Steve Stoute on the Trajectory of the Music Industry

This week, I had the pleasure of listening to Steve Stoute on the Music Business Worldwide podcast. Stoute is a major player in the music industry, having priorly served as President of Urban Music at Sony Entertainment, Executive Vice President at Interscope Geffen A&M Records, and current Founder and CEO of both Translation and UnitedMasters.

As the host of the podcast notes while introducing Stoute, Translation is a marketing agency that specializes in brands and artist partnerships, a facet that has followed Stoute to UnitedMasters (00:35). His prowess in this field is further evidenced by his work as a marketing consultant with the New York Knicks.

UnitedMasters is a distribution platform/app that simplifies the distribution process, and provides additional services to its members. As the host also establishes in his opening statements, UnitedMasters allows "anyone to upload their music via the platform, which then takes a ten percent cut of revenue from distributed tracks on services such as Spotify, Apple Music, SiriusXM, Tidal, and Tencent" (00:50). UnitedMasters is among the services that enables an artist's cell phone to become their partner, as Stoute describes it (28:00). These services help funnel power away from record labels and toward artists.

Stoute's greatest criticism of record labels' business practices is not so much a disapproval as it is an observation. He illustrates how record executives used to develop artists' image and music to transform them into superstars (10:30). Nowadays, however, record labels buy whatever is currently hot; Stoute asserts that this practice is no longer the record business (11:30). He argues that production companies are now the true pillars of artist development, and that these entities should partner with artists to exploit record labels, rather than the alternative (15:00).

Stoute also has a myriad of reasons for artists to stay independent. He says that once music went digital, and artists could distribute music themselves, record labels lost industry value (7:30). Their contracts, however, do not reflect this change in environment. Stoute is fully against 360 deals, and also believes artists should keep their masters for as long as possible. Royalty revenue is perennial, and as much as a record label may pay for a catalog, a buyout is finite (13:00).

I tend to agree with Stoute's takes on the transition of power in the music industry. The easier it is for an artist to distribute their music, the more incentive there is for them to create. Likewise, artists do not need record labels anymore, and the more they realize the power of their independence, the more the playing field levels.

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Patrick Gannon is an intern at MINT Talent Agency, who has experience working in nonprofits and in performance production.  He will graduate from William Paterson University in 2022 with a degree in Jazz Performance, and is working towards an MBA which will be earned in 2023.