays?

  Right, because that was my first time, like, doing anything creative in a school setting. So, I, then I went like, almost probably fifteen years, thinking, "I'm not creative," right? And so, it took me to being an adult to realize that creativity can have all these other forms, right? It's not just like, "Can you draw a pretty picture?" Right?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Well, you could also, you could learn. You could learn creativity. You could learn taste. You could learn all those things. It's somewhere in you, where you could learn it. Absolutely. I had no taste when I walked into the record plant in John Lennon's studio in nineteen seventy-three. I had zero taste. I went from three albums with him, two albums with Springsteen, and one album with Patti Smith, and I left with taste.

• 14:38Jordi Hays?

  Do you, but, but, I often find that a lot of people have great taste, but they don't have the ability to create things that meet their taste level? Like, taste can, taste can be inherent in some people.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  You know, what you do then is you have an eye for people that do have the gift.

• 14:57John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  And you surround yourself with them. You know, I learned that at nineteen years old. I, I came, I was living in my mother's house in Brooklyn, in Red Hood, Brooklyn. My father was a longshoreman. And I met John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. I did those records and I got an apartment. I said, "Okay, I meet people like this, my life is gonna be okay. I just gotta make sure that I don't get thrown out of the room."

• 15:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  So, when you're running a company,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  leave your ego out of it and realize somebody does something better than you. And don't defend anything, don't defend your ignorance. You know, just go for it and just say, "Okay, this person's great. I'm gonna be of service to this person."

• 15:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Even if they work for you.

• 15:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  To get them loyal to your company and loyal to you. And, um, you know, that's what I always do. I just, I got a pretty good eye for seeing who's gifted, and I make, try to make their life as great as possible.

• 16:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I'd, yeah, that, that resonates on a smaller scale where I, I knew I would, I'm not great at, I'm not great at design. I'm not great at, you know, drawing out a logo, for example, but I can find people that can make great logos and, and I realize I could, uh, at least work with.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Headphones.

• 16:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I, yeah, we, we come out of music, me and Dre, so people used to go, "Well, of course, you guys are in the recording studio. Of course, you knew how to make headphones."

• 16:27John Coogan?

  Where would you?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  If you gave, if you gave Bruce Springsteen two pieces of wood, he's not coming out with a guitar.

• 16:33John Coogan?

  No way.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Okay, or Keith Richard.

• 16:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So, we had to go and learn. What we did was we found people that really were good at this. And bring them in and, and we just added the idea of what was wrong. What was wrong is that everyone was listening to music, an entire generation, including yours and yours, on those little free earbuds that Apple would give out.

• 16:57John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  So, Dre said to me, "Man, that's, I spend all day in the studio and my kids are listening on these ridiculous things." So, we said, "Okay." So, then we decided we're gonna make a headphone. Then everyone tells us, "You can't, they got a great headphone, they'd be like three hundred dollars at retail." I said, "Well, that's not gonna work, because Apple gives them away for free and so does Samsung." We said, "Okay, our job is to get them on people's head. Once they hear it."

• 17:31Speaker 01

  They're not going back. And that's what we did. So we brought culture. And we got them on people's head to try them. And then once young people started trying them, they wanted it for Christmas.

• 17:44John Coogan?

  Was that expensive? I remember the story of you paying to advertise G-Thing, right?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  That was a song.

• 17:51John Coogan?

  It was a song.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  That was a song.

• 17:53John Coogan?

  But it was a contrarian move because I feel like pulling the trigger on a big ad spend before an artist is really broken through is risky, but how did that change your...

• 18:04Speaker 01

  I don't know how to spell risky either.

• 18:06John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I just, I do, I wake up in the morning and I do what I feel.

• 18:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  And I do what makes sense. I talk to the people that are around me. And I don't care about the risk. I really don't. I never did. I just do what's right for the project.

• 18:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And sometimes, you know, you cut a lot of flack because, you know, when you're at a big company or something, the budgets and things like that, but I, I, I just get myself in situations where I leave them if I can't just do what I want to do.

• 18:35John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You know? I try to make a life of just doing what I want to do.

• 18:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Jordi Hays?

  Over the years, how, how did you think about bringing in new business partners? You have some early success working with some set of people. You start meeting other great people. In your mind, how are you deciding whether to spend time and partner with new people versus sticking with the band?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I'm very, I'm a very positive person, so I always give people the benefit of the doubt and try it. You know, and you could tell pretty quick if something's gonna work or it's not. If it's not, say sorry. And if it does, go in further. I try a lot of things, you know, I'm not, it's... I'm not precious about anything. Once I figure out what I'm doing, I'm precious about that.

• 19:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But as far as the education and learning how to get, look, we would have never done this school.

• 19:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, if we were nervous about things, I mean, we knew nothing about what we were doing.

• 19:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And I think we have one of the best, if not the best, school in this area in the country.

• 19:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  You know? So, that's a good thing.

• 19:47John Coogan?

  There's a, obviously, a big technological transition in music with AI. Going back maybe before streaming, what was the first technological shift you remember in the music industry?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  You mean Napster, you mean?

• 20:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, before Napster even. Is that synthesizers?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I go back a long time, you know, stereo.

• 20:11John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  You know, multi-track recording, you know, where do you want to start?

• 20:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, but what was that like? Was there a discussion about it or was it something that just, you know, was adopted behind the scenes and the consumer of music?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  It's always the, because the stuff like that, it was expensive, it was always the professionals, you know? Like you could hear the first time a phaser, one of the first times a phaser was used on a record in Jimi Hendrix, you know? You could hear when the Beatles got stereo, they walked in the studio one day, because I knew those guys. And there was two speakers instead of one.

• 20:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  You know, Paul will tell you, he has told people, they, they said, okay, they thought at the beginning, oh, twice as loud, you know?

• 20:53John Coogan?

  But... There's more to it.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  There's more to it. So, you know, it gone all the way. There's drum machines. Drum machine was big.

• 20:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  You know, I, I was fortunate because Roger Lynn used to be a guitar player and he was playing on one of my sessions when he was creating this thing. He had the computer in there with him, he was creating a drum machine.

• 21:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  So, I got to see that really early on, but then Prince exploded it.

• 21:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  You know, so, AI is, you know, it's a little different.

• 21:22John Coogan?

  Do you think people thought it was a risk, and I know risk is not in your vocabulary, but for Prince to adopt the drum machine?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  It was bold.

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Bold.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It was very bold because, remember, this guy is a great, great musician.

• 21:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  That had the greatest musicians playing around him.

• 21:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  So he said, I'm gonna simplify, I'm gonna go to a drum machine here. That's bold and brilliant. And he, he was one of the guys that exploded it, you know, that really took it, went all the way.

• 21:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. The boldness, that feels like that's, like, when you're thinking about stereo or the drum machine or synthesizers, there's an opportunity for boldness on the side of the musician?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:05John Coogan?

  Did that same opportunity for boldness exist in the streaming transition, in the social media era, in the AI era?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Okay, let's go to streaming, right? Streaming, you have to go to iTunes first.

• 22:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  That was very bold.

• 22:18John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Because the record industry didn't want to license it.

• 22:23John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  You know, musicians didn't want to sell their songs at a dollar a time.

• 22:26John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  But, but on the other, but out the back door, they were being given away on MP3, you know, all day, right? So, what Steve and Eddie had was a really good idea, an elegant way to match their iPod.

• 22:40John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  You know, they had this piece of software that was really elegant. And it worked. And these guys understood the culture. Steve, my first five conversations with Steve Jobs was about John Lennon and Bob Dylan. He really cared and understood, hey, understood, hey, he went out with Joan Baez, right? So, he understood the, the culture.

• 23:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  And he understood, he had a feel for it, you know? So, that was a big step. And then streaming was another big step. Daniel Ek was a brilliant guy, you know? We came to the market, we had Beats Music and Interscope and we sold to Apple. And that, and then we started, we worked with the guys up there and made Apple Music.

• 23:31John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm. How do you think streaming changed music production or the decisions that musicians make? I mean, I've heard at least anecdotal evidence that albums got longer or there's more songs because that gives you more shots to go viral in the algorithm.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  I think what caused all that was social media.

• 23:51John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Social media, unfortunately, like a thing like TikTok,

• 23:58Speaker 01

  it's, it's in a lot of ways, it's great because it gave artists power and a platform to market themselves, which is what artists want and need and should have. But it also made a lot of artists and record company people chase that.

• 24:13John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Whatever the latest TikTok thing is, and that can be pretty ridiculous at times, right? So, I think that affected music more sonically and creatively than streaming did, personally. Maybe more songs or whatever, yeah, great, but even that more songs thing came out of SoundCloud.

• 24:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  And TikTok and Instagram, just putting stuff out, you know?

• 24:42Jordi Hays?

  I was, I was talking to a buddy of mine in Malibu and he's produced 20, 30 Billboard number ones, like really, really impressive career. And he's, for decades now, received, people will send him demos and he, he always says he likes to listen because he wants to be working with, you know, up and coming talent. And he said, over the last year, it's become harder to judge who's, who's got potential and who doesn't because, because of AI. Because anybody can make a song that sounds at least decent and maybe there's a thread of a good idea in there. And so he said, it's just become impossible to understand.

• 25:25Jordi Hays?

  And to me, that signals that it's gonna become even harder to break into the music business because, and suddenly anyone can make a song, right? Like Suno, shockingly quickly, in about, takes, in my experience, about 10 seconds to make something. And there's patterns, you can, if you...

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Where do you want to start with this?

• 25:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  You're just covering a lot of ground, okay?

• 25:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, but, but I guess my, my main question is like, does it become, these previous technology trends in music, the professionals, the existing professionals got access to them first. They were expensive to adopt, things like that. Now with AI, anybody in the entire world can get access to it. And I'm wondering, does that mean you're gonna have a lot more people breaking into the music industry or, or less just because competition is like...

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Well, do you want to talk about the licensing of AI, the actual use of AI or the production of it? Where, where do you want to, where do you want to start, right? You know, where, where?

• 26:26Jordi Hays?

  Well, specifically, what is it, what do you think it means for emerging talent?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Well, let's use the word talent. If you really have talent, it'll help you. It'll help you create as a tool, you know what I mean? It's like, you ask the right question, stereo.

• 26:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  It made Sergeant Pepper better.

• 26:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 26:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Drum machine made Prince's first album fantastic, you know, or second album, whatever that was. You know, so, I think as a tool, it's gonna be fabulous. You know, a lot of these companies that are creating AI music right now are doing so on unlicensed music en masse, like 60 million tracks or something like that. Well, those, in my opinion, those are gonna be like the kazaa of this moment. It's gotta get under control to a certain extent. There, there should be, I mean, in this particular case, there, there's gonna be some kind of government regulations or there should be something, right?

• 27:27John Coogan?

  For proper licensing, if you use these three influences in the creation of this AI song, those three artists get compensated.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  That's right. The prompts, the prompts should get paid.

• 27:36John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Right? So, but, there's a lot of cowboys and they're gonna run around doing this stuff, you know? But that's not, I don't think that's where the, it's gonna shine, you know? Like, can people make songs, you know, easier? Can somebody who was Instagram influencer go out and make a song because they know how to dance and jump around and get people's attention? Possibly, but there's crap now. There'll be crap then, there'll be crap now. Maybe the crap will get more interesting, who knows? But as far as the great artists, you know, Kendrick Lamar, Alicia, Olivia Dean,

• 28:15Speaker 01

  you know, some great people that are C-Mas, some of these young artists that are just, you know, St. Harrison. Some of these great, that kid St. Harrison, there ain't no AI that can sing like that kid.

• 28:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  You know, so, something like that, you know, is...

• 28:33Speaker 01

  You know, they're gonna be there. Because what AI can't do is grow up in a terrible home. AI can't have a broken heart, you know, so, you know, AI is not gonna be Dolly Parton.

• 28:47John Coogan?

  Art has always been about stories. You look at the Modern Art Museum and there's The Cost of Refrain. My kid could have drawn that, but you didn't and there's not providence and there's not a journey and a story behind it.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I'm not afraid of AI. And I met a lot of people that are working on it and none of them truly scare me, you know. Or should scare anyone for that matter. And, you know, so I think it's a tool. I think Dre said last week on some interview that it's a tool and that's what it is. But the licensing, the artist that it's learning off of, the way this product is. Look, when the Beatles came out, they were influenced by Little Richard and Buddy Holly, right? They didn't get paid. But now if you're influenced by the Beatles and Dr. Dre, they will get paid. And I gotta tell you, everyone's always tough on the labels.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  But I think, I'm watching the labels closely and I talk to the guys that are running it quite a bit because I've known them all for years. I think they're handling this problem right in the beginning because they have to, the things that are out there just randomly licensing, not licensing, ignoring it and thinking that they're gonna, I think that's, I don't think that works. It most certainly doesn't. I grew up, I grew up for the first 18 years of my life relying on musical artists. They changed my life and a lot of people's around me's life. So that music deserves to be paid. You don't just come in and think, I don't believe, I don't believe that. So, but I'm an older guy.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I, you know, I've been around a long time, so some things are good about that, some things get a little stale. But I believe that how the labels are handling those particular cases is the right way.

• 30:39John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the technology should be able to help here. Of course, there needs to be legal precedent. But, I mean, if you look at the way YouTube's handled it, if I upload a video with a Dr. Dre song on it, that's, any money that I earn from that's gonna route it automatically.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  In the beginning, it wasn't.

• 30:54John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, it wasn't, but pretty quickly. And why they sold to Google was they had to pay out a bunch of money.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Well, because that's gonna happen here too, you know. But, but.

• 31:03John Coogan?

  The money will flow though.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  But, but the chain reaction that this causes unfortunately is the people that are giving out licenses shrink. Meaning they shrink what they're gonna, they lessen what they're gonna do. And it's gonna cause a lot of this product everybody's excited about to really be dumbed down.

• 31:23John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  All right. So, you know, a couple of companies have gotten licensed. I guarantee you, I don't know, but I guarantee you, in my opinion, that those, that product would be dumbed down.

• 31:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  So where the thing will shine is when you get producers that learn how to do this. You know, when Stereo first came out in Extreme, there were records, a Beatle record, where the drums were on the right and the vocal was on the left. All right. But then people learn how to.

• 31:57John Coogan?

  Blend things together.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  So, a lot of producers are using AI right now and it's really helping them.

• 32:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  I mean, what they do is they, they even copy the AI, you know, the idea. What's gonna, it'll break a log, it breaks a logjam in your head.

• 32:13John Coogan?

  Is that the best way that you see artists using AI as essentially pre-visualization, like what would happen?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  That's what I see. The guys that I know, you know, the producers that I know, I talk to them, you know. And I, I keep in touch with a lot of producers because I was a producer and I relate. In the record business, I really relate to record producers, their journey and stuff, you know. So, when I was at Interscope, it was driven by record producers, you know, Swiss Beats, Pharrell, Dre, Timbaland, you know, Will.i.am, Paula DeGee, all these guys were at Interscope at one time or another. I hope I didn't leave anybody out. I'm sure I did. I'm sorry. But, you know, they, they are learning how to use this.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  It will come from them. And, yeah, they'll be, look, there are, there are artists out now that can barely sing Happy Birthday.

• 33:09John Coogan?

  I wanna think about that.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so what's the difference if you can barely sing Happy Birthday, if you can't sing Happy Birthday at all, right? So that, there will always be boring, silly, you know, records like that, right? But the great artists and the great producers will maybe create real masterpieces, you know. Because of this, it'll spark something. So I'm very pro-AI. I just think that in the beginning, there's always the Wild West in anything like this. You've seen it enough, you just go, okay, it'll. But I, the guys that are running the labels are really trying to do the right thing here. And I think in this particular case, the artist and the labels are aligned.

• 33:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. That's a good point.

• 33:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. What do you think, so, so knowing some of these entrepreneurs that are building in the space, they would push back and say, within streaming, if somebody was illegally streaming or pirating a song, they are taking a product that an artist and a label produced and they're just consuming that product without, without paying. That is objectively wrong. In this situation, they are training on a bunch of music to create something entirely new off of that. And they would argue that.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  That's fair use?

• 34:32Jordi Hays?

  They would argue that that's fair use in the way that, like you said, the Beatles, you know, had their own inspiration.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I know, but that's, that's the argument, right? Is it fair use or isn't it fair use? The artists and the labels think it's not fair use and somebody's making a lot of money on a new company thinks it is fair use, right?

• 34:49Jordi Hays?

  But, but here's.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  It's a very convenient argument.

• 34:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, these companies are making money providing a tool. And I'm not, I'm actually not taking a side one way or another, but they're making an art, they make money from selling a tool that lets you create music. And, but the, what's also happening is people are creating that music and then they're going back to the labels and they're going back to artists and they're making new music that then gets listened to and monetized the normal way. So I would argue in some ways that the music industry and artists are, yes, their, their music is being used to train models that, that then create other music, but they are also beneficiaries of that.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there are some people that are dead.

• 35:38John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 35:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  So, you know, Wilson Pickett is not gonna go out and make a new record. So if you're learning on Wilson Pickett, I believe that his estate should make money. I believe that if you're learning on, you know, somebody who's around today, George, not George Harrison, you know, like any of the artists that are around today, where you're learning from their music, they should get, the prompt should get paid. It's gonna be hard to monitor, hard to police and all that stuff, but they'll figure that out, you know. I just don't think that, I don't think it's fair use. I don't think it's free.

• 36:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  You know, I just don't.

• 36:16John Coogan?

  I saw this with the social media addiction trials, like big settlements can come decades down the road and be basically benchmarked to revenue and, and the money can flow, but it takes a long time to go through the court system. That's just the way things in America.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  So what, you know, it's so what? But it has to be done right and it's a wonderful technology for music. It's fantastic. But, you know, there has to be deals made.

• 36:44John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course, of course. Always. What do you think about the future of live performances in the age of AI? It feels like it could be a really important proof of humanity, proof of talent. I went to the show. Sure, maybe there was some autotune in the loop, but I watched them perform. And if they can perform to a certain level, that gives me more confidence in the rest of their library.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  I happen to be fortunate. I have a really good friend in that business named Michael Rapinoe. He's the, he's the CEO of Live Nation. I learned a lot about the live business from him. Plus, I grew up, my friends playing live all the time, you know. So I, I think live is live. You know, do you wanna see somebody performing live, spilling their guts on the stage? Or do you wanna see a hologram or something? You know, I don't know. I'd rather see the person live because they're just more exciting. So, I don't know. I don't think there's any problem with that. I don't think there's, I don't think it crosses. I just don't see it, you know. I don't see it. I don't know the future. I have no idea. I'm not gonna be here anyway.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  So, but, but it's, you know, I don't know. I have no idea.

• 37:53John Coogan?

  I would just expect it to, to grow. I don't know. It feels like the, the Eras Tour was such a moment. And there's these certain moments that happen in American culture where shelling points, everyone comes together around a certain thing.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Like, you know, to me, it's simple. You got a new technology. It's gonna be great. It is great and it's gonna be even better. People are gonna use it. But there's gonna be licenses and there's gonna be, people get paid for it. And then the great talent and the great artists are gonna show the world how to use it. It's that simple to me. It happens every time, you know. So, I'm, I, it all comes down to what we talked about first, which is. Which is, what's great about this is it's teaching young people. That's where multidisciplinary behavior comes in. This is technology and you're creative, right?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  So when you really understand technology and you really understand the creative, you're gonna really do well.

• 38:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  So but you, so you shouldn't be siloed in school.

• 38:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  You shouldn't go to a school where all you do is play the guitar all day. You know what I mean? It's just, to me, that doesn't work.

• 39:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  It, uh, I mean, Julia is a nice place and I'm glad it exists, but, or Berkeley, whatever, you know, but it's not, it's not where I see the world going.

• 39:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  And not if anybody cares, but me personally, I'm on this show as, as you two guys care. So.

• 39:21John Coogan?

  Do you think AI can help bridge that original gap that we were talking about? When I think about, uh, what it takes for a creative person to build a hardware product, for example, there's a lot of technical hurdles that can now be broken down.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Look, before there were things to break it down.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Let's put it this way, Dre and I had a record company.

• 39:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Okay. We're creative people, both record producers. We built the biggest headphone company in the world. That's hardware, okay?

• 39:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  And the reason why it's hard, because it's goddamn hard.

• 39:52John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Okay, that's why not, not everybody does it. So we did it.

• 39:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Right? We're creative guys that built a piece of hardware. That's why we started the school.

• 39:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  It, it's all needs to be working together.

• 40:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  You know, and, uh, we, we built the number one, Beats was the number one headphone in 50 countries when we sold to Apple.

• 40:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  So, we did it.

• 40:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And, um, because we live in a multidisciplinary world. We were both recording engineers, me and Dre.

• 40:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  And so we come from the non-wall background, you know, and, um, so that's why we built the school.

• 40:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  It's, that's it. And you know, it's, uh, when I go, when you go look at these, these, most companies right now.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Technology, design, engineering, design.

• 40:47John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  There's, there's, there's a lack of communication and a lack of understanding.

• 40:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Again, I asked the question again, in case somebody just tuned in.

• 40:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Why, why can software companies not build really successful consumer products?

• 41:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  It, there has to be an, I don't have the answer, but you guys are really smart. You talk to everybody in the world. I don't know why.

• 41:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  You know, but there has to be something at the core of what's going on that challenges that. I mean, no one could say, no, he's wrong. No, I'm right.

• 41:23John Coogan?

  No, you.

• 41:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, well, well, you know, one of the things, you brought up, you brought up Meta.

• 41:27John Coogan?

  No, no.

• 41:28Jordi Hays?

  You brought up Meta. One of, one of the, I think one of the reasons that's been successful is they didn't try to reinvent too many things. They just made a good-looking pair of glasses that also had a camera in it. And that was enough, that's been enough.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  They sold 2 million. They didn't sell 20 million. We sold 2 million headphones in Brooklyn, you know?

• 41:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  It's not a really, it's not a massively successful.

• 41:46John Coogan?

  And it also required Oculus to get the, to get that whole project started.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And by the way, in fairness, I have a pair.

• 41:52Jordi Hays?

  I would argue that's different.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I have a pair and I enjoy using it. It's fun, but that does not a story make yet.

• 41:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  They make, now I know who they hired, that the head of, uh, the hardware division, and he's really good.

• 42:05John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  So, but are there people at that company that can really communicate and, and empower him and that type of stuff? I don't know, right? I don't know. Meta's a great company. Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant.

• 42:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  But do I know about that? I don't know. They did, they've done a good job at getting that product out.

• 42:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Do you, is, is, uh,

• 42:31Jordi Hays?

  I feel like one of the big, the big lessons that, uh, people in the school should, should hopefully, should hopefully be imprinted on their minds is that you can be wildly successful in business without creating anything that's exactly new, right? Like you, you guys didn't create, you created desire and you created an amazing product, but you didn't create the headphone. And I think that when a lot of people think about entrepreneurship and creativity in business, they think, I need to come up with some totally novel idea, right?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Well, it starts out by, I don't think I'm Steve Jobs, okay?

• 43:08Jordi Hays?

  But even Steve didn't, he didn't create the, he didn't create the phone.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  No, but he, he had a much bolder attitude towards life than I did. He's much smarter than I am, right? Somebody asked me, what's the difference between you and Steve Jobs? He's very simply smarter than me, when we were hanging out together, right?

• 43:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  So, um, but, no, you don't have to invent something new. I mean, headphones weren't new, but the attitude of headphone was new.

• 43:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Bose was out there saying, buy my headphone for $300 and we're gonna help you sleep. We were like, this is taking candy from a baby, right?

• 43:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  We are not gonna help you sleep.

• 43:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  You know, we are gonna rock your head.

• 43:45John Coogan?

  The ads were silence, not music. It's the opposite of music.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we had a real edge there.

• 43:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  And they all look like medical equipment.

• 43:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So your job as an entrepreneur is to find that hole in the market, right?

• 43:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Where's there a hole? We knew there was a hole there because Dre, first of all, most computers had their speakers facing the table.

• 44:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  So that was like, okay, great, let's face them up.

• 44:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  You know, we're geniuses. Let's get a computer, you know, right?

• 44:13Jordi Hays?

  So. No, there's some, there's so many times in, in, when you're looking at different categories, specifically with, I, I find it with consumer products where you're like, is there like a law that says that it has to be done this way?

• 44:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Jordi Hays?

  Uh, and oftentimes you do a little bit of research and you realize.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  We're going back to the, to understanding each other, right?

• 44:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Computers, like I went to a couple of computer companies, not Apple, right? And I witnessed this firsthand to where engineering, audio, the audio budget in a speaker, in a computer at the time was 50 cents.

• 44:50John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 44:51John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Right? So you wanna know why? And music was being played through it.

• 44:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Guess what? That's not enough.

• 44:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  You know, so, but that's where the breakdown is.

• 45:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Because design and engineering clash.

• 45:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  And that's where, I keep saying it over and over again, but it's true. That's where our school.

• 45:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Comes in to help train people that are gonna, that are gonna become the new engineers and the new designers and the new entrepreneurs to understand the why of each other's discipline. You know, it sounds like kumbaya, but it's not. You know, it's real.

• 45:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. Was there anything else you looked at in terms of product ideas, business ideas before settling on headphones, or was it strange?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Well, it came out of a real frustration of the record business because record business, again, the record business at a time was really cool and, you know, music was the right thing to do and all that. But when, when, when I met Steve and those guys, cool had moved the technology and I felt it.

• 45:58John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  You know, I felt, I felt the shift and I said, okay. The first guy that was really cool with technology was Morita from Sony.

• 46:07John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  The original founder of Sony. He had the Walkman, you know? He really got it. Oga, who replaced him, really got it. They, he bought Columbia Pictures and Columbia Records.

• 46:18John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Right? And then they kinda screwed it up because they got, that gave Steve, that gave Apple the opening.

• 46:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  To go take that idea.

• 46:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Which Steve has said many times publicly.

• 46:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And, um, so when I saw that, I said, we have to learn a new trick. We have to move la, I believe companies need to move laterally.

• 46:42John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  I do. I felt the, I felt record companies especially needed to move laterally. That's why we created Beats and Beats Music inside of Interscope.

• 46:52John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  We did it at the company.

• 46:54John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  So we built the company in Beats that was bigger than Interscope in six years, right? So obviously, tech and design and creativity all belong in the same box. It's all just moving your company lateral. Like, we have a company called Complex right now.

• 47:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Uh, and what we're trying to do there, we brought back Mark Echo, we have Aaron Levant, my son Jamie's there. And we're trying, we have a real, a lot of really good people and we're trying to mix disciplines in it. And we are creating an AI product alongside of it that will blend all these things together and, um, not all of them, but the things that we have together, because we're firm believers in that. You, you know, the record industry needs to move laterally. They need to own the enterprise of AI, not just license to everyone. That's, you know.

• 47:49John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, interesting.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  They should own the enterprise. Why not? You know, it, it is no reason why not. Instead of licensing to everyone.

• 47:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Own the enterprise yourself.

• 47:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Right? We own Beats.

• 48:02John Coogan?

  Yeah. Why is there so much historical sort of disaggregation in the music industry? Like the, the actual relationship between the artists and the end consumer, it's always been intermediated and it feels like that's been a problem.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  It's insane and it's ridiculous, okay? All artists want is to be able to communicate with their audience.

• 48:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  And ask me why Spotify and Apple Music don't have social.

• 48:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I know why Apple Music doesn't and I don't know why Spotify doesn't, but that's why I said on an interview once recently that streaming is, is minutes away from being obsolete. What I meant by that is unless they adapt to what artists really want, the artists are very resourceful.

• 48:51John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Right now, they gotta go to Instagram, TikTok. You know, it's like, it's like a silly game.

• 48:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  And, um, that has to be fixed. That has to be fixed quickly because, and the labels who have all this historic music need to be in the loop. They, whether they like it or not, they are a tech company.

• 49:15John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And they have to adjust to that. And if they don't.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I believe it's not gonna be great for them.

• 49:23John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, the Spotify story is interesting. I mean, Sean Parker, obviously involved in both Facebook and Spotify. And so I think they had this like delicate truce. Because if you remember in the early days of Spotify, everything you'd listen to would be shared on Facebook. And that was a huge growth driver.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  But that's not why Spotify is not social. I don't believe that. Apple's not social because Apple Music was, they don't, look. When we were there, we wanted to buy musically.

• 49:51John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 49:54John Coogan?

  That's crazy.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  We brought those guys up there twice, but Apple doesn't do social and they shouldn't do social. I get why they shouldn't.

• 50:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I was on the tail. I was on the tail wagging the dog, you know what I mean?

• 50:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Um, I was on the tail. So, you know, I understand why they didn't do it.

• 50:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  But we, Trent Reznor and I instinctively knew, especially Trent, that we needed social.

• 50:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  And it's gonna be limited without that. So, you know. Look, Apple, I, so far out of all the companies I've found, they're still the most interesting, you know? Because they still have that DNA in them. They just said, we're not gonna, we don't do social. Fine. They don't. So that was not a good fit, you know? So, but that's cool. But it doesn't mean that music doesn't need it. Right now, you're not giving the artists what they want.

• 50:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  And the pay structure in streaming is all screwed up. So, if you're married, I see you're married, you got a ring on your finger, so maybe you have kids. If you have two or three kids, you have the family plan.

• 51:03John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  If you listen to, what's your favorite music?

• 51:08Jordi Hays?

  Uh, my favorite artist is Yeet.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeet? Oh, great. Okay. So you listen to that and your kids listen to?

• 51:18Jordi Hays?

  Elmo.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Or their babies. Okay. Well, let's say they listen to Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar. And you listen to Fleetwood Mac and Madonna.

• 51:28John Coogan?

  I'm paying, but the kids are listening disproportionately.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yes. They've been on the button all day. So guess who gets paid? You pay the bill, but.

• 51:36John Coogan?

  It's paid.

• 51:37Jordi Hays?

  Crazy.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  But Fleetwood Mac doesn't get anything.

• 51:39Jordi Hays?

  Elmo's raking it in.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that's, that's the structure. So, streaming is flawed and not complete. But Daniel's brilliant. Alex is really talented. Those guys at Spotify. So they're gonna figure a lot out. They may be sticking to a whole other paradigm that I don't even understand, right? So, but someone who helped bring a streaming service to light, I can tell you that they're all missing social.

• 52:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Period. And that's why I have a crew of guys and girls that I work with. We're looking at something right now that's really interesting. We're doing it with one of the, one of the main companies. And we have an idea that we believe is unique and good and great for the artist and great for the labels. And that's what we're gonna do.

• 52:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we have, uh, we've had some guys from Spotify on and I think that one of the interactions I was most excited about that they've been working on and working towards is making sure that the people that are listening to artists the most get access to the concert tickets, right? Because an artist doesn't necessarily benefit if they.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's, that's self-serving, you know? I mean, I get it. But the artist should be doing that.

• 52:58John Coogan?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, you don't need third parties to do a lot of this stuff, you know? Why, why do the labels need third parties to deliver their music?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  I'll tell you why. They don't. Right? But they do, right? So that all should evolve with the artists in the front of the paradigm, you know? Making the money and doing great and communicating. So, um.

• 53:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, they're very differently in Hollywood with Disney Plus and Hulu.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Well, that, that, well, hang on. Yes and no, and I'll tell you why. Because when Netflix came to town, they came to town with a big checkbook.

• 53:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  And unfortunately, all these companies are public. Now, this, I'm gonna make this official. This is my opinion, okay? But they all licensed them their music. At least most of them did. Why? Because they got big checks and helped make their numbers. Well, guess what? They created a monster, right? And now they're trying to catch up, right? So, music business is the same thing. They license their music to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon. Well, Spotify is worth more than all the labels together.

• 54:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Guess, guess how much IP they own? Zero. Somebody's podcast, maybe, or something. You know, maybe.

• 54:25Jordi Hays?

  Joe Rogan.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  I don't know, but.

• 54:26John Coogan?

  I don't even think they got.

• 54:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  But that's, but that's the point. So the movie business didn't get it. They, they got it late. At least they got it.

• 54:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  And I think that's gonna happen in music. I think the music companies are, are going to be more involved. And AI is the opening to do it. AI is the road to, that doesn't mean Spotify is not, but Spotify is going to have to morph as well. Okay? Again, just no ride goes forever. When I was a kid, not a kid, I'm sorry. I wasn't a kid. It was 2002.

• 54:59Jordi Hays?

  Just a, just a spring chicken.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  I was nowhere near a kid in 2002. But when I saw Pirates, I went and met with three tech companies. And one of the tech companies, very high up guy at Intel, said to me, Jimmy, this is a, I started talking about the recording studio and the people that are suffering and, you know, it's not the big stars, it's the kids in the studios. And he said, what a fabulous story. He said, Jimmy, but not every industry was made to last forever. That was powerful, right? I said, he's right.

• 55:33Jordi Hays?

  Sorry, this music thing had a good run, but it's over.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  But it's not music. It's the business of music and what that looks like, right? So, I, I carried that with me.

• 55:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  And then when I met Steven and Eddie after that, I said, holy shit, these guys, they're the next step, right? So, there is a next step now and Spotify may grab it. You know, they have all the tools available and the money, the capital and everything. So they could recreate their business all the time. And you got a guy like Alex running it, who's really, really talented. The people at Apple are really talented. You got Oliver and that team over there. They're all really good. So maybe they'll morph the company into something that it needs to be, or maybe the labels will figure it out. And they'll do more of what this new model needs to be.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  But to have, to be just a licensor of music, to me, first of all, is boring. Second of all, has nothing to do with any other discipline in the world. It doesn't.

• 56:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And, and you need to, to have a proper company today, you have to have blend of disciplines inside your company, proven by two great, great people. Marita from Sony and Steve Jobs at Apple. Period.

• 56:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  They got it top to bottom and they set the tone. Who out there doesn't want to be Steve Jobs, right? They, you know, they, everybody, every, he's the new Steve Jobs, this is, he's the old Steve Jobs, you know? He's not Steve Jobs, he is Steve Jobs. But.

• 57:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and it's saying something I've never, everyone wants to be and yet I've never seen someone and thought, damn, they're the new Steve Jobs.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Well, of course, then they're missing what Steve was. Steve was the ultimate. He knew it. He knew the goal was where technology and the liberal arts meet. And there's nothing more evident in that than in AI.

• 57:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 57:35John Coogan?

  Do you think he would have liked AI?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. I, I can't, I never tried. I was a friend of mine. He has an incredible wife, Lorraine Powell Jobs, who's an incredible human being.

• 57:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  And Johnny Ive is incredible people. Uh, I can't speak for them. For Steve, he was his own guy, but, you know.

• 57:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. A friend of the show was trying to compare AI messaging to the launch of GarageBand and democratization of creative tools and, uh, I thought, I, I, I thought there were some good points there.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Although he didn't like streaming.

• 58:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  He was very public about that. But who knows what, maybe he was right.

• 58:16John Coogan?

  You mentioned the tail wagging the dog at Apple. If you're a tail, should you try and wag the dog? Is that advice that you would give to someone who works in a large organization if they're interdisciplinary?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Well, what I was saying, what I was saying is that, look, there's no, there's no hiding it. Big companies, music, outside of music companies, you, you, you, nobody wants a tail wagging the dog.

• 58:40John Coogan?

  But is it a fool's errand to try?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Um.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  I, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I don't know. But, but I always use Apple an example because I think it's run really well. And they blend it as well as you could blend it. You know, Steve was a big music guy and so is Eddie. So they do it really well. But, you know, it's, I don't, I think, I think the record company should do it. I really do. I, I, I don't get it. I, I think that they should do it. They should take it on themselves. And Spotify's a music company. They, they can do it. Live Nation.

• 59:21Jordi Hays?

  Isn't there some interesting positioning that the record companies, at least if they banded together, could work with the artists to say, hey, you have an, if you work with, if you, if you subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify, Spotify and Apple Music are taking a big cut. If you work with us, a lot more revenue is actually going to the artists. Is that, is that like how you position it?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if that's, if that's right. I just, because it's, it's, it's a hard bell to unring.

• 59:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm gonna look at it streaming. That happened already. I don't think the labels are gonna start streaming services. You know, not in any time short, in the next few years, anyway. But I do think there could be a new AI business.

• 1:00:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  And that's where the opportunity lies. And you have Spotify, you have the labels, you have the artists. So there's something in there that needs to evolve out of this that makes more sense. You know, and I, I see, I see it all together. But I always have. That's why, that's why we started the school we started.

• 1:00:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  It's just, all goes back to that. It's just the way people think. That's how we think.

• 1:00:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. I, I mean, obviously the answer is probably both, but I would, it'd be interesting to see if you were more optimistic about uh, the entrepreneurship that comes out of your school or the transformation within, within industry.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  The school was built to transform inside the industry. Yeah, it was, it was built for jobs. It turned into an entrepreneurial place.

• 1:00:48John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  You know, uh, I guess we caught that wave, you know, everybody wanting to be like one of these guys, Zuckerberg or something. But it was made to help communication inside Apple, Google, all these giant companies that are taking over the entertainment business, literally. So, it's not gonna happen in my lifetime, but we wanted to build as many people as possible to infiltrate and help make that all one thing, rather than have to be a tail wagging a dog, you know? I mean, look, Intel's buying Paramount and Warner, right? I mean, fundamentally, I mean, and David Ellison is terrific. You know, he's a really smart and, and, and, and understands where these two things cross.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  So hopefully there'll be some great stuff there.

• 1:01:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's gonna be exciting. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Hey, you're welcome.

• 1:01:41John Coogan?

  An honor and pleasure.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  It was fun.

• 1:01:44Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it again as you're making more of these plays.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know, but it was, you're very far from my house. Maybe you come to my house, we can do it.

• 1:01:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, we'll do it over there. That's fine.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  But anyway, thanks. There's a big world behind me. I see that. Nice set. A little lighting and so.

• 1:02:01Jordi Hays?

  We reinvented television.

• 1:02:02John Coogan?

  Well, uh, we will see you tomorrow at 11 AM, sharp.