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- [00:00]
Troy Carter
Foreign
- [00:04]
Dan Runcie
I'm Dan Runcy. Welcome to Trapitol and you're about to hear from the one and only Troy Carter, who now officially is a friend of the pod. This is now Troy's third time on Trapital. The first was during the pandemic. The second time was at our first ever Trapital summit in 2024. And this conversation you're about to hear was in March in Austin during south by Southwest. The talk was hosted by Shaka Mahone, who is the founder of Dahua, who had hosted this four day experience during south by called Vision8291. A bunch of speakers and conversations around music, entertainment, culture and where things are heading. Troye needs no introduction, but for those who may be less familiar, Troy's experience as a talent manager managing artists like Lady Gaga, Eve and countless others. He also built Atom Factory, he was an executive at Spotify for a number of years, he managed the Prince estate for five years, and he is now currently the CEO and co founder of Venice Music. Troy and I covered a bunch in this conversation, including why he believes that Suno is the most consequential technology to ever enter the music business, what he thinks about catalog sales, where the music industry's going forward, and where he thinks some of the opportunities to grow in. So I really hope you enjoyed this one as much as we did. Here's my conversation with Troy Carter. I have some exciting news for you. Our Trapital Summit is back for year three on Tuesday, September 15th. Some rooms matter more than others and
- [01:38]
Shaka Mahone
this is one of them.
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Dan Runcie
We built this summit for the people who are shaping what's next across music, media, technology and capital. Your founders, executives, investors and operators. The people making decisions, asking sharper questions and building where culture and business are headed. This is not about packing a room
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Shaka Mahone
for the sake of it.
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Dan Runcie
It is about bringing together the right people for the right conversations at the right time. If you care about where the business of culture, entertainment, technology is going, this
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Shaka Mahone
is a room you want to be in.
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Dan Runcie
Our tickets for the Trapital Summit go live on Thursday, April 30. We'll see you there in Los Angeles in September.
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Shaka Mahone
Can't wait. We were just talking now. There are so many developments happening in this space. How do you stay ahead of everything? How do you make sure that your finger is on the pulse?
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Troy Carter
You know, I think for me personally it's about staying curious. That's always been like a key trait for me. Like since I was a young kid I've been having a ton of fun because I Think there's so many new technologies to experiment with. I like to be out as far in front of these things as possible. If you can't get your hands dirty and play in the dirt and get the dirt under your fingernails. So that's what I do with all of the software. You know, Suzy knows. I think I have like every subscription you could think of or whatever. I try everything. So I think, you know, just learning by building and playing with it and following some really smart people, you try to stay ahead of the curve. But like we were just saying, every six weeks we're seeing these leaps now. It's very hard to stay ahead. You just gotta keep riding a wave right now.
- [03:24]
Shaka Mahone
And where are you getting most of your information from to stay ahead?
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Troy Carter
From other founders, from, you know, smart people that I follow on X from. I read a ton, so I'm just always digging. I'm like a truffle pig with technology. So I'm just trying to find like, what are these people working on right now? So. And I asked a ton of questions.
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Shaka Mahone
I remember Mark Andreessen had this quote recently. He said he's getting a quarter of his information from X following smart people. A quarter of the information from reading what the AI generative prompts will give to him based on what he's sharing.
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Troy Carter
Yeah.
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Shaka Mahone
A quarter from podcasts that are sharing stuff and then a quarter that he's still reserving for old tested books or
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Dan Runcie
other things that have stood the test of time.
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Shaka Mahone
So that there's still that balance of old and new.
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Troy Carter
Absolutely. I would say my division is close to that. Part of it too is I give myself a lot of empty space too. Sometimes I just need breathing room to not read anything, not be on my computer. Being out in nature, that's where I get a lot of my downloads from. And I think that fresh space is what makes it just give it a little palate cleanser as well too.
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Dan Runcie
Right.
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Shaka Mahone
Like you still need some form of real world.
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Troy Carter
Oh, absolutely. For me, one of the competitive edges too is I still read a lot of books. I was reading a Ray Dalio piece today. I was reading the comments and everybody was asking Grok, what's the TLDR on this? Or whatever. As I was looking through the comments because it was said 46 minute read or whatever it was, people aren't gonna have the capacity for deep thought thought because they're going to let software do all the deep thought for them. And when you lose that capacity and that software goes away for any reason, you're stuck I'm convinced we got to be prepared for there to be some sort of period where you don't have access to the software. And when you got to think for yourself and you're not trained to think for yourself or you forgot how to think for yourself and you lose a bit of an advantage. That's like my, my gym still being able to read and think and have my own ideas.
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Dan Runcie
Let's talk about that.
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Shaka Mahone
Because I feel like sometimes people over value just how much the process is you taking in the information in its full part and then you picking apart which parts are the most valuable. You saying, okay, this I can put here and form my own thought behind it.
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Dan Runcie
But if you're just saying, hey Grok, summarize this please.
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Shaka Mahone
Then you're just getting the same thing everyone else gets. And that just takes you further and further away from anything that's authentic by any means.
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Troy Carter
Because you know, if you look at part of learning and part of reading is basically to be able to digest other ideas and to be able to come out with your, your ideas based off of those ideas. So if you're pulling from all of these different spaces, the whole point is for you to come up with your own point of view about it versus it just being a sort of one way thing. And I think that's what we're being trained for right now.
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Dan Runcie
And that reminds me of things that
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Shaka Mahone
you and I have talked about in the past.
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Dan Runcie
Right.
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Shaka Mahone
You hear so much about taste. It's hard to develop your own taste if you don't have anything that really stands out as your own thing.
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Troy Carter
Yes. Like, you know, when everybody has access to the same exact tools and the same exact information, taste and point of view is gonna be what makes the difference. You gotta know the difference between a good photo and a bad photo. You gotta know the difference between a good song and a bad song. You gotta know the difference between a good script and a bad script. That's gonna matter. What I'm seeing is models are getting better and better, but it has to be somebody on the other side that knows this is better than that and this is what's gonna be presented to the public. Being able to have those filters right now, I think is gonna be a differentiator that's gonna change, but I think is a window right now where it's really gonna matter.
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Shaka Mahone
And this is relevant to music because this is the thing that people that have been successful in this space have always had some ability to discern. There's no mathematical equation. You can go back to that says, oh, why did L. Reid choose to put so and so to the forefront? Or why do they drop certain artists? You have been at the front for
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Dan Runcie
a lot of those conversations.
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Troy Carter
Yeah, I think what made me successful wouldn't make me successful today. When I look at the music industry right now and culture right now, we're just in such a different time. I'm just going to be honest. Like, I think Suno is the most consequential piece of technology that ever came into music. The most consequential. More than radio, more than the phonograph. Yes, because it equalized the playing field. When I first saw the technology, I'm like, this is pretty terrible. It was bad. And then probably six months ago, I'm on it. And I'm like, yo, this thing has gotten really good. And then some people started playing me music from it. I can't tell you how many managers, producers and songwriters that a lot of people in this room know use it. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I guess America in general is very AI pessimistic. It's happening with whether we like it or not is like, it's happening. It's going to be a part of our everyday lives. My concern for creatives is that creatives will become so dogmatic about it that they get left behind because it's going to create a new crop of creators. So it's like, so if you're a kid right now, you're not coming in learning Ableton, you know what I'm saying? You're not going to music school, you're going on Suno and you're going to learn how to create songs there. And that's going to be your primary format. The same way we saw people become YouTube natives or streaming natives. It's just a different generation and what ends up happening. I'm old enough to have lived through a few technology cycles. You have people who push back against technology that get left behind, and by the time they jump in, they're a little too far behind. So whether it's release frequency, whether it's release strategies, all of the things that natives just get naturally, but because they don't have a history of 20 years of how it used to be done, they jump out way ahead. And so if I'm an artist, at minimum, I'm learning as much as I can about it and then making my decisions based off of that one. I would use it to my advantage because I think there's a huge amount of upside in it. But I wouldn't be as afraid of it as I see a lot of creatives are right now.
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Shaka Mahone
Let's talk more about the consequential part of it because I'm sure some people may hear that and they say, okay, well, streaming seemed pretty consequential. You look at anyone from Soulja Boy coming out with the video straight on YouTube ghoster number one. And then anyone that have released through the SoundCloud era. And then even with some independent artists I've been able to do the past few years, that's been pretty big for the industry. And why is this?
- [10:55]
Troy Carter
But you had to have some level of talent to do it. You had to have some level of talent to do it. AI removes that. If you could type in natural language. I want to make a record that sounds like this. With this, this and that, you get it back. I want to change this, this and that. In five minutes or 10 minutes. You got something as. Just as good as everything on Spotify, which isn't a. It's not a compliment, by the way, because by the way, 90% of music is bad on Spotify right now. But it's creating an equal playing field at that point. I heard a couple songs where I'm like, that's a hit. That record right there is a hit. And that took that person 15 minutes to make it, by the way. And nobody. Fans don't care. They don't care. They just want to hear good music. I look at these platforms like Suno, like an Instagram photography, to take a good picture was really hard. You had to know names of filters and like lighting and like all of these things. You had to be a professional photographer to really take an excellent picture. Instagram comes along and all of a sudden everybody takes beautiful photos. When you can layer on commercialization and music has natural commercialization to it, all of a sudden the game changes at that point. On the flip side of it is the music industry is powered by technology companies, which is unfortunate by the way. The people that are in charge of the music industry led the music industry off of a cliff thinking about short term gains. So all of these record label heads who did all of these stupid deals with these companies who didn't innovate and build any technology themselves, who, who priced the music the way companies wanted the music priced and all of these things, and they're just looking at their own bonuses. The way they're incentivized is way different than the way founders of companies are incentivized. So they're thinking short Term. And they're not thinking about the long term interests of the artist, they're not thinking about the long term interest of the business. They're thinking about what does this quarter gonna look like and am I gonna get my bonus? And they handed the keys over to technology companies. And technology companies don't give a fuck about music. It's like it's a byproduct that sits within a platform that they gotta pay for, unfortunately. So the way they're looking ahead, it is from a technology company is if I gotta Pay x amount 70% of my revenue out to music companies for using that product or I gotta pay these billions of dollars out and now I could get music that's almost free from all of these new artists that are making music on Suno that sounds very similar to the music that I'm paying billions of dollars for. What music am I going to point the Funnel towards? Now, ByteDance is a really smart company. YouTube's a really smart company. Meta is a very smart company. If they got to choose between paying Lucian Grange $11 billion this year or all of these new creators $2 billion, they're going to point towards the $2 billion. And unfortunately, consumers won't care. They'll have that small percentage of artists that they really care about that they're going to pay 200, 300 bucks to go. See, those still exist, but for the background music that you're just listening to on streaming or that you see in a social content video, they don't care who that comes from.
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Shaka Mahone
One thing specifically, you worked at Spotify, you worked at one of these technology companies. Did you feel like at that moment your goal was in a lot of ways, how can we bridge the gap? I am the person that is well respected in the music space. Do you feel like Suno can do the same?
- [14:51]
Troy Carter
Yeah, I think so. They've already started. Like, even some people who work for me are working over at SUNO now, who worked for me at Spotify and worked for me at Atom Factory. I'm a management company. They're hiring the right people. But this is different. The goals with Spotify and me building out a team there, it was to really build a bridge between the music industry because we had to do licensing with record labels, we had to do licensing with publishers, we had to build better relationships with artists. Honestly, those companies don't have to do that at all because they're a consumer company. The music industry can't sue their way out of this one because when this goes to court, they're going to get fair use. So it's not going to be a copyright infringement thing. It's going to be fair use because for AI in this, in America right now with this administration, they're not going to do anything to slow AI down. And the moment it turns into a copyright thing where it starts bankrupting AI companies, the people in charge of this administration, who has a lot of influence over the people that are making decisions, are going to say China's going to win the AI war if we do. Da da da da da da. My prediction is it's going to be fair use with copyrights. Unfortunately, by the way, a lot of artists got robbed. They stole everybody's music to create these models or whatever. But it is what it is. We either could bitch about it or, or really take a look at say, okay, the train's leaving the station. How is this thing going to work? When I saw streaming come in years ago and I sat down with Daniel on the Spotify team, I'm looking at all of the data that was happening in the Nordics at that time. Nobody was on itunes in the Nordics. Everybody was on this new platform, Spotify. Let's check that out. You mean to tell me for 999 or 799amonth I could have all of the music in the world or I could buy one album on iTunes is a no brainer. This is where music's going to go. You get paid every time people listen and you could build revenue stream like this is definitely where it's going to go. As much as I could be sort of nostalgic about things and dogmatic about things, I'm also really practical about things as well too. And I think, you know, we, we got to be realistic on where things are going and make sure that, you know, we, we're able to benefit off of it as well too.
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Dan Runcie
Let's take a break for our chart metric stat of the week. Troy and I talked about the Michael Jackson estate and the work that they've done, especially in the past nearly 17 years since Jackson passed away. Of course, the biopic came out recently, the biggest opening weekend for a biopic of all time. But I was curious to see how did it impact the streams. Checking the chart metric data, Michael Jackson is currently the 9th artist on the chart metric official artist rink number 3 in the United States.
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Shaka Mahone
Number 8 for pop music.
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Dan Runcie
Number 4 for rock music. Number 6 for both R B, soul and dance. Number 1 for soft rock. Number 1 for classic rock. Number 1 for disco.
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Shaka Mahone
The List goes on.
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Dan Runcie
He is one of the most streamed
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Shaka Mahone
artists in the world currently.
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Dan Runcie
And of course the biopics a big reason why. But the work that Interstate does to get to this point plays an important role that can't be overlooked. Let's get back to the episode.
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Shaka Mahone
We should talk a bit more about the consumption piece of it, specifically for a platform like Suno, because with the Spotify example that you gave, yes, you're shifting from itunes to streaming at that point, but the knowledge base of the underlying music is still the same. If you want to hear a Dr. Dre record, you want to hear 2001. Whether you're buying like a set, tape, CD, digital download or streaming, that's still the same thing. But on any of these AI generative platforms it's different, something derivative off of that. It's assuming that the consumer is then still going to be as interested in the output from a platform like Suno in production music. Of course it makes sense, but how does it play out from the consumption aspect?
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Troy Carter
If I look at and we did a, we did a ton of studies on eras of music, right, where you see natural deterioration, Nobody's listening to 1920 music anymore. 30s music, 40s music, 50s music, 60s music, 70s, 80s. You sort of see this deterioration as generations grow older, right? We'll see a merger of the two where they sort of coexist. But the reality is catalogs are going to start building from these platforms. And so if you get hit records coming out of these things, and when I mean hits, it's just songs that become popular on social, they'll be on these new platforms. They'll be on Spotify as well too. They'll be on SoundCloud, they'll be on YouTube or whatever else. But slowly but surely you'll see these migrations or whatever. But my guess is you'll see some acquisitions where maybe you see some of platforms merge with these types of platforms as well. So where you have creation and consumption that coexist together as well too. So I think you'll see a combination of models. By the way, one of the things
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Shaka Mahone
that Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kinsel had mentioned recently in his one of his letters is that he actually could see a platform like Suno being a benefit. Because if you look at the current lay of the land at Spotify, right now they're sharing a royalty pool based off of the 100 million plus tracks that are there. Of course, the top 1% get most of the streams, but there's still a lot of distribution there but their bet is that a platform like SUNO would hopefully pull more music from the music that they own. And could that end up actually being even more additive to their catalog than the current status quo?
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Troy Carter
Yeah, it'll be new models. You know, this is new, totally new territory. Robert Kenzel is probably one of the smartest guys that I met because he came from Netflix and then helped build YouTube. He sort of understands what new models look like, you know, and Netflix is a great example of, of just, you know, if you would have looked at what that company was in the beginning and, you know, studios didn't take them seriously and they changed consumer behavior and consumer behavior changes. You know, nobody knew you wanted to watch all of the episodes at one time. Thinking about binge watching and thinking about international programming, just all of these different types of behaviors. Netflix and technology ushered it in. And we never look back. Those old models, they look much, you know, they look antiquated.
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Shaka Mahone
Now, the other thing you mentioned, I want to go back to, you talked about Instagram, and for as long as I've worked in this space, people have been eager to find what is music's Instagram going to look like. And in some ways there are aspects of SUNO that do look like that. Yes, it can democratize the middleware. If everyone then has access to these tools, then what people are willing to pay for changes completely. But what I think Instagram also did is it raised the bar for what people were willing to pay for and also what they expected. So it wasn't like photographers went out of business. There were now photographers that could charge 10 times more than they could before because of the fact that Instagram exists. And I'm curious to see if something like that happens in the audio space in the same type of way.
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Troy Carter
Yeah, I think because music is like, we've always had a much larger commercialization than like photography. I think we've always had larger sort of distribution systems for it is going to be a lot of talented creators. I won't call them artists. I'll call them creators that come out of SUNO because they'll understand, they'll come up with their own formulas for making music. And on the consumer side, TikTok's a prime example. People don't care who the artist is. They're discovering music through the context of video. The song just happens to be in the background. The context of it has zero to do with the artist. I was driving my daughter to school last week. I always play her like old school music, and she's like Oh, I found this Bill Withers remix of Ain't no Sunshine. So how'd you find that TikTok? This bill with the song is 60, you know, 1960 or whatever. But it's like she's discovering that on. On TikTok from a video that somebody played, you know, some trend or whatever. If you're a content creator and you're making a video, for instance, you don't have to use somebody else's song anymore. You're going to go into. Into. Into your Suno or Udio or whatever. You, you. You're making music on. Create something very specific for your video, and that's going to be a hit. That's going to be the hit. So that'll be the hit that people go to Spotify and stream, and you'll get 10 million streams on a song that you created from that. You, as a video creator, was able to create that song. So I just feel like the whole. The whole thing's going to shift. We're in totally new territory. It's new territory. That's why I couldn't be successful at it, by the way, because, like, for, you know, my definition of artistry, the bar is much higher. You got to have skin in the game. I come from a place of artistry where there's suffering in the work. You wrote that song because your heart was broken, you know what I'm saying? Or this was about your life or you got shot at for real. That wasn't just a line. These are life experiences, you know. So for me, spending decades working with real artists, it was blood in that work. Susie and I worked Prince's estate for five years after he passed away. I'm not going from working Prince's estate to somebody who just decided they wanted to be a musician and created a song in 15 minutes and we gonna work together. We ain't doing that. My respect level for the definition of artistry sits separate from what I know to where. Where I know the music industry's going. I gotta separate my personal beliefs from where I understand the music industry is going.
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Shaka Mahone
What's the skill set you think that you don't have that you think that you would need to be successful at if you were starting out.
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Troy Carter
Love of art. I'm serious. I think a lot of people right now have a love of the music business. I think there's a lot of people who have the love of money. People are in it for different reasons. And guess what? We can make a lot of money doing it. I love the business as well. Or whatever. But it is very hard to be a successful manager if you aren't in love with artists. Because being a manager is hard. You got to put up with a lot is blood in that work is me away from my family is a lot of work you put into being a manager. And if you don't absolutely love it, you're going to hate it. That was my breaking point. When I really decided I don't want to do management anymore is when I woke up and I. I was still successful as a manager, but I wasn't in love with the artist. And that was like, where I'm like, I can't do it. Like, it's not, it's not in me.
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Shaka Mahone
And that can always be the tough trap, right? Because you know that that treadmill can just keep going, the money's good, and you convince yourself and then boom, 10 years later you're in the same spot.
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Troy Carter
Yep, 100%. And for me personally, I've had the most success with artists when it was artists who I really, really believed in. Like, I was like, I'm in love. I know what this artist is. I know the DNA. The artist wasn't making no money. 90% of the artists that I've worked with were artists who was at zero or less than mid when I came in. And then we built it. So it's like you're taking bets on people. So to take those bets, you gotta really, really, really believe. Because you don't make money as a manager unless that artist becomes successful.
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Shaka Mahone
And this is where things feel a bit full circle in a way. Right, because you're mentioning the skills that would be required. Now, maybe someone has a bit less love for this, but they are more of a quant in certain ways. Right? But on the other hand, where do they get the taste from if they're going purely off of someone that is an artist manager of the Suno generation, the Yurio generation.
- [28:01]
Troy Carter
The one thing I have faith in is like, I got faith in culture. I meet a lot of young people who I feel like are just dope. They'll go from knowing dope movies to like obscure fashion designers to some up and coming, you know, visual artists. There's people who still have refined taste. So I got faith in that part of it, you know, so and so they'll always exist. The question is, is it going to be enough of them? Are they going to be trained to turn taste into structure and strategy? Because you got to have taste, but you also got to have some structure. You also got to have Some strategy. You also got to have some discipline, you know, and that comes from training and mentorship and those things or whatever. I'm pretty optimistic that those layers will still continue to surface.
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Shaka Mahone
Switching gears a bit, you talked about Bill Weathers earlier, and you also talked about the Prince estate. We should talk about music catalogs and rights sales. That's been a growing space, and in many ways it sits opposite of what's happening right now with these platforms. Like you said, there's definitely a decay in terms of the popularity of music from the 70s, 80s, 90s. There are people that are still spending billions of dollars on those catalogs and those rights from that era. What's your take on that space right now?
- [29:31]
Troy Carter
It's really incredibly smart people that are coming into that space. How do I put it? That's not even a music business anymore. So we're talking about different categories. You got sort of art and artists. You got the music business, and then you got the private equity business. And I think catalogs are no longer music assets. I think they've become financial assets. Where it concerns me is you gotta have a certain level of stewardship when it comes to estates and legacies of highly important individuals. And so when I look at some of the most important artists that ever walked the earth, by the way, they can't be treated like financial assets. They got to be treated as cultural assets. So the same way we would treat a Monet or a Picasso or a Van Gogh in the Met Museum, and a Monet that's worth $350 million that hangs in the Met, that's the same way I want to see a Prince treated or a Michael Jackson treated or Bruce Springsteen. And so that's what we gotta be careful with. Like, how do you treat those assets? Because if you just start throwing all of these things in the fucking Ford Escort commercial, they become less and less and less valuable. You got this stewardship that comes with those.
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Shaka Mahone
Is there anything that you've seen, any examples of a lack of stewardship or opportunities?
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Troy Carter
A lot of them, but I won't mention them.
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Shaka Mahone
Okay, well, maybe on the positive side, is there anything that you've seen that you've liked, that you've said, okay, this is a good example. Could we see more of this, especially after an acquisition or after a deal has happened?
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Troy Carter
Yeah, I just. I think it's early. I think it's early days. Still a young space. When I look at the catalog acquisition space, Michael Jackson's estate, I think they've been incredibly responsible. Because if I look at where Michael, when he passed away, I think he was almost a half a billion dollars in debt. Reputation wasn't in the best place or anything like that or whatever. And the legacy has sort of faded of who Michael was. What they've done with the Broadway play, this Antoine Fuqua version of the movie, they just made really great choices. It's still early, but I feel like they've been really responsible. They haven't made stupid. There's no net negative there. All net positive, I think.
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Shaka Mahone
And I know you would know better than anyone, having worked with the Prince estate, maybe speak a little bit to how tough this can be. Because I think from the outside, there are a lot of these estate management relationships, business deals that can make people say, what is going on over there? It's like a shit show. I also know that it's harder than it often seems from the outside has given all of the stakeholders.
- [32:41]
Troy Carter
I remember the day they announced that I was going to do the Prince estate. The news broke, and Jimmy Iovine called me up and he goes. He's like, troy, what the fuck are you thinking doing this? 99% of the people who inherit this stuff have. Have 1% of the integrity of the person that they inherited from. He was like, just be super careful. You don't know the hornet's nest that. That you may hit. Because when somebody passes away is a lot of emotion. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of parties or whatever else. I had the time of my life doing the Prince estate. It was such an incredible experience. And, you know, granted is like, you know, you deal with probate and things like that or whatever. On a personal level, I was very sensitive to what his family was going through. If you haven't been in the music industry and all of a sudden you get Prince's estate, you don't even know where to start. And then all of the emotion after having a loved one pass away is fresh territory for everybody. So, one, have some level of empathy for the people who you got to deal with on this thing. The toughest part was you never can answer, what would Prince do? That's a lot of weight on what would Prince do? Because I can't do what Prince would do. This is one of the most brilliant artists in history, one of the most complex artists in history. And then you sort of have this burden of pay a tax bill with probate, you gotta monetize, because that's part of your job, because it's in the probate system. And at the same time, you gotta protect his legacy with your life. What does that balance look like? But, you know, it's such a. Such a fun project. Such a fun project.
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Shaka Mahone
Would you ever manage another estate for an artist at that level?
- [34:30]
Troy Carter
Absolutely. It's not many of those. When I got that phone call, I was at Spotify, and, you know, I called Daniel from Spotify and I told him, I'm like, dude, I'm doing this one. Like, you know, and they were cool about it or whatever, but, you know, that's. Who wouldn't do that.
- [34:48]
Shaka Mahone
You brought up the point about just not being able to know what Prince would say. Like, did you find yourself repeating those lines? Don't own your masters or your masters or own you or any of those Prince axioms.
- [34:58]
Troy Carter
What we did was we brought on Michael Howe, worked with Prince on the remaster Purple Rain, and I'd known Michael Howe forever, and I'm like, okay, if Prince trusted Michael, I'm definitely gonna trust Michael. So he came on board as, like, our sort of curator in A and R. We brought on one of Prince's creative guys, Trevor, who worked with Prince in the past. We brought on a Prince historian who knew everything there is to know about Prince. He could hear a song and say, oh, that was 1986, Syracuse. Live from da da da da da da. That was Dwayne. We had a crew who really knew Prince, too. So the weight wasn't just on us to make business decisions. We had a team around that could kind of like, say, okay, this is the closest we could get to what we think Prince would give us half a side eye on. We had to be careful, but we were comfortable enough to know that, okay, we're. We got good people around that he trusted.
- [36:05]
Shaka Mahone
I could definitely see that. I could definitely see that. Before we close out Troy Carter, give
- [36:10]
Troy Carter
it up for Dan, too. Dan's one of the smartest people in the business, and I love and respect. Thank you, brother.
- [36:19]
Dan Runcie
And that is a wrap for my conversation with Troy Carter. Thank you again to Troy, Donovan, Susie, and the entire Venice music team. Thanks again to Shaka and the team at Dawa. Thank you to G, Eric Roana and
- [36:32]
Shaka Mahone
everyone on our team for helping with
- [36:34]
Dan Runcie
the audio and video for this episode.
- [36:36]
Shaka Mahone
And most importantly, thank you for listening.
- [36:38]
Dan Runcie
If there's one person you know that would really enjoy this episode of Trap Ital, whether it's this conversation with Troy or any of the conversations that we have, then send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow. And if you're not already following trapital, tap that follow button. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get podcasts.
- [36:58]
Shaka Mahone
And if you haven't already, leave a
- [37:00]
Dan Runcie
review, leave a comment that helps the algorithm do its thing and make sure that trapital gets in front of the right people. Thanks again.
- [37:07]
Shaka Mahone
Talk to you next time.