Top 77 Troy Carter Quotes

The primary plan is to let the music speak for itself.

I believe in outgrowing a mentor and getting a new one, and I think that you can never be too old to be schooled by your mentor.

When I first got pitched on Uber, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever.

With Gaga – she‘s not afraid to take chances. You get these dynamic projects because of it. She’s completely unafraid.

Spotify favors hits. It’s very much a meritocracy: It’s not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it’s up to consumers to stream the music or not.

People are experimenting with streaming, with subscription services, whether it’s a Spotify or a Pandora or a Rdio.

If you look at a company like Uber, a company that so anti-establishment that cab companies are trying to find ways to shut it down, one could compare that to how Public Enemy and NWA went after then-modern society in hip hop.

There are not a lot of black men in the pop business.

Mattel stepped up and changed the face of Barbie. Barbie looks a lot different than she did decades ago. Or even three weeks ago.

We look to find partners whose values align with that of our artists. We also look for unique platforms that the potential branding partner can provide. Sometimes that’s distribution, and sometimes it’s an advertising platform. Each situation is unique.

When you look at how technology companies are funded, it’s not a zero-sum game. It could be 20 investors in one company, and everybody has to work together for the benefit of that company.

Being born in the adolescent years of hip hop helped us learn about flux. And when you’re in an industry that is constantly growing, changing, maturing… you get a chance to try different things out and a chance to fail.

As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there’s a lot of rejection in our business.

Exclusives are bad for artists, bad for consumers, and bad for the whole industry.

I’m a very commonsense guy – I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.

No one has bridged that gap between music and technology yet.

If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.

The more people are listening to music and experiencing it, the more value for both the music companies and the artist, especially when their financial model is built around that . With the music industry, everybody is starting to understand that doesn’t begin with a piece of music.

If a kid goes and buys a CD at Best Buy, we have no idea who the person is, how many times they listen to it, or anything like that.

There was a time when radio stations wouldn’t play Gaga’s music because it was considered dance. Outside of live performances, the Internet became our primary tool to help people discover her music.

Coming from the music business and seeing the transition from artists to fans, fans to consumers, it’s really about understanding the psychology of why people want to associate with your brand.

I think overall, and this isn’t specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label… when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business – I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.

Our bet is on the future of micronetworks.

The music industry really is a meritocracy on a creative level.

I come from a place where when you shake someone‘s hand, it is a deal.

What’s important for that person on the other side of the table, and what’s important for the client?

You go into the venues, and there’s a huge drop-off rate in the merch lines. People don’t want to miss parts of the concert.

As we look at Hollywood and the controversy around the Oscars, it goes back to the voting block and the lack of people who come from that culture. For example, the NWA movie is a fantastic, fantastic movie. You need people who can look at a piece of art like that and understand the artistry in it.

So many black kids aspire to be entertainers or professional athletes because those are the only role models they see that look like them. There are only 300 jobs in the NBA but an endless amount of opportunities as an entrepreneur. With enough hustle, entrepreneurship opens doors to a world of opportunities.

I said, ‘Who said African American founders can’t build a billion dollar company?’

I am inspired by the diversity of the entrepreneurs that come into ‘Shark Tank‘ and the ability of the show to reach all Americans.

Priyanka and Red One made a great record that we think will stand on its own. People won‘t buy the music just because she is who she is. We want them to buy it because it’s good.

You can’t make an artist like Lady Gaga. You can help support, you can help develop the vision – I think you can add to the vision – but you just can’t make an artist like that. That’s like saying Lebron James‘ high school coach made Lebron James.

On the artist side, we made a significant investment in very young artists from the very beginning of their careers and helped them become global superstars.

The most successful people in the world are the ones who thought of that idea that was ‘too crazy to work.’

You have a huge demographic shift that’s happening in America. Globally.

Actors play different characters, so you have to build a new base around each new movie – with few exceptions, most actors don’t have a fan base that just follows them around. With musicians, the fan base just goes everywhere they go.

When we look at transportation in America, there’s going to be companies like Magic Bus, where you have these private bus fleets. You’re going to have carpooling; you’re going to have these different types of transportation. It’s going to be a full ecosystem, but it’s not going to be a winner-takes-all.

When you sit down with Zynga and Google, and they talk about billions of impressions, you think, music has way more of an emotional connection than technology, but we haven‘t cracked the code.

Being schooled is the same thing as learning, and you can never be too old to have your coattail pulled when you’re wrong about something.

To me, mentorships and internships are two big pillars in business development. I believe in having multiple mentors.

It’s always boiled down to the quality of your music and the quality of your deal with whoever‘s distributing your music: There are artists who sold a lot of records and didn’t make money because of their deal, and artists who didn’t sell nearly as much who made a great living because they own their masters.

I think piracy itself is going to end up going away.

I was brought onboard to strengthen the bridge between Spotify and the music community.

She was a performance artist calling herself Lady Gaga, who had a European dance-club sound and pop-star aspirations – elements that historically haven’t mixed.

Music as a whole industry is growing exponentially, but in terms of the actual music file, when you look at the actual value there, to me, ‘The Beatles‘ catalog should be worth more than Spotify.

Hip hop is a multi-billion dollar business, and it was built off an opportunity that nobody else saw because they didn’t understand the culture.

My biggest frustration is the lack of scale in the music industry. The fact that no one has sold 100 million copies of an album is frustrating.

My third hire when I came to Spotify was Tiffany Kumar, who came on as our global head of songwriter relations. The whole idea was to put our heads together and figure out how to build and contribute within the songwriting community.

With what Enrou was doing with helping women and taking products from local marketplaces, we thought it was really great.

I don’t think holograms are the future in the music industry.

We called ourselves ‘2 Too Many’ because we only had enough money for one of us.

In order to continue the growth, we have to go back to embracing technology and the way that people choose to consume music.

Lady Gaga is phenomenal. From the first day I met her, she was lightning in a bottle.

I came up with Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Those guys, they took me under their wing at an early age.

When I started Atom Factory, the idea was to do something small yet powerful. That name resonated with the mission.

The venture capital world is completely stacked against minority entrepreneurs.

I stay away from the arts… writing songs, being creative – those are downloads from God. You can’t do data analytics on art.

Now we know that if we make a ten min video for YouTube, people will watch it.

I found a scrap book that my mom had given to me, and inside was a letter that I wrote to myself at age 19. The letter included my goals and dreams for my life, and even then, I was writing about the management company that I built today.

The only two things that ever came naturally to me are music and investing.

I grew up carrying crates of records for Will Smith and those guys.

It isn’t that every company is going to be successful. The law of averages shows that 80% of companies are going to fail.

I’m from the streets, so I look at investing through a very unique lens.

With the ‘Born This Way’ album, generally we said, how do we find strategic partners that can help us with our vision? Part of that is about putting the music in places people wouldn’t normally put music, like with Google and with Gilt.

When you think about brands and movie studios and everybody who is trying to reach millennials, having a captive audience in the back of Lyft or an Uber is a pretty great place.

To me, as A&R people and as managers, we’re in the business of finding talent. It’s no different than working with these engineers who just want to make good products.

I think, as an industry, we should be supportive of a broad subscription model and not do anything to jeopardize the potential health of the music business – because we’re not out of the woods yet.

I don’t think we’re out there aggressively looking for deals. Our strategy is that business follows the creative. We’re not out there scouring the marketplace for opportunities.

I was Jazzy Jeff’s assistant.

Before I even agreed to work with Hennessy and the Privilege Awards, I wanted to do some research on it, look up past winners, and find out more about it.

It’s pre-roll or post-roll on Vevo. The record company makes money off of that, and then it trickles down.

Once we started making investments, we realized the same service we provided to artists was applicable to entrepreneurs as well.

If you wake up in the morning and your favorite artist isn’t on the service that you’re paying ten dollars a month for, sooner or later you lose faith in the subscription model.

The problem with when you look at eBay is that you can put a pair of Jordans next to a frying pan. It’s an altogether different experience compared to having some editorial around it and well-curated experience.

I invest in black-led startups not because of a sense of charity. I make those investments because of the basic principle of supply and demand and the reality that black entrepreneurs typically lack the network to have their deals become bid up and overvalued.

Fifty-one million likes doesn’t mean we’re going to sell 51m albums or concert tickets.