HYBE America CEO Scooter Braun Talks Career Ups & Downs

Published Oct 10, 2024, 7:31 PM

Live, from Bloomberg Screentime, HYBE America CEO Scooter Braun sat down with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw to discuss his career ups and downs and what's to come. 

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Back to the main stage, our Lucas Shaw up there on the stage, the CEO of the American.

Division of HI. We're talking about Scooter Braun.

Let's listening. A lot has happened with you in the last couple of years, and that's sort of where I want to start.

Really.

Yeah, just a little bit, because there's been a lot of coverage of Okay, all your clients are firing you. We won't touch your personal life, but I know a bun just happened there. You sold your company. You haven't said a ton about it, and I'm curious, what is your take? Did a bunch of your clients fire you in the span of a couple of months, or what happened with Arity three?

Fired me in the exact same day? Yeah?

Now, what happened with Arianna with Justin with listen?

I actually a year after it happened.

I for contractual reasons, I wasn't allowed to say certain things, but I wrote something called twenty three years I posted on social media. It was my words, and I kind of explained why I made a decision to not manage musicians after twenty three years, and that it actually happened about a year earlier, but you know, we're running a big company and there's things that we needed to handle, so I didn't feel like it was the right time.

And simply.

Twenty three years of my life, from nineteen years old to into my forties, I only knew being a music manager. Twenty four to seven, seven days a week, every vacation, every holiday.

I was on call.

And I wasn't on call to one big artist. I was on call to a lot of big artists. And for a large part of my life, I really loved it. But then I had three kids and I went through a divorce, and anyone who's been through a divorce with children knows that.

It is not an easy situation.

And I really looked back at my life and realized that, you know, you can point fingers in a divorce and say, oh, this happened, This happened, but you play a role in it. And that's why me and my ex wife are partners. With these three children, we put them first, and my role was I wasn't present. I was a manager twenty four to seven, and even though I was home, I wasn't being there the way I should and it led to a divorce, and I realized I might have lost the marriage. I wasn't going to lose my kids, and I decided that I wanted to step away from it and focus on other things. And now I have three of the best clients in the world and that's my focus. But then, yeah, there was a lot of noise because no one actually thought you would want to step away from that. But how did you communicate that to the clients that you were working with. Well, one of them I wrote about this. One of them approached me and said, Hey, I think I want to try something new. And at first I was kind of hurt because we've been through so much together. But then I realized I was already heading in this direction for the last couple of years anyway, and I think you make plans and then the universe kind of shows you what you need. And I realized it was actually a gift and it wasn't about one client, it was about all. So I started picking up the phone and having the conversations and some went well, some took a couple more conversations. But I'm grateful for all those years. I lived a very unique life doing that. I was a part of the journeys of the most successful and incredibly talented people in the world, and now I get to root from them in a different capacity.

How does how does the relationship like, take someone like Beeber, you take him from nothing. You guys are do the whole ride up together? Like, how does that relationship work?

Now root for each other?

I mean it's you get to a point where you just say, we built this legacy alongside each other.

And now he's a father, he has.

An opportunity to continue doing you know, the things he loves to do, and I'm going to be rooting for him for the.

Rest of his career.

So, Hi, buy your company. About three years ago we had the we had we had Bang here last year. A lot of people, I think thought you would have left by now, so did our chairman? Why have you stuck around? I guess what are you doing now if you are not managed artists?

A couple of things.

When Chairman Bang and I met, he's the chairman of Hive and he's a very unique individual. This is someone who was one of the biggest music producers in all of Asia, and at the height of his career in Asia, he came to the United States to have meetings with A and RS and presidents of labels here to discuss his ideas. And one of these meetings they had him wait in the lobby for three hours and then told him, I'm sorry, we have another meeting and canceled on him. And instead of having an ego or getting upset, he goes, you know, and I'm going to go back home and I'm going to build this industry myself so that when I come back here, I don't need to ask for these meetings. And if you look at the groups, including BTS that he was able to create and produce and develop and continually do so, he's actually brilliant. And I had admired his work for some time. He knew about the stuff I had done, and he reached out to me and said, can we have conversations, And the first four conversations that's when the last one happened about the purchase. He said that in the East, we have conversations about what we're going to do. He goes, too many times when I talk to people in the West, they talk about just the transaction, just the deal, not what we're going to do. He goes, all four conversations we've had We've talked about culture, We've talked about philosophy, we've talked about meditation, we've talked about music, we've talked about family. He goes, I want to do this with you, and no matter what we find, we'll go through it together. We signed up and we did a five year deal. And the reason I'm still here because you're right, and those deals usually vest out at a certain point, and my deal was pretty much upfront.

I gave my word, and I really enjoy him.

I think he's a visionary and I think your words should mean more than just the deal that you do on paper. And I told him I'd be there for five years, and I'm going to do that. And the exciting part is we've developed such a relationship that now we're talking about extending that and being there longer, and I'm looking forward to it.

And is that being focused?

Like, are you because you're the CEO of hYP America, right, how much of your time are you spending on taking big Korean acts and bringing them here or bringing them around the world, And how much of it are you spending on developing acts here that have nothing to do with Korea.

It's about fifty to fifty.

And also, you know, if you look at our strategy, we purchased QC, which is, you know, the biggest independent hip hop label in the country. We had big machine from Ithaca when we brought it over. So we're going to you know, go out and find other companies that make sense for us and other assets that make sense. We also launched High two point zero, which allows us to create a distribution system for independent labels because of our distribution deal with Universal, a ten year deal that puts us a unique position.

And then you know, you look at.

Weavers, which is our large platform for fan engagement for super fans, which is the biggest in the world and the biggest in Asia. A lot of people don't realize this, but thirty percent of our revenue is actually from North America. So you know, now we've introduced Ariana Grande to that platform. We introduced kid Leroy this week. You know, you're starting to see a lot of you know, acts from the West joining and it makes sense because you see acts from the East coming here and they're selling out arenas day one and if everyone's asking why, and it's because of that opportunity to talk directly to the fans on weavers.

Right, I'm curious setting aside reverse Like the last decade plus, I feel like a lot of people were finding artists on YouTube, then they're finding artists on TikTok. Where do you or where do people you work with discover new artists right now?

So I can give the nice answer and you know, but I'm going to give the real answer. You know, when when we're talking to people, there's still A and rs, there's still scouts. They're going out there and they're finding stuff. There's still people looking on TikTok and on YouTube and you might see something and you know, part of it is, you know, true development, like we just did with our group Cats Eye, which we developed them, we did a show on Netflix and now we've launched them. But the thing I'm most excited about is what's to come. And the reason I say that is I'm forty three years old. When I found Justin, I was twenty four about to be twenty five. I was native to technology that was around at that time.

I was a young guy.

I understood what my peers wanted, I understood what was missing in the marketplace, and I understood how to use the social media in a way that made sense to my peers. So, for example, Twitter at the time was just celebrities talking to other celebrities on the suggested user list, and I was like, well, this feels very voyeuristic. You know, I don't want to just watch someone talk to someone else.

I want to engage.

And Justin was the first person to cross a million followers on Twitter that wasn't on the suggested user list because we actually engaged with the fans. We created fame groups like belieber Babes and bieber Army and all these you know things.

The names are amazing. I know, you guys can giggle, It's okay.

And actually a lot of the people who ran those accounts are now executives in the music industry. Jackie Augustus is a very big executive and she used to run Bieber Army back in the day and when she was like sixteen. So what I'm waiting for is that next kid, that next kid who's in their twenties or even a teenager who understands who's native to the technology and realizes how to use that the AI that's coming all the different things in a way that myself and Bang and my peers just don't because it is a youth driven industry. So when I meet people or their young artists, they go, hey, what do you think I should do? My response is usually stop worrying about getting to people like me. You have all the resources to get to the audience directly, and your peers develop with them. So when you say how do we do it, it's going to be self discovery. I just don't know how the next generation is going to do it because for my dad it was vinyl, you know, for me it was mixtapes for someone else, who knows?

Right?

Do you as a result of that, do you feel the balance of power in the music industry has shifted more to the artists than when you started.

I think it's shifted to the artists, but there'll always need to be those teams or people that give their all in their heart alongside the artists to develop talent, to understand the marketplace. And you know, that's what's exciting because I kind of like where I am in my life. I've never been so uncertain about what's gonna happen in my life in the next five years. But I've never felt so at ease with being uncertain and I think the industry is in a very similar place.

Right.

Well, I would imagine a lot of money helps with that. But I'm I'm just the best. I'm curious if you were starting a a a new company today management whatever, I know you don't you don't wanna manage it anymore? Is there who is an artist out there? Like if you could just pick one and you I'm gonna build around you, who would you pick?

Ah?

I don't know cause I haven't really been in that space of like, you know, finding the next one.

Well, it doesn't have to be the next one. It can be it can be a huge star. Now, Like who is someone now where you look at them and they're already a star and you feel like their earnings are over the next twenty thirty years or they're potential of where they could go at their career is something that.

You want to be involved with.

I'm gonna give you the sound but you're looking for cause I just can't help myself and the PR team's gonna be like what I think the artist that's you know, it's one that you should always bet on and is already a huge star and you can always bet on because they want it all the time, and they they do what it takes to be you know, present and relative all the time. Is Taylor Swift, I.

Was actually not thinking you were gonna say that, but it's it's an obvious answer, but I you.

Know, I I also love that what we're doing with our group Cat's Eye. I love uh Teddy Swims. I love great voices like that. I love like Benson Moone. I saw him perform the other day and that was really impressive. Zach Brian is doing incredible stuff. So there's you know, the fun part about it is everyone you know, there's a huge opportunity coming with AI and it's going to change the music industry the same way pro tools.

Did.

You know when pro tools came along, people said, what is this? We need live instruments and you realize it's a tool to create more music. And I think AI is going to do the same thing. But there's always going to be a need for both human emotion and human error.

You know, if we want to watch the Great.

All right, that of course is our Lucas Shaw with Scooter Ball and see you have the American division of HAIG.

I'm guessing that Taylor Swift comment might make a few headlines.

Look on's Twitter right now, see who's chatting about it, because yeah, lots of people following.

These interviews from Bloomberg screen Time.

You can see the latest at live Go on Bloomberg Terminal, and also catch the latest at bloomberg dot com slash screen Time