From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business. People often say what's happening in

Hollywood is what's already happened in the music industry. So Eric Deggans sat down to hash it over

with Evan Bogart, the son of Capsablanka Records founder, Neil Bogart, who discovered such

talents as Donna Summer and Curtis Mayfield.

Evan, who's a Grammy-winning songwriter and a label executive,

talked about the state of the recording industry and says, hey, it isn't all bad.

The really positive byproduct of labels consolidating and re-organing is that you have a lot more independent artists

and a lot more independent distributors that are

funding these artists and that are helping them be independent and own their own masters and

empowering them. Bogart shares how, as a 19-year-old working for Interscope Records, he discovered

Eminem and how he sneaked the rapper's demo tape onto labelhead Jimmy Iovine's desk after no one

else would listen to it. But first we banter. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my colleague in banter Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt.

Hi there. So let's talk about the box office first.

I know some people are saying that the combo platter of Wicked and Gladiator 2 does not

match up to Barbenheimer, which I'm sure the studios would have loved.

But I do feel like these are two huge successes, and it's a little ridiculous to me to compare it to this

phenomenon that happened last year. Yeah, I mean, this used to happen all the time, where

movies would open opposite each other, both big budget, both targeted at different audiences.

Wicked is heavily female, Gladiator 2 is heavily male, older, and they would both

have success. Post-COVID, this is a novelty. This only happens like once or twice a year,

and people go nuts over it. We saw with the opening weekend that it did not have an additive

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