Kanye calling for the “Y Combinator for the music biz.” I feel like my time at Columbia in the 90’s was a precursor to this. Today I treat founders I work with like artists & often think back to my days working with then emerging artists (Fugees, Destiny’s Child, Maxwell, etc)

In the 90’s I took it upon myself to take my artists around to brands, partners, media and thought of myself more like a “venture partner,” the artist was the “portfolio company” and my record label (Sony) the GP.

I never treated my artists like pure artists I always looked at them as “entrepreneurs” and felt a need to help them exploit their product which for me was bigger than just the CD or the song.

Most of this “extra activity” I would do like taking my artists to meet with The NBA or building merch concepts with Nike was frowned upon by my bosses and ultimately my frustration with the industry’s slow adoption of tech disgusted me and in 1998 I left for the startup world

My “revolt” was to build my first startup from my office at 550 Madison Ave, an email newsletter using AOL email which I would ultimately sell to a dot-com but I never lost the desire to look at artists thru the lens of entrepreneurship. https://authenticated.substack.com/p/culture-signals-1520

As someone whose first start was working with Dionne Warwick and watching the ills of the business I vowed to always protect the rights of the artist. I’m here to support all efforts by those currently working in the business to replicate and create other models

This thread inspired by a great convo this afternoon on @joinClubhouse hosted by @batnib @naima featuring @cheriehu42 @IsaacHayes3 @keiopensdoors @milana @FADIA they have a cool new weekly show which is seemingly looking to innovate on new models for a business in desperate need