Hi everybody and welcome to in good company. I'm Nicolola Tangan the CEO of the Norwegian So wealth fund and today I'm in really good company with Robert Kinsel the CEO of Warner Music Group one of the world's largest record labels.

Now they have incredible artists including my favorite co-play Ed Sharon Dualipa and even the Norwegian legends. Aha. Very good Robert. What a pleasure to have you on.

Same here. Thank you so much.

Now we need to kind of kick off with uh with your beginning. you were born in uh Czecha and so how does your background shape you as the leader you are today?

So actually you know when I was born and grew up it was Czechoslovakia the country rebranded three times in my lifetime. Um it tells you something about change that I'm probably used to but uh the way it shaped me was interesting. My parents, my mom was a teacher, my dad was a doctor, uh, you know, in a socialist communist society, uh, not earning much, but the values they instilled in my sister and I actually apply in the, you know, capitalist world in United States.

uh for instance to always value education because education is something nobody can take away from you when you go through something like nationalization in in Czechoslovakia people are used to losing their possessions but you cannot lose your education. So our parents were really focused on that or you know my dad would

say whenever I I was a competitive athlete crosscountry skier and whenever I would fail somehow my equipment failed etc my dad would be like oh that's great

uh you know nobody's going to remember the fact that your bindings failed but everybody's going to remember your ranking and uh and it was one of those wakeup calls to me early on that excuses don't really matter because those are forgotten even if they're good ones. and that it's only the results that matter.

I have to say if you were a really good cross or you moved to the wrong country, you should have moved to Norway, right?

I I know I know there are a lot of Norwegians who were kicking our butt.

Absolutely. But you were also interested in music from early on, right? You played a couple of instruments.

Yeah, very much. Uh you know there's a saying that every Czech is a musician. Uh and there are deep classical music roots in the country and my sister played a piano. I played cello and then after playing cello for about three years I then played Spanish guitar and my teacher actually is wonderful. He was a blind teacher who was a skier as well. So I was his teacher and I was this guide for skiing and uh and he was teaching me this wonderful uh art and uh it was a great long relationship and by the way I just reconnected with him about six months ago which is incredible.

That's good. Now, you've been um you've been doing incredible work at HBO, Netflix, uh and YouTube before you stepped in as a CEO of Warner Music Group. So, just um take us through the the journey here.

I started like many others in a windowless mail room in a talent agency, stapling pictures together with resumes which got mailed to casting agents. Those were my humble beginnings until I got promoted to an assistant. And I was pretty much doing this for the first three years of my career.

And then early on I joined a mutual fund company which was a movie uh co-inancing company early on in in in the 90s and that's what I learned how to value content how it's paid for and how it's distributed from there went to HBO

uh that was at its height uh you know Sex in the City Sopranos etc and I worked on the international side launching territories HBO India HBO Korea and then uh then I did a about

threeear stint in a a VC funded startup in the year 2000 that was like a risky move right from high-flying HBO to completely unknown company on the internet which was just slow you know right as the bust happened right in March 2000 the docom bust and uh uh but

you know our company we we were uh working through it and within 3 years I ended up at Netflix which at that time had roughly 500,000 subscribers and I was you know DVD by mail and then 2005 started to focus on streaming because we we knew at some point we wanted to transition the business and disrupt our own disruption and uh so I I started to work on that, built up the team and you know the rest is history.

And then in 2010 uh I was recruited uh to Google and and joined YouTube and helped basically grow it into what it is today. And you know at that time it was roughly $450 million in revenue. was small, was very messy, sued by lots of different people.

And uh and Eric Schmidt told me, "Figure out how you stop them from sending us paper and instead we send them paper, meaning money, commercialize, you know, fix the relationships, commercialize it, and build a business." And um you know, and we did that, you know, along with lots of other people.

Um why did you transition into the music industry? when you when you have two sort of hockey sticks like this, you know, two uh big uh disrupt uh disruptive forces scaling, it doesn't really get any bigger than that, right? Netflix or YouTube, it doesn't get any bigger.

So, you have to actually set your sights on something smaller and and more focused. So, I chose music because I love music. Uh we spoke about that. Uh I think music has this incredible power of being absolutely ubiquitous. Everybody in the world has some kind of relationship with music and uh everybody has a soundtrack to their life. Music is like a time stamp basically. You know there's a bunch of time stamps throughout your life.

And um you know I have this favorite saying that art decorates walls but music decorates time. And I think that's very powerful. And because of that music goes through ups and downs in the industry but it's resilient and gets through all the downs. And I think it's incredibly interesting to work in a company transitioning company from one thing that it that it has been to something new that it that it will be. And uh I just find that intellectually stimulating and it's it's fun to work on that.

It's amazing when you have reunions and you put on the music, you play it at the time. I mean my you are just back there, you know.

Yeah, exactly. No, but it invokes emotions, right? That's that's what happens.

What do you listen to now?

Uh uh well obviously I listen to all of our artists before their music is released, you know, sort of like an internal system for that. So I do all of it and it's kind of fun to do that, right? And then kind of try to imagine how that's going to do and then kind of look how it's doing. So So I like playing that game with myself.

And what is your predictive power?

It's uh it's not so great.

And why and why and why do you think that is?

Because I haven't really applied any system to it. I'm just doing purely by a feel. And I think what you have to do is you have to have some kind of a method to the madness. You have to figure out some patterns that you follow and then eventually you start narrowing your scope a little bit and and and you get better at it. And and I noticed that lots of uh folks who work here say in ANR they have different approaches to finding artists, selecting artists, thinking about hits, etc. But they they they have a system and I think that's very very important to to have your system because it just allows you to you know progress and get better and so I don't have it myself yet. I just kind of do it for fun on the side.

Now I asked Daniel Eek the founder of uh you know Spotify what he thought I should ask you and so he had a question here. I've asked a lot of people you see. So um what's what his uh question is what's what's been the biggest cultural adjustment you have to make going from a technology company first like YouTube to a creative company like uh Warner Music Group.

I think there there are two I'll name two. The first one is uh I think there is this unfair assumption that everybody in digital world has of let's say uh content companies that that they don't like technology. Uh and when you

come into a company uh like Warner Music, the what you realize that all employees want it. They all have it in their personal lives. They have their banking apps. They have their, you know, private chauffeur apps. Whatever it is, they're living their life online like very very well, but they may not have it in their professional life. Not because they don't want it. It just hasn't been built for them and u hasn't been made available, but they want it.

And I think there's just been this my assumption was like, yeah, people don't want it. They actually do. So, we've been working really hard to obviously fix that and and provide as as many of these tools as possible. So, that's one. So, there was a very pleasant surprise.

And I would say the the other is uh uh culturally the organizations in most media companies are set up in very distributed manners with lots of different P&Ls and lots of different infrastructures and in today's world they can function like global companies can function in much much simpler setup.

So I think but that doesn't that has to come with cultural change right it cannot happen on its own but I think that's a that's a an important cultural difference let's say from technology companies or from you know a whole bunch of companies in other industries which uh have come up with a simpler organizational design

Robert there seems to be so many ways the music industry is changing just now right uh it's changing in so many different dimensions um

what do you think are the main changes we are seeing just now or the most important ones

So one obviously there's one big change which I obviously was part of which is democratization of distribution. Yeah. Right. Uh the the uh music companies uh were the ones who got you distributed in a physical format. Right. There was lots of inventory issues and shelf space issues and all of that to get sorted out. And today it's in digital distribution. It's simpler and anyone can publish.

So the role that we or the music companies played in distribution has decreased. Obviously uh there is still a role for it because it has to get pushed through supply chains into many different distribution points and there's complexity involved with that. But it's it's decreased versus the past.

But in a world where anyone can publish, no one can be heard. The level of noise increases so much that it's really hard to succeed on your own. on a repeated basis. You can have like a one-off success, but if you want to do this as a career, you want to succeed, you want to build catalog, you want to build lots of value, it's a very uh it's it's a difficult job.

And for that, you need a team and you need global infrastructure, which we have, you know, the the large companies, you need global infrastructure all around the world that helps you break through the clutter. And that becomes a combination of both uh technology because you need to collect lots of different data and know how to use it and also creative prowess around each of the artists and what to do with their brand and with their art.

So, so it's become uh much more sort of integrated business between technology and creative on the global scale still with with infrastructure that we can unleash everywhere. So I think our value has shifted decreased on the distribution side and increased on breaking through the clutter.

What's the most important thing you you add here um as a record label and then how does it change during the life cycle of an artist? Let's just start with the beginning. How do you how do how do you find them and what do you add in the beginning?

I'll uh I'll I'll give you so so we are one of the companies that actually has a great DNA and history in discovering artists very early. Yeah. Whether it was uh Ed Sheeran, uh Bruno Mars, Dual Lipa, Cardi B, um Zack Brian, you know, Benson Boon, etc. It could go on. So artist development is very core to what we do.

I I sat down with, you know, when I started, every time I ran into an artist, I would ask, you know, they would tell me, "Oh, you have some amazing people in your company. It's awesome." I was like, "Yeah, tell me who." And they would give me the names immediately. I just stepped up an email and emailed that person. And so many times they're like mid-level executives. And so I was like, "Hey, I'd like to meet you." So I would meet with them.

So So there was this one ANR exec that um that I met with and I was asking her the same question. How do you find artists? how do you find somebody that you believe in that you think is going to develop in a superstar? And she was telling me, um, I look for their connection with the audience before I even listen to their voice.

And I was thinking, oh, it's interesting. How do you do that? You you you look at the likes online or like how do you discern or comments, etc. He's like, no, I'm watching the audience. I was like, what do you mean? And like and live stream like no, I go to the shows. I was like and you know this is a very young executive by the way like you know in 20s and I was like well but I thought that's what the older ANR guys were doing. I was like well I do that too. I was like and how does that work? She's like well I watch the audience and if the audience is an emotional connection to the artist that is priceless and it's and it's it's amazing.

and if it's there and by the way the connection is either they're they have misty eyes or crying or they're shrieking or they're laughing. And if it's there, then we work with them on the art and develop their voice and just like develop the artist skill set and the connection is there. And now now we have something that we can really build a longlast long-lasting career on.

I was like interesting. And she's like and you know what's important that if it's a female that that audience is teen girls because they're the earliest adopters, you know, and Shakira and Beyonce, etc., right? and and if it's boys, it's even more important.

So, it's basically, you know, I just described to you a system that that NR executive has to find uh artists early and build them into stars. And philos and philosophically, what is it that creates that connection? It could be their attitude. It could be uh their lyrics, you know, the topics that they care about. Uh I think it's deeply personal but it's like it's got to be there and it's what makes them unique

and uh but the thing that's interesting is like what I just described to you it's not that you can like force this on another ANR executive right people have different systems I'm giving you one but it's like this is a young person who's very very successful and um and then has discovered an artist and has a system

can that connectivity be learned you think can an artist learn to connect uh

Uh I think I think people try over time. it pro I I think it probably can be but it's uh it's easier to learn like if you have it it's easier to obviously develop your art then learn the connectivity but I think it comes with uh probably increased focus you know to learn that connectivity but uh

but you know this is all like the beginning the nucleus of it right but then what we have to do is figure out okay how do we grow the artist audience and and not go into big concert uh venues immediately that would be half empty, but instead grow them gradually and uh and build up a uh you know group of fans that will be with them forever and from you just need to build a core from which everything grows.

So let's say so let's say now I have my guitar I'm playing in Cton Town, you know, in some kind of uh bar uh Robert Kinsel comes in. It's just like hey look at that guy Nikolai. He's got great uh rapport with the audience. So you come to me and but just what do you do with me the next couple of years you know how do you how do you build it it

all depends like obviously what you need specifically right which also varies because sometimes artists are also songwriters so they write their own music uh you know Bruno Mars was an example of that he's an excellent songwriter and that's how he started and then and then he started to uh sing his music so initially maybe you may be a songwriter and you're writing for other people and then you try your own luck right with that

and it's like you know deciding which ones you do which ones you don't or it's a collaboration with somebody. So so many times it's also about not just about like perfecting your voice but it's also about collaborating with the right people whether it's songwriters that you work with or collaborations from uh from singing perspective. So so it all depends on who the artist is and uh and what they need.

Uh there's tour support, right? Like helping them set up uh small tours that help them start building the nucleus of the super super fans, right? That will be with them. Um you know, all of that's work and you know there's a

you know really great example with Teddy Swims, you know, one of our, you know, current stars who, you know, five years ago wasn't and he has just done an incredible job uh with us to build up his core audience. he would travel to Europe, do small shows and build it, you know, and and you know, we we do research, right? We look based on a lot of the data that we have. It's like where where they should tour, what they should do, right? Where the focus should be. So, it's like it becomes a deep collaboration.

How is it different when it's a long time established group, let's say Cold Play or you know, one of these, what do they need help? What do why do they need help? Yeah, that's uh I

asked them the other day the same thing. How why do you need help? And look, the if you're an aspiring artist, you want to become big and relevant, right? If you're a huge uh superstar or band like Coldplay, then you want to remain relevant, right? Of course, you know, so it's like you're at the top of the heap and you want to make sure that you stay there.

And again, it's in the world that's increasingly noisy, right? and across all forms of media, but in music it's very noisy, but across like everything it's very hard. So, so you want to make sure that you're creating hits and that people around the world hear your new art and you know,

so we just did a new album with co-play in October and it was a great success, but like you know, all of us were nervous, right? And everybody worked extremely hard to make it succeed. Nobody sleeps on their lures just because it's a it's coldplay. it's actually we're that much more nervous because we want to really make sure that it delivers on its promise and um

so so I think the you know if you if you look at it today no matter how much distribution has democratized all the big stars are signed with large music companies and um and because it it it takes a village it takes a village again if you're looking for sustained and repeatable success if you're just looking for oneoff thing doesn't matter the

The concert business seems to have changed and just become, you know, a bit grander in a way, right? So Adele built$und00 million pop-up stadium. Many artists do like 10 nights at Wembley. I mean, Taylor Swift, I guess, is a story in herself, but um yeah, cold play massive tour.

Absolutely. How should we how should we read that? What is it a sign of?

Well, I think initially there was a penta demand from COVID, right? obviously, but then it's a thing. And uh and I think in a world that's increasingly digital, people crave physical experiences. That's it. It's as simple as that.

And if if music uh decorates your time, right? It's soundtrack to your life. When you have couple favorite bands or or artists and they're they're playing in a venue near you, you go, right? Because it's like you like the collective enjoyment. I think I think when you can enjoy obviously a lot of people enjoy music by themselves right you're working out biking running whatever uh or even just at home working but when people enjoy it the most is when they're sharing it together w with others and usually they start moving they start dancing right and it just it's like expression of joy so so I think you know live music is here with us to stay and and will be will continue to be very successful

and usually they start moving they start dancing right and it just it's like expression of joy so so I think you know live music is here with us to stay and and will be will continue to be very successful

are you a good dancer

nope you should ask my My my wife my wife is Dominican which means she's an excellent dancer and uh and she will criticize me all the way till Sunday about my dance moves.

How has um streaming uh the streaming concept uh changed what you do?

Streaming is more efficient distribution, right? I I spoke about in the past when it was uh you know whether it was LPS or CDs or tapes uh you know there was a lot of inventory, right? So you know that a lot of people who are in the inventory business it's it's not that much fun right like there's returns and breakage and all of that.

So u music is very fluid. It's perfectly aligned with the internet. It's very efficient distribution and what it does is it reaches more people than before and uh and it allows people in a non-demand fashion. Right?

People could hear music before through radio. you're sitting in the taxi or in a restaurant and you hear it, but in a way in a personalized way that you can select what you want and personalize it and and have your playlist that is now accessible to a lot more people.

So it has grown the business and uh and I think you know obviously credit goes to Daniel for Daniel Ike for uh driving Spotify you know through the decades and building the business as well as others you know what we did at YouTube and and and you know Apple and and uh Amazon etc. So there's a lot of lot of subscribers around the world

but still even today we are lagging uh esot subscription video on demand which you know we shouldn't right so you can imagine that there is still a lot more addressable audience for us to take and uh and that gap is even bigger outside United States you know in lots of developing markets so a lot a lot more room to grow

music is cheap

no it's it's probably the best deal that consumers get in anything. Yeah, it's definitely cheaper than X. Like if you think about it's cheaper than anything because it's been lagging inflation for a very long time.

Why is it so cheap?

Because uh and I don't mean it as a criticism. It's uh you know the industry post Napster and Kazan and all the file sharing services was obviously uh on its knees and then the streaming services uh came and and drove growth and pricing just remained the same from the time uh any of those services got established.

Nobody has moved price up despite you know whatever inflation there may may have been. But it was the right choice because that was the time to hunt, you know, hunt for new subscribers, right? And just focus on volume and focus on growth.

And I think now we're entering the era where it's important to do both hunting in places where the penetration is very very low and continue to do what we've done in the past. But then in territories which are where the penetration is high, maybe not as high as yet, but like high, then we also start harvesting on price, right? And increasing that.

So, so I think you know whatever worked in the past 15 years doesn't have to be applied exactly the same way to the next 15 years and we just uh you know we just need to be a little bit more uh laser focused and audience segmented in our approaches.

So when you say harvest you mean increase prices slowly and carefully until just below the point just below the point where they live.

Correct. Correct. Which which of course nobody wants, right? We don't want that. The DSPs don't want it. Uh,

but I think it's important to not have a one-sizefits-all strategy, which is what we all had, right, for 15 years, which was the right thing to drive growth. But now we got to have sort of two sizes.

So, let's say now uh the value of music to the consumer is 100. Where does the money end up? So, what goes to the artist, what goes to you guys, what goes to streaming?

It it all depends on who the artist is. There's so many that's one of the things I learned. There's so many, you know, the company has grown. It's been around for many, many decades. And there, you know, there's cataloges and there's new releases. Uh there are distribution deals. So the spectrum is really, really wide.

I mean, just think about it, right? We have we have deep, deep cataloges from Fleetwood to Joanie Mitchell, the Eagles, you know, you got David, right? Historic cataloges, which is just incredible what happens. By the way, my younger daughter, like one of her one of her favorite bands is Fleetwood Mac, right? She she's 22 now. has been her favorite band since 19 and it's just incredible the power it that you know the power that it has. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Interestingly uh one of the guys at Aha Mafu Wman he uh suggested I asked you about this. So kind of the the pedigree artist right?

Yes. Where old songs are becoming new hits for new generations who they don't care when it was made or whatever right. So yes on that topic uh just what uh what have contributed to this renewed interest?

So so I have to say actually since you're speaking of AHA uh you know I grew up in in in a communist country closed borders no no freedom of uh choice of media or speech uh there was very little imported music. Aha was one of the LPs that I got. I think I had like seven LPs when I was growing up. Aha was one of them.

And um so you know the sun always shines on TV. Yeah. And it's like it's uh you know it's like but by by the way you know when I when I said that art decorates walls and music decorates time for me aa decorated my time and like I know exactly where I was you know in you know in the 80s in in in Czechoslovakia and the you know how it made me feel then.

Um the the renewal of interest comes in different ways. one which is uh you know we do these catalog license l licensing deals with all kinds of platforms and then if it's an open platform sometimes users just users for fun take the music and they do something with it and attach it to a video and and sometimes that takes off by the way that's that's how Fleetwood Mac took off you know and u uh on Tik Tok uh so it happens that way in a very very organic way right and this didn't used to be there

the other sort of well-managed ways that this happens is uh when current artists want to remake a song that was iconic. David Gha is like a master at this, right? David got one of one of our artists. He's a famous uh DJ and producer and he he just uh loves to find you know just iconic songs and remake them and and he just he just remade Forever Young right with Ava Max and uh and Alpha and uh you know and it's like suddenly the song is just charting everywhere.

Uh, but by the way, the I I have to I have to say that one of the most incredible stories over the last six to nine months has been Lincoln Park. It's a band that released their first album with us in in the year 2000. A few years ago, their lead singer passed away. They went through replacing uh replacing him. The the resurgence that they had last fall was like unlike anything we've ever seen. The success of their new album was insane. The pre-sales were the highest in Warner's history and and their catalog just shot through the roof.

And this is a band that's been with us for 25 years. And and it's just, you know, nobody deserves the success more than these guys. Uh but it's just it's incredible when that audience is there. It stays. It doesn't go away. And uh and it just underscores the value of IP despite whatever happens on a macro level.

What are the challenges when it comes to copyright um and the reuse and mashups of older music?

Um the challenges they've always been there uh with the advent of social media, right? And YouTube was the first one. So I actually had the the privilege um of working on that early on. This is like what I referred to when Eric Schmidt said, "Hey, figure out how you stop them from sending us paper." And so we send them paper and um um it's basically how do you track uh you know fragments of copyrights in other copyrighted material or in other videos or audio etc. and how do you aortion the money, you know, and what tools you give.

And so early on at YouTube, we built something called content ID that allowed us to do that. Basically, fingerprint the content and then as people uploaded it to YouTube, we would then be able to sort of parse it out and then have commercial relationships to give the copyright holders the the ability to either block it or track it or monetize it. And then there had to be a commercial split obviously negotiated for for that.

Basically, fingerprint the content and then as people uploaded it to YouTube, we would then be able to sort of parse it out and then have commercial relationships to give the copyright holders the the ability to either block it or track it or monetize it. And then there had to be a commercial split obviously negotiated for for that.

And I think that's uh you know that's the same thing that will develop in the age of AI because it's basically just UGC on steroids and uh so it's just everything is faster bigger and but uh I think we've laid down a a really good framework uh you know more than 15 years ago for how to do this and we can learn from that.

What's the catalog you wish you had?

more more and more there's so much uh you know there there are companies I have all the cataloges you haven't got which one do you want to buy

um it depends what the price is what multiple are you charging just average average like you know there's obviously iconic iconic music like Michael Jackson right and queen again it's I just named two where I also had the LPS behind Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, right? So, you know, it just kind of enforced that, but you know, uh uh you know, those two stuck with me along with aa back then.

Um it's, you know, I I love uh yeah, I mean those two I would obviously get. Unfortunately, competition has them, but uh such is life, but we have some really amazing ones ourselves which I'm tremendously proud of.

Another one I'm really proud of is Tracy Chapman is just, you know, that one for me timestamps my college years here in the United States, right? So, it's like different bands and and different times. And it's just it was so great to see her perform at the Grammys a year ago. And um yeah, it's fun.

Pink Floyd.

Yeah, Pink Floyd as well. Yeah, that one for me would go to the 80s in my Yeah, it's kind of funny because we, you know, we have a jingle on the podcast and we uh we were thinking about having this money, right? But it was so expensive to uh to have it that we we made our own instead.

We kind of touched on AI. Um just how how is it going to change your business?

I don't think we know yet exactly. U but um we're very focused on it. I think there's two different ways uh that it can happen. One just like for any other business where you use it for efficiency, right? So it's like that's got nothing to do with music, right? is just like uh you know standard practices and sort of standardizing our workflows so that you can then you know automate a lot of those and and um um you know through application of uh AI.

The other which is music specific is uh for what we discussed which is how do you track and attribute but the other is also creation right and um there's obviously uh creator tools that exist today there'll be more in the future whether open source or closed source and and I think they'll ultimately have two separate two types of outputs

one which is what I would call more like background music that it's not like associated with any artist it's more like mood music and and I think AI will probably take a big chunk out of that because you know it will be easier to do it at larger scale probably more you know better precision etc. So I would say that may be an area of music that may be under attack. Pretty that's that's pretty clear.

The other is artistcentric music and that's when I'm so when you say mood when you say moodcentric music what is that like sundown?

Uh it's yeah like I'm I'm not thinking like when I listen to it I have no idea who the artist is. It's more like I'm working and it's just something playing in the background. Elevator music. uh you know it's just it doesn't have any clear artist association. Yeah. Or voice. Sometimes it doesn't even have a voice but sometime you know many times it does but it's it's not it's not branded with any artist.

Uh and that's why I'm using the words artistentric for the other bucket which is like you know it's this this is either a sheiran or it's substantially similar to aan right or Bruno Mars or dualipa etc. And I think this type of content will uh we have to handle extremely carefully because it's obviously people's identity and their livelihood.

That's right. But like very importantly their identity and and uh and here it needs to be very permission based whether they want to to be sort of duplicated or not and whether it's their existing songs or completely new songs. But this is the area where we're really focused a lot and our our work on this is in with three constituents.

One which is the platforms themselves because that's where the content ends up right. So how we treat that the second is with the with the uh model companies and the third one is with governments sort of and in this order in that ascending order of priority because obviously with government it's important to work on things like uh uh AI um um no fakes act etc. But sometimes it takes a long time for it to actually come to fruition, right? Doesn't mean we don't do it, but we don't rely on. So it's uh it's a multi multifront uh work.

Robert, let's uh change tack a bit. What's the corporate culture like at Warner Music Group?

It's a I kind of call it a um 15 depending on our market cap is 15 16 17 18 billion startup. uh because you know you you want to retain that right as much as possible to have the entrepreneurial uh feeling at the same time we're public company which means lots of reporting and stability and visibility etc.

So I'm I'm constantly sort of juggling these two feelings that I want to move fast and disrupt things fast as a startup and at the same time I got to operate within within uh you know certain structures.

Uh I would say it's very entrepreneurial. Um and and you kind of have to I think the the best way to tackle it is then you need to decide as a leader which roles can be entrepreneurial and which ones need to be much more structured, right? Because that's really the way to to manage because you can't apply all the same to everybody and uh I think that's a mistake.

So um so that's that's what I'm feeling through and feeling my way through and obviously the closer they are to front line to the artist you want them to be entrepreneurial and the closer so the more right brain right the more entrepreneurial you want them to be and the more left brain the closer to the center of the company the more structure and then you can have like a glo global platform that unleashes the creative people.

What are the challenges of having the left and the right brain in the same company?

That's the fun of putting that together because I don't think that you can have a successful uh company in our space that doesn't have both. It doesn't work because if it's only right, it's going to be too small. It's not going to scale enough. And if it's going to be only left, it's going to lose all the creativity and and and deal flow, etc. So, so you need to you need to find how to bridge it together.

And then you also realize that when people spend more time together, uh, that they're not that different. I I always used to say, you know, when I was working at YouTube is that engineers are like songwriters. They both write software. It's just one is storytelling software and the other one is like utility software, right? One is code and the other one is notes, but they're writing something that's digitally disseminated throughout the world.

And they kind of behave the same way. You know, uh star engineers are uh you know, they can be peculiar just like star songwriters or artists.

Have you adopted any kind of unconventional cultural practices? Do you have like concerts every Friday?

No, we don't. Uh you know, I do all all hands meetings obviously with the company, but that's not like unconventional.

Um well, you know what I do is with all of my reports, uh we do, you know, Friday, uh sort of, you know, quick one page of like what have you, you know, what did you get done this week? Uh what are some of the important things for next week and what do you need from me? And so all of my reports do this on Friday. Uh I read it over the weekend and I know what I'm going into next week, right? and maybe I realize okay I need to set up two meetings on this topic because you know it came up through the documents.

and it's a very efficient way to understand uh what's are the important things happening every week in the company but also it gives people like it forces people to articulate their work

I I read about another person in the US who is asking people to list five things they did during the week

yeah I think he copied me I think he must have done uh

what do you look for when you hire somebody

one is an open mind. I think it's extremely important because we live in a world full of uncertainty and actually increasing uncertainty

uh where visibility is limited and you need people who know how to pivot on a dime if necessary and have very very open mind to rethink things. Uh I've always look I always like disrupting right like if you look at it from my choices of employment I was I was always disrupting something and uh

so it's very hard for me to sit still and just kind of be part of something that doesn't change like I uh I do that. So I like to hire people who have that in them because that obviously makes my job easier too right than you know through having sort of lots of change makers. So change makers with a very open mind because when you have an open mind especially when you work in a company like ours or any other large multinational company you you have to you know ultimately you get to matrix setup you you can't have people who are too rigid about things right they got to be flexible to work with each other give up control still demand you know performance but you know it's okay to not have control and you can still succeed and uh these are important traits.

You can't have people who are too rigid about things right they got to be flexible to work with each other give up control still demand you know performance but you know it's okay to not have control and you can still succeed and uh these are important traits.

Do you disrupt your own colleagues in uh what way do you mean?

Well, I mean you disrupt everything uh left, right, and center. Do you disrupt things internally in in the group?

uh they would probably say so uh um you know I I I I actually work with our head of HR quite a lot u because a lot of these things tie to you know uh what you know HR processes are and how certain things are set up and u

and and also uh with our head of comms because one of the things that I learned is that you can do what you know all the different things but if people don't know it if the message doesn't translate if it doesn't resonate you don't have people on board ultimately it doesn't work right then and you don't accomplish anything so uh you know having having the collaboration uh uh around communications becomes much much more strategic

how do you communicate internally how do you get people to climb the mountains

so a all hands meetings right uh and and again those it's not just me right obviously I include other colleagues from the leadership team.

How often how often do you do them?

Uh we do it every six months and u and we'll see you know if I didn't want to uh uh in my previous job we did it every quarter. Uh I didn't want to overload it right away. We have a lot of things to do, lots of lots of change. But now we're doing it every six months. Uh and um but you know brings the company together which is important.

Uh the thing that I do every week on Friday is um I I publish basically what I read this week on a slack channel. So it's not spamming the whole company. It's only people who want to follow that and uh which is quite a lot

but it's I I find it helpful because I read a lot of news uh whether it's political news or entertainment news or business news just every day at least an hour of that. So, so I basically collect not everything that I've read but basically a bunch of notable stories and then I share them.

What kind of things do you read?

Um, I mean a there there's a there's an uh uh headlines u headlines uh newsletter that I get uh from one person that gives me like probably 100 headlines every single day on different important topics. So that's like my most succinct way to absorb everything that's happening uh in the world right now.

Who is it called?

It's uh his name is Abe. Is it Abe Burns? I forget. Right. I'll I I'll get it back to I'll get back to you on that. And uh but it's extremely useful and um

and then uh you know I read Wall Street Journal uh you know all of the publication Bloomberg, FD uh New York Times etc. So I read all of those. uh then I go through uh Apple News because then you rope open a whole bunch of other one it goes beyond business right so it's more into like general life etc

and then I have lots of different newsletters uh that I subscribe to like strategery etc Ben Thompson um you know and just read all of that on topics that have nothing to do with Warner right uh but just to be generally smarter

if you were to distill it down what is driving you each day when you work with uh amazing creative force, you know, artists and songwriters. And for me, the favorite part of my job is meeting them. Uh when you when you work with them, what drives you is that you want to figure out the best way that we can help them unleash their art on the world.

And that's kind of fun, right? Because when you see that happening and when you see the blue flame then getting bigger and you know until it's like really flaming uh it's it's incredible and in order to do that you you have to not sit still and disrupt the company itself right because the industry is changing and that's also cool.

So it's like for me it's the it's the constant evolution and the ability to shape things for the future again you know it's disruption it's uh yeah I guess I in one word it's disruption right because I think through disruption you find opportunity it makes you stronger smarter and you can't be afraid of it and uh yeah I just don't like to s sit still and so this job allows me to do that

and when you have to sit still how do you relax

I don't really by reading news uh

But uh no, I like watching TV a lot actually. Uh that's like my my favorite way to completely disconnect. Um I'm yeah voracious uh watcher of movies and TV shows and a lot

such as such as

White Lotus, uh Lionus, you know, I love a lot of stuff that's on Paramount Plus, all the Taylor Sheridan shows, you know, Yellowstone and so I love that. uh you know, Gilded Gilded Age on HBO was fun. Uh but you know, obviously uh White Lotus is great.

And uh you know, um Black Mirror on Netflix, amazing. Drops of God on Apple TV Plus. Incredible show. There's just so much. Uh The New Look on on Apple, incredible. So there's just there's just so much great stuff to watch and um yeah, so that's that's that's a way for me to completely disconnect.

We have 10 thou tens of thousands of uh young listeners uh to this podcast. What what's your advice to them? What is it that you have told your two daughters?

Sort of the same thing that my dad told me which was, you know, nobody will remember the reasons why you failed. They'll just remember your ranking or whatever the result is.

uh you know just focus on driving results and always always do stay two steps ahead of your boss. That's I learned it on one of my first jobs uh 30 years ago uh when I was an assistant where my boss told me be two steps ahead of me and you'll be a winner.

And you know, of course, of course, there's two steps means like, you know, there's a tree, right, of decisions, but it literally stays with me to this day. That's how I think about things because it allows you to iterate very quickly with people when things are thought out a little bit more. And it doesn't have to be precise.

How do you stay two steps ahead of your boss?

Anticipation. You you anticipate what is the next question after you've answered the first one, right? And and you've answered it this way or that way. And then so like you got you know maybe four scenarios but like you just kind of think it through so you prepare it and and because of that you kind of have much more dynamic conversation versus oh I have to get back to you and this and that. Like you you you progress and you make faster progress. So I think that's really really important. It stayed with me.

Honestly I learned that in my late 20s and it stayed with me to this day. And uh and and you know the I say this to my daughters. I mean this might not sound that nice but when you say I'm doing my best if the result isn't good it means there's no more upside from you right

so you know should think about that before you say that right that you're doing your best and um um you know so it's uh there there are a few things like this and and I think the you know the immigrant mentality in me is I always felt because I have an accent. I was in an accent. I always felt like it probably holds me back somehow. So, I have to do more in know, you know, I don't have connections. I was like, I have to do more than the Americans in order to get the same.

And uh when you do that, somehow it sticks stays with you and then you always just end up doing more always. And um so I think it's it's good to outrun the other people.

Well, Robert, all I can say is that it doesn't sound like your immigrant accent has held you back too much. Uh it's been incredible talking to you. What a fun company. What an incredible what an incredible world and uh big thanks for coloring our times with this incredible music and for making life so much fun.

Thank you. We're really proud of the company. We love what we do and uh you know and we're disrupting ourselves and and working on providing much uh you know even much greater value to artists and songers and users all around the world and being good partners to our distribution partners.