Lyor Cohen, a well known American executive producer who’s been a key figure in the rap/hip hop industry, recently sat with Complex to share his thoughts about the future for the music industry.
For more than thirty years, Lyor Cohen has been actively involved with different rap/hip-hop labels. He has managed many successful artists from labels such as Rush Productions and Def Jam Recording, and even gained leadership in Warners Music Group. With all the experience gained from the management of different labels, he eventually started his own music label called 300 Entertainment. This label, with the help of Lyor Cohen, has represented a long list of artists such as Young Thug, Highly Suspect, Fetty Wap, Coheed, ASTR, Cambria, Migos and many more.
When asked if 300 will ever follow the lead of Kanye West, Frank Ocean, and others and do exclusive releases, he replies with “I don’t believe in exclusives. I think it’s damaging to our industry. I believe in ubiquity.” He continues with saying that streaming services shouldn’t win because they have exclusives, and this is what fractures the customer experience. With this he follows with an example saying “if you sign up for Spotify or Apple or TIDAL or Rhapsody thinking that you’re getting most of the world’s music for $10.” In conclusion, he believes that this interrupts the proccess of paid subscriptions.
With online services, such as Spotify, profit success in music industry takes more effort. These days many more listeners have all the music to satisfy them without having to worry about the price needing to pay to get the access. This creates a lower gain for producers, executives, artists etc. who have spent a large portion of time and money to produce the new albums they have planned out.
Read his full interview with Complex here.
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