'Magic' is a word that's too often misused in the record industry.
We have a problem in the industry, I believe. This whole 'free' issue. The television industry doesn't have it, the movie industry doesn't have it, but the record industry has it.
All I've ever wanted to do is move the needle on popular culture.
I didn't feel comfortable as an executive. I felt comfortable around artists and record producers... and then I found my niche: I gotta find great producers, and I produce them.
I'm not a pioneer of hip-hop; I just saw it and said, 'This thing is incredible, and these people are incredible. They should be exposed all over the world.'
It's one thing for the industry to lose half its revenue to piracy; it's another to destroy it emotionally.
I'm trying to help Apple Music be an overall movement in popular culture, everything from unsigned bands to video.
There's just no way to stop a movement in popular culture. It's going to happen, with or without you. There's absolutely no way to stop that train.
Having a hit is nice, having some success, but when you move popular culture, that's a high.
There are geniuses, savants; I'm not one of them. I work hard, I see where popular culture's going to move, but I've gotta keep having information pumped into me. I look under every rock.
The good news is in the record business, they only count your successes.
Record companies are not unique. Artists are. Period!
You go into any recording studio in the world, and you see candles, lights, and that Apple light from a Mac.
I consider the recording studio where I was born.
What I saw in the record industry is it's just getting more restricted, more restricted, more restricted to where everyone's trying to figure out what kind of song to make to get on the radio: that's researched and where advertisers are telling you what to play.
I didn't have any sophistication. I didn't really have any great taste or anything like that. I was just a kid from Brooklyn. But what I learnt is the why, the how. The work ethic.
I don't look at Spotify or Rdio or any of these guys as a direct competitor: I look at other forms of entertainment as the competitor.
I don't know why records are treated different than books. I don't know why an Eminem record is different than a Stephen King movie.
What we feel, especially in the streaming area, especially in the services area, is that you need curation.
The fact is that 'free' in music streaming is so technically good and ubiquitous that it's stunting the growth of paid streaming.
