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06.09.13 MusicWeek 17
Management. Producer Brian Robbins has also been brought on board, bringing with him a track record of successful content creation for YouTube via his own community-based MCN ATVNetwork, having generated more than one billion views. We spoke with Simmons to find out what
inspired All Def Music and why YouTube is such an important platform for the media-hopping mogul in 2013.
How did All Def Music come about? It started this way: I moved to Hollywood to buy a TV network with the intent to produce a lot of content that could move across media but that didn’t have to. Creative work that we would monetise without traditional cable or network television. All Def Comedy was a focus because a lot of these comics are underserved and haven’t had a chance to cross over or be in the right scene. Finding talent on YouTube and moving it
across media is an obvious idea, rather than buying a TV network, which was the first instinct. I couldn’t do All Def Comedy without someone calling me and saying, “What about all these poetry videos?” so then I was doing All Def Comedy and All Def Poetry. What happens with all the YouTube talent is
that it hasn’t got proper management. People who are developing online don’t have insight into the industry that they want to join and music is no different. So I went out and got Steve Rifkind, who
became a partner, and I got a good director and partner in Brian Robbins and All Def Music was born. And you can’t do All Def Music without Def Jam Records… So that’s it’s evolution. Now there is so much music online and so
much talent. We’d be what is called a ‘super indie’. We’re meeting with and developing lots of new
“[All Def Music] would be what is called a ‘super indie’. We’re free to work with developing artists but we have the resources to move them across media” RUSSELL SIMMONS
artists. If you look at that Jarell Perry artist, he’s building a nice little buzz and there are number of other artists who are doing extremely well and just beginning.
What do you mean when you refer to All Def Music being a super indie? We’re indie in that we’re free to work with a lot of artists. The structure that most record companies have is prohibitive [if you want] to work with developing artists in the way that we want to. We have the resources to move them across various kinds of media, which is something they really care about, and to monetise them, which I’m uniquely qualified to do. On top of that we have all kinds of branding exercises we can go on that are different to what a major or indie company would do. So we’re a super indie. There are another couple of announcements that
we’re going to make that will help us do that in publishing and other ways of exploitation for music artists. We’re going to find ways to give developing artists a break - a ladder that’s cost efficient, that makes sense and still develops them and gives them attention.
So we could see a ‘YouTube publisher’ from you in the future as well? Well yeah, if we could find a way to exploit these artists’ publishing in ways that have previously not been explored by major publishing companies.
ABOVE Signing icons: Jay Z and LL Cool J are just two of the hip hop giants signed by Russell Simmons during his time at Def Jam
How do you sign, develop and promote artists on YouTube? How will this label work day to day? People will be given additional ways to reach their audience by heightening their presence online through creative marketing and branding. Each artist will be different; some will be hot online and fall into a traditional system as part of their process, some may be successful online and never join into the old record companies, the old world.
Is there the intention to get revenue directly from YouTube? Promotion is one thing but will there be a push to monetise content there directly as well? There’s a synergistic opportunity between YouTube and Universal and Def Jam Records that is really advantageous to all parties.
How effective a platform is YouTube in terms of generating revenue in your eyes? Well, we’re going to find a bunch of new ways [to generate revenue]. [YouTube] is being more open, we have some strategy ideas that we’re discussing that I can’t talk about today, and some are more obvious. I opened another company called Narrative,
which I invested in two months ago. Narrative is about creative ways to brand products online, to come up with alternative and more innovative solutions for people who want to exploit the internet for their brand. There’ll be a lot of integration between the work of Narrative and All Def Music.
It sounds like there’s a hope that artists that are doing well on YouTube can move into traditional sales and charts. Is that when they move into Universal’s more traditional house, if you will? Universal’s more traditional house will move more towards us than we will towards them.
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