Troy Carter: "There was no Plan B"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2019

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’s tech correspondent brings on Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s former manager and music executive, to talk about the importance of radio (3:40), why streaming is still evolving (6:10), the death of the album (7:20), showing up at Spotify (9:50), the music industry’s history of screwing artists (13:50), why artists are less desperate than they used to be (15:20), growing up as an aspiring rapper in West Philadelphia (21:40), doorstepping Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff (24:30), dropping out and failing (26:50), promoting Wu-Tang Clan in Philadelphia (28:55), working at Bad Boy when Tupac Shakur got shot (30:30), becoming Eve’s manager (32:40), what works in music (33:40), negotiating with Taylor Swift (36:55), becoming Lady Gaga’s manager (39:30), how they used social media to build a following (42:10), becoming a tech investor (40:55), how the techlash has created opportunity (43:40), investing early in Uber (47:55), the merging of culture and tech (49:10), whether we should worry about algorithm-led art (51:40), how the music industry will change (55:40), his worst day of work (58:40), and managing Prince’s estate (1:01:00).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be
0:06.8	wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain
0:13.0	that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching
0:18.7	their peak in the afternoon.
0:23.0	Not in the mood for miserable weather.
0:25.6	Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express.
0:28.7	Sun Express, nonstop sunshine.
0:34.6	Yo, technology.
0:36.4	What is it all about?
0:38.3	Certain things you feel. Like, the hair that stood up on my arm, seeing Lady Gaga was my data.
0:43.3	You know what I'm saying?
0:44.3	It's like that feeling I got the butterflies seeing Eve on stage, that's data.
0:51.3	So I think from a pure art creation perspective, until I can find software
1:00.0	that's going to write, imagine from John Lennon or Ribbon in the Sky from Stevie Wonder,
1:07.0	it's going to be hard for me to believe that we're going to find algorithms to write those records.
1:15.4	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.
1:23.1	We have a special one for you.
1:25.4	This week on the program, we have Troy Carter, who is a former rapper, briefly, club promoter.
1:33.9	He was Lady Gaga's first manager, managed her ascent from obscurity to superstardom.
1:41.1	He is the former head of creative services at Spotify. He is also currently the
1:47.4	manager of Prince's music estate. And he is also a tech investor. So yes, he wears many, many hats.
1:55.8	And we sat down recently to talk about a whole bunch of stuff, including the present and future of the music
	...

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