Big Technology Podcast - How The Music Industry Predicts The Future — With Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

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/

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed nuance conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is Zach O'Malley Greenberg. 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. Zach O'Malley Greenberg, 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 brought me into Forbes where I was a contributor for a couple of years. And, you know,

you've written a number of books about Jay-Z and, you know, the music business. And you did this amazing thing, which, you know, I was like, oh, where is that 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 and the media industry lessons about owning your own intellectual property and being 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 doing in the music industry, but also your personal moves. And what was the inspiration behind them? Yeah, for sure. I think to sum it up, really, I've spent. 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 at the top earning rappers or the wealthiest hip hop 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. they you know were in situations in the late 80s early 90s where if they wanted to 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 know 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. Um, so, you know, uh, you know, these guys have had to overcome a lot of obstacles, obviously that, that I haven't had to overcome this, you know, a white dude, uh, who grew up in, you know, in Manhattan and, um, and so forth. But, um, that doesn't mean that there aren't lessons for everybody that, you know, that could be taken away. And, 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? 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 before, like I wrote the stories, but never owned them. There's always, you know, the publication stories, which, you know, it seemed fair. They were paying me to do it. But on the other hand, with a little more risk, I think something like a substack or 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.

some way or maybe get paid through advertising. 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 moved to the internet largely, you know, happened first with the music industry and then, and then, you know, with the rest of media like television 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. yeah you know i think you i think you hit on it um in the in the preamble there you know that that's pretty much the thesis right if we're all musicians now right 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 yeah so what's what's hit music first yeah uh i would i would look at any number of trends i mean so for example the shift from physical uh retail to digital right

who did that impact first tower records you know even before bookstores even before you know any number you know even before everything was on amazon uh you were seeing tower records go out of business uh 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 a decade until you know sort of like the the real e-commerce thing uh completely upended you know the way we buy and sell things 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 uh so going from like buying 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? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, the rise of Netflix or Netflix and chill, you know, that phrase has only come about for the past couple years, but, you know, Spotify 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 be doing pretty well. And then, I think, as you mentioned, single release albums, you know, kind of were the prophecy, if you will, you know, to kind of lay the groundwork for NFTs. So one of my favorite stories that I ever reported at Forbes. Well, these NFTs, before we get into it, the NFTs are these essentially JPEGs are an image that you can buy ownership of on the Internet. So I guess there's this interest in them because they are scarce or because they're a good place to. to park your crypto winnings, but there's this nice part of it that it's one-off,

you know, and it's original. And 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 tell the story and let me know how it connects. Yeah, I mean, well, you tell me if you think it's a stretch. I don't. I think the first NFT ever, it wasn't even called an NFT. It was this Wu-Tang album that I broke the news of for Forbes back in 2014. And it was the strangest thing.

I got an email from some incomprehensible jumble of letters claiming, you know, 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 going to sell one physical copy. for millions of dollars and that would be it and this person whoever bought it couldn't reproduce it so it was going to be like you know

essentially a sculpture I ended up interviewing Riza sort of the frontman of the Wu-Tang clan and he said it's going to be like the scepter of an Egyptian king so you know the in between of all that

was pretty fascinating basically I thought they were kind of scamming me I didn't think it was real and so I made them have, um, there's a DM me from his, you know, verified Twitter account in order to and then, and he did. He said that, yes, we did this. It was once upon a time in Shaolin. That's, that's, that's the album. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, have you listened to it? Yeah, I, I've listened to to parties in anyway. Um, okay. Orb sent me out to Morocco to, uh, to, uh, no way,

keep chasing the story. And, um, okay. It was just this bizarre scenario. They had the album, You know, they had this handcrafted silver and nickel box produced by a Moroccan British Moroccan artisan named Yaya, 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 like a private suite at this hotel where all the billionaires stay, it was, it was just super over the top and eventually Martin Schrelli bought it, you know, the, uh, yeah, the, uh, Farma Bro and Farma Bro villain, yeah, Exactly. Who's playing some games to make people's prescription coverages go through the roof and is in jail or prison now.

Yeah, and ended up forfeiting the album. Right. Who has the album now? So that's the latest mystery. The album was seized by the U.S. government and it was sold to an unknown buyer for at least $2 million. Zach, how does the U.S. 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 yeah I mean it's 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 an installment Dickin style we're all musicians now and the other one is the you know I call it the Zog blog your blog a week intersection of music media and money and it's all on Zoglog.org.com and you can subscribe for free to the blog or you can go and do a face to the book. But yeah, 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 the kind hip hop albums 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 move on, you know, kind of like you might sell, you know, like some incarcerated drug dealers, you know, luxury car. 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, yeah, you know, I think that, I think that they could have actually gotten 10 times that for the album. And that's what some of the crypto people I talk to about.

Oh, yeah. Especially the way that money is, right? right now. It's money is crazy right now. So yeah. People are spending money on dumb things like JPEGs. Yeah. Yeah. What is this is an actual album. Money is kind of weird right now. I think that was a, uh, an Alex Cantewan's quote. I really love that. Money is weird. Yeah. Yeah. 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 yeah i think i think that's it's in

the same vein right um but you know for the wutang album what they were trying to do is to create scarcity for something that's theoretically infinitely reproducible and that's what an ft is right i mean it's oh yeah oh great point okay so no longer a stretch in my opinion okay good good yeah 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 screlly 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 that album of martin screlly streaming but you know it's kind of like if you have

a when i was in in ninth grade i had this business um I bought a copy of Babe Ruth's original contract on eBay for $10, or $20, maybe, I think. And then I just copied it with a copy machine, and I sold it for $10. Nice. You know, and whatever it was, $0.33 for shipping and envelopes. And, you know, I was making a nice profit until somebody else caught on. And they bought my copy and started selling it for, you know, $5. And then the margins got too low and I lost interest.

But, you know, but we knew it was. It was, yeah, it was a copy of a copy. 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 there's some certain... Boston Red Sox rolled out a parchment scroll and a quill to sign the multi-talented.

It's all been downhill from there. That's, yes, it has. Although Shohayotani, maybe we're back in. But anyway. Right. So NFT, so I now buy that argument. And then I guess the last thing is that we touched in it already was people's move to own their own intellectual property. We're in a moment now where 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 label and 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 that's coming for the rest of us as well. Yeah, definitely.

And, you know, the first chapter of we were all musicians now, which is now complete and up there on substack. But, you know, 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 in a car and you know you're going to you're going to get your music put out but they own all your rights and that has evolved over the decades you know

acts like paul mccartney fighting to get their rights back um you know acts like j 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, it would probably be like a split ownership of some kind. The default is no longer that the record company ends 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 been indie and long enough and kind of bootstrapped it as a musician, you can insist on owning your master's and owning your publishing rights and so forth. And, you know, you can keep it from the get-go. You know, that's a huge change. 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, you know, 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 to write good stuff. Extreme journalism, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But they own the words that are printed outright. And I think that's insane.

I mean, how is that not even the split? Like, you know, there are stories that I've written at Forbes that still generate, I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm sure, you know, tens of thousands of page views a year, maybe maybe more um just sitting there and you know those are those are being monetized and you know

that's fine and i you know i have no ill will there that's just the model but 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 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 are going to save themselves a great loss of talent, you know, and frankly, I think that news outlets right now, magazines and newspapers in particular are trying to grab onto the rights more. They're trying, you know, because of the rise of things like Hulu and Netflix,

everybody wants a taste of that next big, you know, docu series. These publications are holding even tighter the copyrights and you know that's just not going to fly as creators become more and more empowered yeah and i want to get into that uh more in the second half uh 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 going to you know go with that artists owning their own, 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? I think there's two main reasons that I look at, and one of them is very concrete and the other

one's not. 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 visual medium, right? The audio files are smaller. If there's video, it's going to be a bigger file, plain and simple. And so I think that, you know, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the technological changes hit music first because the stuff was more easy to move. You know, you can't really download the whole movie with a 56K modem. So he's funny, especially when, you know, your mom is picking up and interrupting your connection. try to steal a movie

so that's one and the other one is just hard to define but you know there's that ineffable coolness 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 there's that that charisma that you know that sort of jean-se-cois that comes forth from music and

you know I think it's just so easily when somebody has that it's just instantaneous and people want it what's going on in music now that we should be paying attention to that's coming for the rest of us next

yeah I mean certainly crypto and NFTs you know that has been a big focus and you know you're seeing a lot of acts now doing limited edition album and ft drops and maybe not one of one like the Wootenclan but you know maybe like a few dozen albums or you know little bits of things but I think that one thing that that people are talking a lot about right now in the music is the idea of the metaverts and sort of like owning real estate in you know virtual worlds

and so forth and you know or the notion of like virtual performances and I'm not talking just like live stream performances but you know

Travis Scott who's one of the biggest hip hop acts in the world right now did a concert within Fortnite and you know drew some incredible amount

of virtual you know observers right 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 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 just so many people tuned into that. And he was also able to capitalize off of that in the physical world by tying.

various merch drops to this performance. So, you know, I don't, I don't know yet quite what the, you know, the, you know, we see like Tim Cook doing, doing his next conference and, you know, product launch in Fortnite. I don't know that that's going to happen, but I think that, you know, those kinds of. We'll be spending more and more time in these video games to do non-video game stuff. You know, I have this. there's this one DJ I listen to, and she's like, all right, I'm going to do a concert.

I'm like, oh, great. She's like, it's in Lego. Lego worlds. Like, wait, what? Like, you're actually going to show up to, but yes, she did. And, you know, it was a big draw. So it is amazing how this is going to, I don't know. I mean, it does seem 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. bunch that people spend more time in fortnight um 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 uh now and we'll we'll see if the rest of the rest of us follow yeah for sure and you know i think in this kind of mid-pandemic world uh there's definitely more movement that direction but this stuff was starting you know way before covid um

even before Travis Scott, the DJ Marshmallow did a Fortnite concert that broke all kinds of records. Oh, yeah. How many people showed up to that thing? You know, I don't want to get my numbers wrong, but I want to say it was millions. Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. It seems insane. I'm not testing you on this stuff, 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. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and

informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15. minutes or less, and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back on the big technology podcast with Zach O'Malley Greenberg. 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, Zach, I was reading, and we've spoken. 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 out alone. 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 the publication and not with the publisher, but entirely via email on Substack.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're, I think you're right. I mean, what took me so long? You know, this is 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 sent 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. Do you want to name the rival publication or do you want to keep that under wraps? Well, you know. I don't want to cause any fights, but I have to ask you. Gosh. I mean, I guess it's out there on the, you know, it starts with the book and ends with the business. insider. So,

kind of out there. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, 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 just before I started, I got this like 50 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 least, because I thought I had signed whatever I had needed to sign and everything was all good to go. And so I brought in my literary agent and, you know, surely this is a mistake. And, you know, you know, you know that I do outside books and, you know, TV and film type stuff. And we tried to negotiate it into something, you know, more palatable. But, you know, they barely budged. 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 leave it. And they said, you know, do you want to take a night and sleep on it? And I said, no. So, you know, it felt good at the time. And then I thought, gosh, all right. Well, you know, this is interesting. so by that point I already I already had the book pitch for we are all musicians now and 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 like the intellectual property grab which which I think by the 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 piece of a Netflix or Hulu show and you know that can be tremendous I guess to to jump in our publishers like news publishers now seeing that their reporters are turning into digital personalities which opens up avenues for books and movies and on documentaries and all that stuff yeah and that's why you think that's why you think

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 well yeah but you know i mean instagram is is helping build you know um 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 sure, that's, okay. You could, you can say it here, man. I've seen you hit a baseball. It goes pretty far. So, you know, the gun show element, uh, it is not quite

there on, on my end, um, uh, as it is with, uh, Mr. Johnson. Johnson over there, but no, you know, I think that that's, you know, my last book is called A-List Angels. And, And it dealt with how Stars started investing in startups. Ashton Pitcher, Niles, Shaq, people like that, J-Lo. 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, you know, somebody like that who kind of came of age at the dawn of Facebook and Twitter.

But, you know, 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 you come down on it. Do you believe that it's the creators or the for the platforms that are responsible for the for the for the prosperity, right? 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, let me articulate business insiders, you know, perspective here and then, you know, see what, see what, see what or what I think is their perspective. And then, you know, see, have you push back on it. But like, you know, they and other publications. would say, you know, we're paying a salary and that, you know, it's like if I pay you to help me build a house and you build a house and people live in it for 200 years, you know, sort of like, well, you came in and you did your job. And just because people are living in it for 200 years doesn't mean you lost anything, you know, because of that. So like, I don't know, it is interesting to me. Like, 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. And, you know, it felt like a fair trade for me. I was getting paid, like, decent, decent salary. And I was, you know, getting a chance to come in and do the work and coaching and all that stuff. And, 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, 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, they're. then we get a chance to own our work. So I guess what I'm curious from you is like hearing that, does the publications perspectives make a little bit more sense to you? Or is it just that 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. Well, look, no. And at the end of the day, I mean, I don't really, I don't have any ill will, you know, towards, you know, any of these places. Oh, yeah. I'm the same.

I just think the model is broken. I mean, but I do think that, I do think it's unreasonable for them to want to own everything. Everything, yeah. I think that, and I think it's also not good business because if, you know, if you're saying, like, I, the publication, I'm going to own 100% of your intellectual property when it comes to, you know, articles being optioned for TV and film,

and you will have no creative control either, you know, if one of your stories does go that way. You know, that's also like disincentivizing the writer from, you know, like, I don't know, going out and shopping in or, you know, or kind of like trying to get involved. I mean, I talked to one editorial, a person who'd been in editorial council, you know, at a big business publication. And the quote was like, you know, it was basically like nobody's going to create this stuff if they're not getting paid.

You know, like 100% of zero is still zero, right? Of course. So not only that. Who's going to want to work at one of these places if you don't share in any of the upside? Yeah. And I think the fact is that because journalism, uh, the salary. 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, it's never going to 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 going to get optioned and turn into a film, you know, or a TV series. But now that there are so many more different perspective buyers and they're so flush with cash. Again, Netflix, Hulu, you know, it's a much

bigger slice of the pie. And I think that's why publications are kind of hunking down and, you know, and grabbing their pieces of it a little more strongly, right? Yeah, I think what we're hitting on here is a, is a large, larger theme also, which is that there's a lot of competition for good, compelling video content. Look at, like, what you mentioned, Netflix, Hulu, the traditional networks, of starts 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 we've moved content largely online and

advertisers want to 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. And I'm curious if you, so I'm curious what you think about that A and then B, do you think we're seeing some sort of shift and power between, you know, going from the big organizations like the record labels or the publishers and to the talent? 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 part of the we are all musicians. now thesis, right? You know, the musicians also, after getting screwed over for so many years, realized that they could start to take more control of things. And I don't think the creators and other industries have realized quite as much, you know, how important they are. 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 kind of, you know, get, get what they really do deserve. Zach, 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 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 i don't want to go sign away all my stuff no i i'm really yeah you know it's just uh there's so much freedom um and you know and i should say i mean there is there is also support from substack i mean you know they did give me a grant to come over and you know what happened basically it was after i yeah i mean i mean i think I think I got to this point of 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 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 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 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. It's day by day. And so the idea of putting it out with a traditional publisher where, you know, the most recent thing that, you know, that will be in a book is something that happened nine months ago, you know, I mean, I just couldn't really envision doing that anyway.

And so, you know, Substack being a startup was able to move quickly and nimbly and, you know, basically give me a grant to kind of, you know, compete with what I could have gotten at a major publication. for a book advance and you know to to kind of take on some of my risk but you know I guess to kind of get back to a question of like why didn't I do this before uh frankly it was a lot of risk you know and I didn't want to give up uh I let's say 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, 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, you know, I had a little nudge.

And so, and I was like, all right, I'm just going to jump in, you know. Are you going to keep doing this? Let's say, you know, is it a one-year thing for you, or are you going to keep doing it for the next 5-10? Oh, you know, I mean, five, we'll see, I'd love to keep doing it for the next 5-10. I'd love for this to be, like, my last job. you know um and just keep growing it yeah i mean i'm gonna 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 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 define this stuff and you know i know that there's an appetite for what I write, you know, and the subscriber numbers are coming along. But, you know, I know that there's orders and 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, for my books and I knew the numbers there. And 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 right 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 yeah you had a great email just asking readers hey what should I write about what are you interested yeah exactly and I have that that goes out to everyone as soon as they sign up tell me what you're interested tell me who you are and people do respond and it's great to hear them back from them so because it's like the you know the reader is sort of your boss right if if the reader I 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 model doesn't work. So, you know, just the ability to do that and then to not have to worry about taking on some publication's voice or preferences or difficulties. Yeah, it's just great. It's just really great. It rules. Okay. I'm going to shout out the URL at Zagblog. 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, Zach, if you're up for it, I would like to do a very quick lightning round, throwing out some musicians, some artists that you've come in a 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. And we're back here for one final segment with Zach O'Malley Greenberg. 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.

Zach, 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 learn from each one of them. We'll start with the big man himself, Justin Bieber. 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. He was one of the early Spotify investors. Interesting.

He was an early Spotify investor. And, you know, I think that was kind of part of Spotify's charm offensive to whenever the music industry was to make some equity available as they were launching in the U.S. because, you know, it wasn't guaranteed that they were going to, that they were going to 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 lawyer. But the other one is, you know, to find a way to own a piece of, not only to own your own your own work, but to own the platform upon which it is created. And, of course, that's not always possible for everybody.

Not everybody's just in Bieber and they kind of just demand a piece of it. But, you know, if you drive Uber, you can go out and buy some Uber stock. I don't know. I mean, it might give you more of a feeling of ownership. And, you know, I guess on the Congress, I always buy stock of companies that, that I feel are overcharging me, like my home insurance company. Yeah. 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, if they're going to be overcharging me, at least I'll be getting a piece of their. Some of the outside.

Yeah. Okay. moving on DJ Khalid let's go quickly through these oh quickly okay so DJ Khaled sort of a piece of advice from DJ Khalid um

man you know I think the big thing from him is you know he didn't get huge you know hugely famous until he was in his 40s he was a late bloomer and he just kept hustler and I think I think that's the

That's the lesson. Just keep hustling. Okay. Katie Perry? I think the lesson from Katie Perry is just learning. Katie Perry never had a sort of traditional education. I think she got her GED but never went to high school or college. Did a cover story for her, or on her for Forbes. I want to say it was 2014 or 2015. And we ended up doing the big cover interview in Rome.

and um and she's she her people told me to meet her at the at the coliseum and there's this whole sort of spy novel thing where i have to get in a decoy car and it was like she was wearing this big hat anyway but um that's what she does in all the coffees and in tours you know she she goes and soaks up whatever the local history is to fill in the gaps in her fascinating um cool so you know never never stop learning gnaz oh man gnaz to me

is all about the pivot um gnaz was somebody who came up you know he was always the guy who was only all

about the music and his peers jZ and uh puff daddy and dr dr dr we're getting into these you know

business ventures um and then later his career naz 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 was a big one. You know, that was probably

the biggest one, but he was in on Lyft. He was in on a bunch of different startups early. So I'd say it's never too late to make a pivot. And now, you know, he's probably the most successful venture capitalist in hip-hop. Yeah. What about Shaq? Shaq I'm fascinated by Shaq I think that dude is he's such a unique individual

Shacks I think the lesson from Shack is you know never get too comfortable and and I'll just share an anecdote from when I interviewed him from my last book

A Los Angeles 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. How big is he in person? I think he's listed at seven feet, 300 pounds, and in person, it's like he's nine feet tall. But no, I want to talk about, tell me about like the, yeah, the visceral experience of spending time with Shaq. He, he, you know, like his shoes are, 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. And so, you know, here we are talking and, and I said, I was really like, dude, you know,

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 to the startup stuff? And he, and he looked at me,

you know, big old imposing shack and he says, fear. Fear. It's just fear. He said, and 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 trying to create new business opportunities for himself, of course, without spending too extravagantly on it. Yeah. But, you know, never being complacent. Lady Gaga? Lady Gaga, I've never interviewed. But I did have a glass of whiskey next to her to borrow one time at a Grammy after

So I don't have any personal lessons to impart from her. Okay. But, you know, I mean, I think that I think that she's done a great job of, you know, never being afraid, you know, to be yourself. Oh, that is for sure. And it, you know, and it's, it's not like being yourself, you know, you lose out on some commercial aspect. I mean, you know, authenticity is super valuable and, you know, frankly, monetizable. Yeah. All right.

Let's wrap it up with two more, Diddy? Diddy, man. I think that the phrase that comes to mind about Diddy is, can't stop, won't stop. Yeah. And I've interviewed him a few times over the years. And, you know, one of the things that really stuck in my mind about him, you know, and everybody knows Diddy, the charisma. and the lifestyle and all that but um yeah against the whole stuff 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 sarac vodka which is you know his it's not even technically vodka but whatever it's his it's his drink to put it on the top shelf you know like you will get that granular yeah and what do you do the bartender if did he just tell me to put you know his you're putting it on that top shelf you're going to put another top shelf yeah we've talked a lot of hip hop um you've done some country tag alongs too is there a favorite one that sticks out in your memory yeah i think the greatest country adventure was a cover i wrote about toby keith about a decade ago and um yeah he was launching a mescal line and and uh you know he he basically he poured me the like a lot of

old mescal like there would be a worm at the bottom So he poured me a red solo cup of it and basically dared me to drink the worm, which I did. And then I feel like it kind of opened up. You drank the worm. Drink the worm. Oh, gross. 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, Zach, were you planning to, or whatever? I'm just going to ask it. If you don't want to tell the story on air. No, I'm happy to tell it. 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. 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 to you know talk for an interview and

there's like oh maybe maybe maybe maybe and then they they said well maybe you should rip up your book deal and and you know we'll maybe he'll let you write his business book and i was like yeah he never said no but he never said yes so the you know the book came out and i didn't talk to him and um and then i was at uh his music festival The Made in American Music Festival in Philly. A couple years after the book came out. 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.

Oh, my God. They were waiting for the porta-potty? What was going on there? Well, I'm not sure, but the port-a-potties were the same for the VIP section as they were for the media tent, which is, you know, unusual. Because usually- That doesn't happen. reporters are, you know, kind of scrolled away in somewhere undesirable. But, you know, there was maybe a little bit space.

So, you know, I just sort of said, I didn't, I just kind of improvised. I was like, hey, Jay, I'm the guy who wrote the book about you. Yeah. And he pretended not to hear me. And he kind of sauntered off. And then he, and then he, you look back over his shoulder and he said, that book was horrible. And disappeared around the corner.

And I immediately ran back to the media tent. And I turned out a post which I titled Jay-Z's review of the book I wrote about him. And I essentially re-told that. Yeah, the story. That's amazing. That's my Jay-Z story. And that was it. Do you think he actually didn't like it or was he just playing with you?

I think he was just playing with me I mean I didn't write it to to please or displeasing him but I'm actually curious like what the reaction was trying to convey Yeah I told this story one time I was I was doing the panel with Diddy at South by And in the green room

I was like I don't know what do I talk to Diddy about And so I told him that story and he laughed and he said, he's playing with you. He's a good cat. It's like, okay. Exactly. Yeah. The book is, we are all musicians now.

You can find it on substack at zagblog.substack.com. The author is Zach O'Malley, Kreeberg. Zach, thanks so much for joining us today. It was great talking with you. Thanks so much, Alex. We really appreciate it. Very interesting premise. And you are crankin.

And I've been enjoying reading the posts. And I encourage everyone. everybody to go sign up. Thank you to Nate Gwattany for editing and mastering the audio, especially as I get my new space set up here in Brooklyn. Hopefully, Nate, it will be a little less work next time. Thanks to Red Circle for selling the ads and hosting the podcast. And congrats on your new round of fundraising. Hopefully, 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 in the big technology podcast with the tech insider or outside agitator

we hope to see you then until then take care