Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul
A lot of the same questions keep coming up as I tour around the country promoting my new book, Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul. People want to know my take on the problems in the record business. They want to know why sales are so bad, and whether music labels have a future.
Yeah, they do, but only when label executives stop being so damn lazy. Sales could be better, but they only seem worse now because people got used to a record doing at least half a million in sales in the first week! The business got spoiled by those crazy sales from hip hop records in the late '90s. Now the labels miss opportunities to make money and break new artists while they chase what they hope are gonna be instant blockbusters.
These days, if an artist doesn't get 100,000 sales in the first week, he's written off as a failure and dropped. It can happen to the biggest stars if they don't do the work. True, Kanye made close to a million sales when his last album dropped, but Def Jam pushed hard and put out three singles before his album hit. 50 Cent had five singles! By the time Kanye's album hit everyone was talking about him. He got on the Golden Globes, Saturday Night Live, you name it. A battle with 50 Cent took the buzz about the album to a whole other level. It was crazy! If it takes that much to get sales for big names like that nowadays, imagine how much you need to put into breaking a new star.
We used to roll up our sleeves. Back in the day we sold 70,000 albums for Kris Kross their first week and went on to sell 8 million. We kept running with it and promoting and gave the artists time and exposure to take hold in peoples' minds. We were willing to put in the time. The music business is a business where you have to build something. It's not scratch and win! We need to get back to those basics.
The basics are about things like artist development. Ya'll probably heard I took a lot of heat lately because people twisted up the meaning of what I was saying about Justin Timberlake's look .The media wanted to turn it into a beef but it was nothing personal. I think Justin's an amazingly talented performer. But his style just isn't that interesting to me. I was making that statement as a producer whose job it is to create artists from scratch. I am always looking at what other people are doing so I can do something different, make something better and create my own lane.
When I sign someone, there has to be talent. But the other part is the artists' look. They have to have that sparkle that's all theirs. A lot of thought goes into bringing out that star quality. It doesn't just happen all by itself. Their style has to be different. They have to have a presence so when they walk in a room, heads turn. They have to be able to stand next to me and have their own shine.
There are other things the labels can do to save themselves. The record companies as we knew them are pretty much gone, but that's okay. People are finally figuring out there's real money to be made from ring tones. There are dozens of other deals we can cut branding our artists and finding other ways to sell content through digital deals, merchandizing, and concert tours. The industry just has to work harder.
I call my book, Young, Rich and Dangerous because young, ambitious guys like me are a danger to all those older guys who sit at the top of most labels. They're gonna lose the race because they're not hungry enough. Early on in my career, when I was fresh off the success of Kris Kross, it felt like my belly was full. I was enjoying my success and congratulating myself. But Babyface told me something I'll never forget: "One hit doesn't count for much. You gotta have three or four hits before you can really call yourself a success." I've lost count of how many hits I've had since then, but I'm not stopping. I have to keep running so I can catch up with Quincy Jones!
That's why I wrote my book. I wanted to show kids who are looking to be in the music business it's not easy. Even after almost two decades of making hits I'm still in learning mode. Two months ago I put out Jagged Edge's album Babymaking Project too early, figuring one single before it dropped was enough to hook their old fan base. But I was wrong. Kanye and 50 changed the rules of that game. It's all about the story that goes along with the album as much as the music itself.
I want the next generation of executives and entrepreneurs to understand that the formula is always changing. They need to take risks and keep ahead of the trends if the industry is ever gonna survive. For the most part, I believe it will.
If I thought the labels were over I wouldn't have set myself up as a man on the inside, as president of Island Urban Music, a division of the biggest of all the music giants, Universal Music Group. I'm there, along with guys like my man Jay-Z, president of Def Jam, and L.A. Reid, who sits at the top of Island Def Jam, because I wanted to be a part of a team that knows how to make great music, then promote and sell it in a way makes sense in the digital age.
We're all music men, so we know what people wanna hear. We're not afraid to experiment. But we also know that it takes good ole' fashioned grind to sell records. We're showing other executives how it's done. We're dangerous!
Jermaine Dupri is a Grammy-award winning music producer, president if Island Urban Records and author of Young, Rich and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul (Atria, October 2007)
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Music companies don't groom acts anymore and haven't for decades.
They expect insta hits. records are dirt cheap to make today compared with the analog past because digital is so much cheaper and beginning with the 96 khz sample rate (and now 192 khz) it sounds as good as analog did.
(Of course most folk listen to the crummy 128 mp3 format)
To quote Parliment Funkadelic "we're doing it to you in your ear holes" Music is sound...th
Record labels offer only one thing...di
McDonald's could provide these two things; any big retailer could.
record companies are done.
The Net will kill them off and it is their own damn fault.
I guess if I'm to be honest. Nearly everything Jermaine writes about is correct.
Let me start out by saying I'm no hip-hop fan. Since the mid-late 80's, just about all of it has flown under my radar. For the most part, I tend to gravitate toward more whimsical melodic power pop and roll (ala XTC, Jellyfish, Field Music) or super-chops fusion (ala Dixie Dregs, RTF, Zappa, Eric Johnson). Two of his "artists" have probably outsold all of my favorites combined, so I'm kinda going into it not impressed by units sold.
I mean if popularity is how you judge greatness, then you gotta take the good with the bad right? If your guy loses the popularity contest, then you must be wrong...
...Or, we have our own individual sensibilities, and units sold don't really mean that much.
When push come to shove, I think most people would agree with the second assessment.
That said, I don't think that's what Jermaine is talking about. He's speaking in broader terms that a few posters here don't seem to appreciate. His challenge is the sell and market. He could just as easily be talking about death metal. The genre doesn't matter as much as the rush of the challenge.
Good article... thank you... but please say NO to throb-bots!
However, I wonder whether your executive attitudes like: "his style just isn't that interesting to me" and "I am always looking at what other people are doing so I can do something different, make something better and create my own lane" exasperates the problem for musicians and their prospective audiences.
When chilling to my favorite artist(s), always with headphones, I'm trying to descern the poetry, the message, the meaning! Please NO more visuals of prancers..
RIP Frank Zappa
Okay, get a grip. The man is not saying that the music doesn't matter. He spends more hours in the studio than most of you have had hot dinners. He's just saying that the "look" and how you market an album is a PART of the whole process. You can make the most brilliant, high art music in the world -- indie rock, jazz,punk, or whatever floats your boat -- but who gives a crap if nobody's there to listen to it? In today's world there are just certain things a music executive has to do to get an album to stand out and be heard past all the white noise that's out there. Get over yourselves. JD is just living in today's world. It's SHOW business. People want to be entertained, and a big part of the show that today's consumers buy into is the packaging. That's not his fault.
Thank you for helping more people understand why the music industry, specifically the labels, are collapsing in on themselves.
I've been inside the halls of IDJ and have interacted with the people you praise.
These are not good, decent people in the redecorated massive corner office suites no matter how you spin it.
Bad people bring with them bad karma.
JD is serving his purpose in being opportunistic and entrepreneurial. In this time of great change in the music biz, he's one of many looking ahead to a new landscape in which he could command that money and power. JD is interested in the business of it, and he's entitled to that.
JD needs to understand, though, why he, and hip-hop as a mainstream musical genre in general, receives so much criticism (which they promptly dismiss as "hatin'"). The audience for other genres, particularly rock, and especially if they're older, is accustomed to music being more like art, taking a sacred place in a cultural and even political identity that rebels against and rejects the interference of commercial interests and authority. The terms "sellout" and "corporate rock" reflect the distrust extended toward corporate influence on music. In the mainstream hip-hop that many of us see today, everything, including values, dignity, identity, and even your ass are all up for sale, and materialism dominates all aspiration and endeavor. There is no shame about it whatsoever; rather, it's the opposite: selling out is celebrated. When one is accustomed to music's message being "save the world", or "fight the power", or "I love you", one can't help but recoil when those are stripped away and replaced only with "get that money".
JD may well succeed the majors following their collapse, but will he be any different with respect to music itself ? I'm not convinced he won't just produce the next round of corporate crap.
I would not sign an artist unless he/she A. PLAYED AN INSTRUMENT! B. WROTE THEIR OWN SONGS! and /or C.SANG REALLY WELL! Why is it that 30 years on ,Stevie Wonder's music from the 70's still move's us ? Or the Isley Brother's? Or Sammy Davis Jr's? The answer is... talent. Not "looks". Not "promotion". Talent.Thi
Jermaine, if you or anyone at your label needs a little "new blood" out at Island, drop me a line at yahoo.comahoo.com.
I'm a college grad music and film minor with a major in the Classics, and I've been following the ups and downs of hip-hop, rock, punk, and electronica since back before the days of Planet Rock and Egyptian Lover. And while I used to spend a lot of time complaining about the music industry (even as I aspired to get my foot in the door) it was only after I put my own money on the line trying to start my own music business that I finally understood the reality of what you are saying in this article.
The game has definitely changed, but the common denominator is that we ALL want to hear more good music by any means necessary.
If you could use new talent on either side of the mixing boards, drop me a line.
Interesting post.
I see a lot of valid points and just as many that have no validity.
I'll wait to see more responses because mine have more to do with the lack of any serious talent anymore and the record companies having no clue about the future of how to market music.
The music industry is totally retarded.
"O Brother, Where Art Thou", which doesn't have a SINGLE radio "hit" on it, and is 100% Americana folk music, has just been certified
PLATINUM for the
EIGHTH time
(8,000,000+ copies sold).
That's 4x more than any other album in at least 2 years.
That's 4x more than Justin Timberlake's latest.
That's 4x more than "Hanna Montana"
That's 16x more than your girl Janet Jackson!
The music industry didn't have any hopes for it.
P.S. Are you still working with Janet? If so, help her out! She still looks fierce and she should be on top of the world right now.
I am sick of these grandiose, over the top bullsh*t statements from those in the hip/hop R&B community. Jermaine, you make mediocre forgettable music for Mariah and Janet. Music nobody will remember in 2 years much less 10 to 20 years. Then you have the audacity to criticize other artists( especially those that compete directly with Mariah and Janet). Last I saw Janet was flopping on her last 3 CD's( she should go back to making good music instead of overly commercial tripe) and Mariah is still considered an extreme lightweight in the music industry( she didn't even make VH-1's Top 100 Greatest Female Artists list, a list compiled by over 500 other female artists). Sad.
Tell us - just how "dangerous" is mainstream music, Jermaine? Do you mean "dangerous" for the general public? Should I like 50 so much that I want to get shot, just like him? Should I shoot someone? Would that get me big in your industry? It worked for 50, because talent certainly ain't his forte...
Oh - and where is Kris Kross now? One hit, if I remember correctly, pushed down my throat until I could only laugh when I heard it... they were 2 little kids, who could barely "Jump."
How about The Coup? How about Mos Def? How about an act with an actual message instead of bragging about how much money they have and how many people they've shot/been shot by?
You have to keep in mind we're selling music not hostess twinkies units also.
"Leave your ego at the door"
Quincy Jones
Mr. Dupri you stated "When I sign someone, there has to be talent. But the other part is the artists' look."
Unfortunately this is keeping some great singers, bands, artist from getting heard and scene by the public masses.
Older artist like Joni Mitchell, Chaka Khan, Boz Scaggs, Stevie Nicks, and Etta James are rarely given the promotion and radio airplay with their new material. I wonder if you'd produced them would they get their just do or will their age and looks deter you?
Good music does not equal sales sir.
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Posted November 7, 2007 | 09:37 AM (EST)