The Reality of Music Careers on Breaking In & Moving Up

Jakob

Hello guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections podcast. Today I have Christine and Stio, welcome.

Christine Osazuwa

Hi there, thanks for having me, excited to be here, thanks Jacob.

Jakob

I've been following you for a while on LinkedIn. You've had an amazing career, to say the least. And right now, we're also going to talk about you, your career, but measuring music, which is a conference happening soon. Christine, for the audience, you don't know who you are. Who are you and what do?

Christine Osazuwa

Hey, yeah, so I do a lot. So first of all, the accent's American, like me, but I've lived in London for five and a half years now. Prior to that, I lived in Stockholm for two years. I'm originally from Baltimore in the States. And what I do, I've worked in music for 20 years, part time to start off with when I was in undergrad, full time. After that, basically, spent a lot of time at major labels, spent time at music tech startups, primarily in the live and the ticketing space. I did my undergrad degree in music business, I did my MBA in marketing, I did my master's in data science, and I used all of those degrees somehow to actually get work done. And some of the work I do now is primarily in the data marketing and strategy spaces, working with labels, artists, nonprofits, and startups all to optimize their companies basically.

Jakob

Well, I think you sort of hit our audience quite well. Go through your LinkedIn and sort of your story. I think it's quite interesting how you went from a very, very senior major label position to working with, I don't know, multiples of startups afterwards, which is not like so usual. Could you just walk us through before we get into measured music, like high level? I know it's been a long career. Like what has your journey been like so far?

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, it's been there is no straight path and I think I had an epiphany when I was in undergrad that there was not a path forward. So basically to start off, I started booking shows when I was 15. I booked my first show with my 16th birthday party basically. Went from that to running a print magazine in the era of the blog, but I really liked print media, so I ran a print magazine for several years while booking shows as well and promoting shows in the Baltimore area where I'm from. By the time I was done, I had a staff of 12 girls all over the East Coast. We did like 40 issues, something along those lines. Those were all like focused on like pop punk. an email. I come up from the Warped Tour space basically is how I grew up. Did my undergrad degree in music business like I mentioned. Started working at a ticketing company in Baltimore part-time while I was in school full-time after I finished school. Did a stint at Atlantic Records as a consultant while I was in school as well. Finished up undergrad. Continued at the previous role. Left music for a few years. Well, left music full-time to work at the company, the university I graduated from. So they paid for my master's degree. So I finished my MBA there, I paid for my master's degree in data science. I left there, moved to Stockholm, worked for Universal Music Group. By the I left Universal, I was the head of data and insights for Universal Music Sweden. Left Sweden after two years to go to London and by the time I finished at Warner Music, I was the global marketing director for data and insights. And then left there, went to a startup, in the live music and intersection of live music and travel. I was there for about 10 months before it imploded itself, but I had a blast for the 10 months I was there. As strategy director, left there to go to another ticketing startup.

Christine Osazuwa

Chief Strategy Officer. I was there for about two years actually and I just wrapped that up to go out on my own so I'm working fully freelance now in addition to in that span of time I joined several boards so I became an angel investor and then I run my own conference called Measure of Music as well.

Jakob

Yeah, well, I love it. It's a lot and that's so exciting. And we've got to talk about that today. But what is measure of music? What is it you're focusing on right now?

Christine Osazuwa

Thank Yeah, so Measure of Music was my baby from COVID basically. So 2020, while everyone else was making bread, I had the brilliant idea to decide to take on an entire new job essentially. So I started a conference called Measure of Music. It's a music tech and data conference and hackathon that happens annually. 2025 marks the fifth year of the conference. And the goal of the conference was basically in 2020, lot of people were losing their jobs. In 2025, a lot of people are somehow still losing their jobs. of it was to help people that were job seekers or looking to change roles in the industry or get into the industry find a path forward. So the hackathon idea came first. The idea of the hackathon was it would give people a finished project that they could show to potential employees or potential clients. While I was doing that, basically, year one a bunch of people said, hey, can I watch the hackathon bit? And I was like, I did not know what I was going to do with this. And I ended up building a conference around it, basically. So I brought people that I knew. I think year one was like Spotify. like Spotify, Chartmetric, a few other people. said, hey, can you come talk about your APIs? Can come talk about your platforms to all of these people? Thankfully, everyone said yes. Pieced it all together. And now we're in year five. I've raised over $100,000. My sponsors are from all of the major music companies. Basically, my speakers are from all over the world. My participants in the Hackathon, my attendees for the conference, as well as my speakers are all majority, minority, and gender and race from all over the world. in the mid-level stages of their career because they're often the people that are actually still doing the work.

Jakob

Yeah. So I think before we had the recording, you said you wanted to create something that was different from everything else. Obviously that could also work from a strategic perspective, but what was the thing that triggered that mindset? What is it that you felt lacked out there?

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, so I tend to speak a lot, public speaking a lot. So I do about 20-ish talks a year, and every year I say I'm going to do less, and somehow I do about 20-ish talks a year. And I would consider myself a bit of an expert as to how conferences work because of this. And I'm very grateful for all the invites. I'm very grateful to get to speak so often to people about what I believe in and things I love and what I'm working on. But oftentimes what you find at most music conferences is that they are full of old white men talking about work they used to do, basically. I even find myself getting to the point where I'm like, I'm barely doing the work in the way that other people are doing the work every day anymore. And so my goal when piecing together the actual programming was I want to hear from people we don't hear from all the time. I want to see the global majority represented on the virtual stage. I want to see what the music industry is going to look like in the future, not what the music industry looks like now. And so I curate my programming in a way that highlights the future of music basically. And that's really important to me because when I go to conferences and I look around the room, these people, all the companies send their most senior executives and because of the systematic way everything is structured, the most senior executives tend to be white, cis, older men. And so as long as we continue that cycle, we're never going to get the diversity and thought at the conferences we see in person. So if I can continue to have a virtual conference that is free and accessible, we can have that type of availability to everyone else.

Jakob

And I hope it's okay that I ask some questions that might sound stupid, but where does the passion for music lie? You know, I struggle with this question daily, right? You know, as I told you, I'm an entrepreneur and I've chosen sort of music as my niche, not knowing what I went into, but that's sort of my niche. And...

Christine Osazuwa

You

Jakob

Maybe that's not the best place to get the most rewarding opportunities, but again, I do it for another passion. But what's your reason? Why do you want to make a change here?

Christine Osazuwa

guess there's two different questions there. guess question one is why music, I suppose. And then question two is why do I only make a change? So to start off with the why music. think about this all the time because I always joke with people, I'm like, if there's anything you love more than music, you should just go ahead and do that. There's anything at all. And unfortunately, what I have found in my life is there's nothing I love more than music. I love music as long as I can remember loving music, basically. And I think I had my first cassette maybe five years old or something like that. I've always loved music. And I realized that the industry, quote unquote, was a thing when I was probably around 12-ish or so.

Jakob

Yeah.

Christine Osazuwa

And I mean, like, I say realize was a thing, this is a very rudimentary situation. Basically, I was watching the MTV Music Awards, and people would go on stage, you know, and they'd thank their mom, their dad, God, and then... they would start listing a random assortment of people. And I remember at 12, I was like, who are those people? How do I do whatever they did to get Thank God Stage by Britney Spears or whoever, right? And that was my first thought, me like, hey, there are people that exist besides the artist in music. And I had no other thought process beyond that at that point. But that's kind of my first thought process of like, hey, maybe this is a thing that I can do for a living of some sort. And I figured it out eventually, you only a few years later, thankfully, I started to figure out that this was like a thing. And then why do I want to change it? Because I started working in music when I was 15. And the amount of... Can we say bad words on this podcast? Okay, great. So basically the amount of bullshit that I saw... has been astonishing. 20 years of bullshit, actually. And what I mean by that is I started working at 15, so I was a young teenage girl working in music. As you can imagine, what comes with being a young teenage girl working in music is like, the best case scenario is people just completely blowing you off. The worst case scenario is just blatant harassment. There's a wide spectrum of what you go through as a young person working in music. Not to mention the expectation to work for free continuously, the expectation that you're someone's girlfriend, the groupie, so-and-so backstage, et cetera, et cetera, it constantly was occurring, right? So there's that one aspect of it. And once you, and I went on tour several times and things along those lines, I've experienced that world, right?

Christine Osazuwa

Which has a complete lack of structure? Completely. Nope. There's no HR in the touring world. There's no there's nothing There's no one to save you when it to touring world And so, you know you go from being in the touring world to going corporate, right? I always joke that I sold out when corporate did major labels And you're like, okay cool. There's HR here. I have a 401k now or pension now awesome We're doing good, you know But there's still bullshit just different bullshit like it's all like wrapped in a fun little like corporate bow now basically and so and the blatant systematic racism, the misogyny, things along those lines on the corporate side and that's not knocking just single out labels, know, startups, labels, know, distributors, etc, etc. You run into other issues, right? If you look at the senior executive teams at most of the companies, music companies in the world, they're still primarily male, they're still primarily white, they're still primarily cis, you know, there's the same structure in place basically. And so you're combating like how am I going to make my way to the of these companies, how am I going to be one of the people that running these companies in the future? And I remember being in those spaces thinking, I don't think there's actually a path forward for me there. And so as I was putting together a measure of music and as I do a lot of the work that I do, it's in the vein of how do I take as many people as possible that are underrepresented in the music industry and help them make their way into the music industry, basically.

Jakob

You have had a career focusing on data. And when you talk about the sort of inequality in music representation executives and what the work they do that, you know, represents the artists and listeners that, know, very much is not maybe their demographic. What is the data pointing towards? Like how do you use data in order to maybe supplement or give subsets behind those arguments?

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, mean, so I look at, and I'm on the board of several organizations now. So I'm on the board for women in music organizations, as well as on the, which is called KeyChange. I'm on the board for two. to companies within the live space as well. And so a lot of the work they do is in the live space, like lobbying, for example. And so we have a lot of stats around the representation when it comes to basically senior executives in these roles. And so if you look at all of the stats, and even if you don't, the thing is like, the data is really important, and obviously I am from a data background, so I find data really important, but a lot of it is... perception and a lot of it is just like very obviously looking around basically. So I can spout off like, you the, you know, like you work in the VC space, know, black women get less than 2 % of VC funding. It's a normal stat that people hear constantly, but also it's just like kind of look around, right? When it comes to the major labels, you can see who runs the major labels. Those are all white men, you know, like if you look at the smaller indie labels, it's still the same. You know, if you look at who runs the DSPs, you know, digital service providers, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etc. You run into the same kind of patterns consistently, right? And so there's plenty of stats. If you look at the gender equity within the UK music, they have to legally provide the gender pay gap, for example. It's never great. So you can look at those stats across all the different music companies. You can look at the stats when it comes to another study. The UK music, like overarching lobbying arm, does a study on pay equity. cross gender and race. It's also never great. those from underrepresented backgrounds make far less money than their white male counterparts. I've done my own salary transparency study to provide people with additional ways to look at salary. And all the stats also show, like, I think what the numbers came out to is that white men made in their base salary more than everybody else did, including base salary bonus and equity, for example. So, no matter how you slice and dice it, it's never good, but also you can just kind

Christine Osazuwa

look around you don't need to be a data scientist to see that like things might not always be equitable.

Jakob

And in a world that you would be working towards, where there would be more fan-less in that distribution, how would that positively affect the music industry? What were the outcomes we would see?

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, I have earmarked or bookmarked a piece I want to write about this because one of the things I say quite often is the music industry is non-meritocracy, which is... very frustrating. Not necessarily needs to be a 100 % meritocracy, but it's very frustrating that it is not. And that starts off from the most simple and obvious components, right? So as I mentioned, there was no path forward. So my career path I have is not, it's unique, but it's not dissimilar from other people who have 85 different places and things they've done and this and that and side projects, et cetera, et cetera. This is a very, very common experience within the music industry, right? And so when I say it's not meritocracy, I remember when I was in university and I had friends that were not in the same majors as myself and the person that was studying with a pre-med, there was a very clear path forward from being in your first biology class, your freshman year of college, to become a doctor. It's a long time. It's certainly not easy. I could never be a doctor. about 10 years from when you start that first biology class, 10 years later, you'll be a doctor. There's not a lot of ambiguity about what's going to happen here, basically. Same with my friends that were studying to be a lawyer, right? From the first class, you take to be a lawyer, you know, in your undergrad to, again, approximately 10 years later, you're just a lawyer, right? And when you want to work in the music industry... I don't know. There's no like, I have a running joke that the only people that actually think they work in the music industry ain't ours. Everyone else is still not really sure, regardless of what you do, what company you work for. And so that is what it feels like a lot. that obviously like that's being a bit facetious. And obviously there's a component of this that's like, yeah, that's, you know, it's ambiguous on purpose. But part of that ambiguity contributes to the fact that the music industry is not a meritocracy. Meaning, if you want to be a doctor,

Christine Osazuwa

you do all the correct steps, you will be a doctor. There's pretty much no way to mess that up, essentially. If you want to work in the music industry, you can do everything right and not get a job, not get promotion, not progress, not get a senior executive role, never be on a board, et cetera, et cetera. You can do every single thing everyone tells you to do, and there's still no guarantee, basically. And so to answer the question, I guess, in terms of how would it change or improve, it would give people some hope. I remember I once talked to a woman who

Jakob

Hmm.

Christine Osazuwa

she was, I don't know, 21, 22, she had interned at all three major labels, she finished university and still couldn't find a job. If you had interned at all three major labels and still can't find a job when you graduate from university, what are you supposed to do? What is the path forward for that then, you know? And so in ideal world, there's just some structure in place. It doesn't have to be a 100 % structure, but there's some structure in place where... your merits, the things that you've done actually have a weight more so than who you know, who your dad happens to be, you know, if you went to the quote unquote right school, if you happen to sign one big artist or if you happen to just be the cousin of the big artist that you're the manager of or whatever nonsense way we have decided is how the music industry works basically. If we can get to a point where it's something that has some semblance of a structure, then we have ways to tell young people, like, these are the paths forward that are going to work, rather than, like, good luck.

Jakob

Yeah. Wow. That was a really, really good answer. And we need to sort of reiterate that just from my angle, which is, you know, I'm not necessarily in the category you're addressing, but, even from my angle, which is, know, I'm Scandinavian, I'm pretty close to music. I've also said to my wife, like, let's say if my ventures doesn't work and I'm not even sure I can get a job. Like,

Christine Osazuwa

Thank you.

Jakob

Thousands of people know me like this is a pretty big podcast of music industry and I could not with the hand of my heart Say that I believe I can get a job afterwards and Like just you know, so I come from a very let's say a very good position to get a job You know done everything right double masters in music but I don't know and just speaking from that angle like that is weird, yeah

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah.

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, it's super weird. No, it's completely fair. And I agree, right? Like, I have always joked, like, just because, like, I'm very senior in my career, I have plenty of contacts, I have a silly amount of followers on LinkedIn, but if I were to actually do a job hunt, I don't think it won't be easy. I lost my job, what? three years ago where I was actually laid off and everyone was super helpful, right? It was great. I built up my network on purpose, but it wasn't instantaneous. It still took several months for me to get a new job, you know? And so that's me. So can you imagine being a younger person, inexperienced, without the network, things like that? I know people like right now are going through this crazy mass layoffs yet again. And there's people that I am genuinely concerned. don't have a path forward basically. And that's scary, right? It's scary to think that like people that have spent 10 years working in music have nowhere to go because if you are a product manager, for example, your transferable skill set is basically for you to go from one label to another label. And if that other label is not hiring, then what's the plan basically? If you really, really know how Spotify for Artists works, if that's your bread and butter, or if you really know how YouTube Analytics works or how to pitch to the DSP, or how to plug to radio, whatever you might be, there's only like 10 of those jobs, you know? Depending on what market you are, or less than that. And so if the companies have downsized from three people having that job per company down to two, that job doesn't exist anymore, basically. And on top of the industry not being a meritocracy, it also does not recognize transferable skills well. So if you were previously on a commercial team, and there's no commercial team jobs, the chance of you getting another job in a different market or a different industry, like a different vertical, like going from commercial to marketing or going from commercial to A &R is very, very slim as well, basically. When you look at people's resumes quite often, there's a lot of different things they were doing for a while, they get the big job. They get the job of the major label at the distribution or at the DSP. And let's say it's an editorial, let's say it's marketing. For the rest of their career, they're going to go from manager to senior manager to director to senior director, et cetera, et cetera, all in the same category. So all in marketing, basically.

Jakob

Hmm.

Christine Osazuwa

And so if they were laid off at director or senior director, the next option the music industry is going to give them is maybe senior director, again if they're lucky, and marketing. They might say, hey, what about A &R? There's almost a 0 % chance they're going to be able to move from that marketing role to an A &R role. And so given that, what is the path forward for anybody in the industry, basically? It's something I think about constantly.

Jakob

I haven't really had it explained that way before and I don't really have a point where I could verify it either, but I can recognize it from any of the talks I've had. My career has been very much parallel to music, the traditional music industry as an entrepreneur. So I can only see it from the outside, but what I do see from the outside is what you're talking about comes from somewhere and you know. and that's a historical thing, that's a cultural thing, there's many things that plays into it. One of things that really plays into it is obviously the financial capacity within the industry. How do you believe... Okay, let me say it this way. I would assume, I might be wrong, I would assume that music people, if that's a term, would in general be fairly informed about these issues you talk about, more so maybe than other industries. Again, I might be wrong.

Christine Osazuwa

You

Jakob

More so than maybe other industries because we work with art which inherently addresses a lot of these things consciously and subconsciously. But does it even have the financial capacity to do a lot of these changes that it knows it must do?

Christine Osazuwa

So, the music industry in terms of entertainment, guess, at depending on how you cut the stats, my understanding is that the music industry might have just surpassed the movie industry for the first time in terms of revenue, but it's still dwarfed. entirely by gaming, for example. There's just the music industry, or if you take it outside entertainment to like, don't know, fintech, health tech, etc, etc. is drop in the bucket in comparison to the other industries. And so that's something that I inherently recognize, right? So there is a component where, yeah, there's not as much revenue, but I mean, we're still talking billions of dollars, so I think it'll be all right. Really, my perception of the music industry, and this comes from, you know, young in university is that generally speaking despite the appearances of being incredibly progressive the music industry tends to drag itself kicking and screaming when it comes to innovation and so what i mean by the perception of progressive is basically it's just like It's kind of what you would refer to as virtue signaling basically. And what I mean by virtue signaling is like you can wear whatever color hair you want to work. If you're wearing a crop top to work, it's cool. If you stay out and have some drinks after work or at lunchtime, it's cool. Go for it. Great. None of those things have any actual impact in terms of the actual progression of the industry, but it makes the industry look very cool. And the industry wants to look very cool because that is how it makes money is saying, hey, we're very cool, essentially. But when it comes down to the actual implementing real change, will drag itself kicking and screaming. So if you go the other way around it, back when I was in university, I was watching a bunch of young people get sued by the RIAA for downloading legally. That is not the most progressive thing in the world to do is to sue 19 year olds.

Jakob

You

Christine Osazuwa

I strongly believe in copyright. do think it's not good to pirate music. So please on the record say I do not believe it's good to pirate music. I'm just saying the solution that came up with in what, 2005 to what, 2012-ish was to sue a bunch of teenagers. And when you go and think about this and you think about the actions that the music industry tends to do, it tends to be very conservative when it comes to decision making that's going to be a and hinder it to the bottom line in any kind of way. And so the same reason, and that all trickles down essentially. And what I mean by trickles down is the reason why you can't get a job from the marketing team to the sync team or from the sync team to the commercial team is because everyone is too conservative to want to give someone a chance to maybe screw up basically. And so what tends to happen is you'll see people just literally get hired from one label to another label going from manager to senior manager until they become maybe a VP or so and retire. That is the path forward for most people because it's a safe bet. Once in while we'll make a big swing, but it's normally because we have no other choice. What I mean by no other choice is the reason why Spotify exists is because we had no other choice as an industry. Right now people are trying to play ball with AI because they kind of have no other choice, but we're also, if you look the other way, lawsuits. I'm joking with a friend, I'm like, oh, it's 2009 all over again, lawsuits. And so the music industry tends to not want to make the innovations and not want to make the change and will consistently make the choice often to do the safest path forward basically. And so that's why when you say like financials, do they have the financial ability to do so? I mean they do, but do they want to, I mean they still have shareholders to please and they're not perceived in the same way as like a company that's going to be a big innovative unicorn company. Their investors are not expecting them to make big swings. They're investors expecting there to be a safe dividend providing platforms basically or like companies.

Jakob

Yeah. Hmm, that makes sense when you, you know, I think the argument of having MusicIP is like a really low dividend asset class. You know, if you look at the last five years, like one of the biggest sales, arguments for music. Well, you might get not a lot of money in your investment, but it's quite stable. that kind of reflects the sentiment about IP rights. And at the end of the day, at least in recording music industry, most of the revenue is based on historical IP rights. No, so I understand that.

Christine Osazuwa

No!

Jakob

So you say sort of the virtue, the showcasing the virtue, is that a farce? Is it just people don't know him better? Like, where does that come from?

Christine Osazuwa

I mean, I wouldn't say it's a farce per se. I think it's more so like it's ingrained in the fabric and the layer of the industry from that perspective, right? And there's lot of good that has happened because of that. The acceptance of the way people look and the way they dress is the reason why we have many queer artists who are able to live and thrive and work within the music industry in a way they couldn't in other spaces. So I recognize that it's not like the perception is still very important. The perception of inclusivity is still very important. And why I hesitate when I say the perception of inclusivity important is because no matter who they opt to put on the radio and push and promo, you still run into issues behind the scenes. And what I mean by that is, you know, the budgets provided to women and people of color are just tend to be lower. The senior executives working on those projects tend to be lower paid or more junior. The amount of people of color or women in a room will be less than, you know, their counterparts. So there's all these, there's all these layers where what you see, the perception is really, really important. And I do strongly believe the representation does matter. So being able to see, know, Chaparrow in when, you know, a Grammy as a queer artist from a underrepresented geography, which is also really important to point out, is really, really important. But on the flip side, making sure that the executives behind those projects are compensated properly are also queer themselves, for example, are also women themselves, things like that. It's not necessarily always case. I actually don't know what's happening on her campaign specifically, so I cannot speak to that explicitly.

Christine Osazuwa

But I've definitely experienced oftentimes working projects with artists where the representation of the artist is not there basically.

Jakob

Makes sense. These are a lot of reflections I haven't done. So it's very new for me to sort of speak about this particular thing. Maybe, for me the opportunity to understand a bit, how would you describe the music industry compared to other industries? I know it's a big question, but like, we behind, are we ahead, are we equal?

Christine Osazuwa

I think as a person that works in data, it's a fun time to say it depends, which is our favorite phrase. But it does, depends on what metrics we're talking about, right? And also it depends heavily on geography. So for example, if you compare the US music industry to the UK music industry, the US has way more black executives in senior roles. Part of the reason why that's the case is because hip hop started in the US. And so hip hop has been seen as a serious and important genre in the US long before it was than the rest of the world. And the trickle down effect is that we have more senior executives in the US than the UK that are black. In comparison here in the UK, London, population of people of color of 40 % in London, that is not the same for the rest of the UK. You do see senior black executives in the UK, not a lot, but a few, but you see almost no Asian senior executives, despite there being a huge Asian population here. So that's one example of, like, there's problems that need to get sorted out in those spaces, right? When it comes to comparing to other industries, like, I mean, comparing us geography to industries as a whole, I mean, like I compare a lot of it to tech, and tech does not do well in most of these spaces either. So I would say equal. And then if you compare it to other industries, one thing that I have found similar, I have never worked, I don't work much outside of music, but I have friends that work in fashion, for example. And what my understanding is any industry in which people are desperate to work in, people are treated not awesome all the time, basically. And so the problem is why say all of this. Part of it really is that it does not matter because if you quit working in the music industry there is approximately 200 people that are desperately trying to get that job that you have just quit in the music industry. My understanding of fashion is very similar and so given that

Christine Osazuwa

It's behind because it can be. It's a really big component of what everything else we've been saying basically. It's like there's no added incentive to be kinder to your employees. There's no added incentive to give raises. There's no added incentive to be more inclusive or to have initiatives to promote within or things along those lines because there are plenty of people that, regardless of how they're treated, will work for basically nothing in order to say that they work in the music industry.

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

Yeah, I perceive that as one of the pretty structural issues about music, the music industry. Like, artists can work for 10 years, easily, know, without getting paid, paying to play. And, you know, you can, to some degree, on a human level, okay, it's a passion, they want to express themselves, you can get that. But, which obviously, you know, there's a lot of nuances to that. But it does also showcase itself in the industry. Just in my case, I worked, I think six months at a label where I did a proper like employee job. I was an intern. I came, hey, can I intern? And I did a full job. I didn't mind one second for six months. I loved it. And even though that might seem great, I don't necessarily think that helps that much, you know, if that's the mentality because people know that's the mentality. I can always get an intern. I can always get someone. To work very cheaply. On the flip side, running a small indie label, I know the economics of it, is there isn't money. So I don't think people sit there and like, know, took advantage of some people, it's just like, well, I didn't have anything, they wanted to go for free, like sure, why not? So I see that, but how do we work with that? Because it's such a big issue. There's not, well, I don't know if that's true, I can make the statement. Generally speaking, it's not enough money to go around to the people who wants to work there. And I don't see a path towards it. Like, I just don't see it. You might see it, but I don't. So how do we go about it?

Christine Osazuwa

You And yeah, I mean that's part of the overall issue, right? It's a systematic problem at hand is that plenty people are to work for free. I agree, it's not a good thing to work for free, but people do it, people are to do it. So I mean some of the paths forward, right, is that you have to grow the pie, right? You need more money to exist in the industry, which you want to see basically. One way to do that is to, you're lucky enough to live in countries in which they do this, is figuring out where the grant money is to start your own companies from the government. Getting familiar with investors in VCs to start your own companies and be able to hire and have the revenue in so you can actually pay people for their time. That's a big and tall ask that I recognize, but that's something that can be done. The second bit is like... the music industry has tons of money, it's just concentrated at the very top of the music industry. There is no reason why the CEOs of these companies should make 200X what their lowest employee is making, right? No one's gonna be willing to make that change, but it's something that I think needs to be recognized when we say there's not enough money to go around. There would be enough money to go around if the senior executives weren't making $100 million a year. Like plain and simple, there's no way to divide that in any other way, mind you. Of course, the CEOs of these companies should be paid comparable to CEOs of other major companies in the world, which I recognize, who actually, for the most part, actually make more money, because, you know, if you were the CEO of Google, you're making more money than the CEO of a music company. So I recognize that discrepancy there, but...

Christine Osazuwa

This is what I mean when I talk about this perception of progressiveness rather than actual progressiveness because if we were truly a progressive industry, we would think, hey, I recognize that Google and Nestle CEOs make this much, but we are creatives and we care about music and we care about people and we care about underrepresented groups and people of color. We've always championed them in their music. Therefore, we should make 2000X what the intern makes, but no one's really willing to make that decision, basically. There's where the money is, right? There's a big chunk of where the money is that's there that is just not being distributed properly, right? Outside of that, I also think the means of doing all of this is also training programs that help employees grow and progress within the company so they can get to the point where they can start their own companies and actually help the companies make money. It's one of the failings of the industry quite often. So the biggest companies do training programs internally, but the smaller companies don't have the budget to do training for their employees, therefore their employees never learn new skills, therefore they can't progress, therefore they can't actually help the company as much as they would like them to. So again, a self-fulfilling prophecy but you know there are means to make more money but it involves investment as you will know you usually cannot grow unless you invest and investing in people is basically how most of the music industry works it's a mostly people company industry essentially

Jakob

Mm. Yeah, it's so complicated and sometimes so straightforward and I recognize the importance of what you say and I support it. I am though, not against it at all, but the layer above that for me in person is just the, I was gonna say that, it's hopelessness, really. As a, I would say, relatively successful entrepreneur in this space. When is this going to happen? You know, because I think there's a big drainage of talent out of the music industry. Think, well, before that, it gets drained. People just simply don't choose it. And at the end of the day, besides having better representation and more conscious choice of who to pay how much, We also just need good people. Do you think there's something we can address to do that? And what are we even leading them into again? Because I can't say with good consciousness to this 20 year old kid studying college, like, hey, go to the music industry. I would feel like I was deceiving him or her. Like, do you get what mean? Like, I don't know.

Christine Osazuwa

You

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, that's a very big question and like I would agree that like I don't know if I would also I also don't know if I would send someone blindly into work in the music industry. Honestly, I have like this is an overarching thought that exceeds the music industry, but I have a I have a, so having a tech background, having been a data scientist for quite some time and having the skill set that could lead me into a role that would pay way more money outside of music. I keep all this in my head, right? And I think a lot about, like you're saying, where talent is going, right? And so really, if, If I became empress of the world one day and I had the ability to make actual changes, one of the things I would do, I wouldn't even start with the music industry to be completely honest, one of the things I would do is I take all these very talented kids that are coming out of school that are finance wizards and software developers and all these different people and I would make them work in the public sector. I would pay them whatever salary they were going to get from Snapchat or Facebook or Amazon or whoever. And have them work in the public sector to do the work, do the good work, because God knows how many people are making 200 grand a year to make filters or whatever other nonsense job that they are making 200 grand a year to do, or to make 200 grand a year so they can not outperform the S &P 500 anyway when they're working at some hedge fund. Why have we decided to put all the smartest people in the world? I mean, I understand why we put them all into these corporate roles, because the corporate world is where all the money is, right? And so you might be the most virtuous person in the entire world. You might want to change the world. But if someone dangles a quarter million dollar check in your face, you're not gonna go save the environment most likely. It's just very unlikely to happen unless you're unbelievably passionate about saving the environment. That's probably not where you're going to put your time and energy because of it, right? I work in music because I love music more than I love anything else in the world. I have an MBA and I have a master's degree in data science. I could be one of those people making a quarter million dollars at a hedge fund. I have literally the entire skill set you're selling. But I have opted not to because I love music. But if you are one those people where

Christine Osazuwa

You're like, oh, I'm not really fussed about where I want to work. You're never going to pick, I'm going to work in the public sector. I'm going to save the world. I'm going to work in a charity. I'm going to work in a nonprofit. You're going be like, I'm going to work in Amazon and make a jillion dollars.

Jakob

Yeah, no, I totally see that. It is a path forward that we need better paying jobs. If you just want to simplify it to the most actionable step, which obviously is not just actionable, just imagining stuff, but if you were the empress of the world and you would address some small changes in music industry, is paying people better? Is that the simple solution or how do look at it?

Christine Osazuwa

No, so the answer can't be paying people better because it's already an industry in which people are desperate to work in the industry, so making it also as lucrative as Google is probably not the answer in and of itself basically. That's not the answer all by itself. Certainly the salaries could be higher because they are. The equivalent job in any other industry is often so much higher paid than the music industry, so the salary should be higher. But when it comes to how the music industry works, we just can't concentrate wealth in the place that we're concentrating wealth, basically. And we can't leave it up to the senior executives to say, oh yeah, I'm going to be virtuous now and give everyone more money, or I'm going be virtuous now and open up more roles and more positions or have more innovation. All of this is not going to happen in and of itself. And so when it comes down to it, if someone's making $200 million a year as a salary... you how many jobs that could be? You know how many people we could hire? So it's not necessarily to pay more money. Yes, we should. But it's like, what would happen if you actually invested in your employees that you currently have? And what would happen if you actually invested in paying people more money and also invested in just more jobs, more roles, more opportunities, more things that can be done, more innovation that can be done? Because right now, part of the issue running to the music industry is just to stagnant. We have the, comes after streaming is a question I'm asked a lot and I don't have the answer to it. I wish I did because I'd doing it. But we are what we are 15 years into streaming at this point and we have no idea what comes after streaming. Had you know we had the cassette, had the CD, we had you know the vinyl, we had eight track, we had and now we're on streaming and now what? We don't have any of the innovation that we had in the industry before and I think it's because we're not investing. We are very comfortable in the industry and as things are at the status quo right now we're gonna stay that way until something else makes us go kicking streaming to 50%.

Christine Osazuwa

It out basically.

Jakob

I am running a venture studio that has a heavy focus on music and being afforded the opportunity to host a podcast like this, I get to see the industry from the outside but still being on the inside to some degree. And one of the decisions I've made myself is for now, and it sounds, can't sound wrong, but I believe in it, for now I'm gonna be an observer. Of the big motions and movements of music. And I think there's one thing I can address, and that is success rates of founders. And how can that be addressed? Well, there's some pretty simple things. Information. Education, in whatever form it is, is not readily available catered to that specific niche. Like this podcast is also based on, we're doing a lot more than that, but just... How do you as an entrepreneur understand the opportunities, the pitfalls, navigate that, like the small steps? And I think what's happening in the startup environment, at least as a CA music tech, is people have realized that as a opportunity for betterment is that not everyone can address everything, but financial success for people taking bets and risks over a long time can bring one of the positive impacts into the industry. I think I think that if a founder, statistically speaking, can be rewarded to create solutions that better something here, I think that's part of it. And I don't know how big, but I do know that it does matter to be called. What is the, what is it? Maybe this is an obvious question, but what is the one thing that you would change that would make this better?

Christine Osazuwa

That's a big question.

Christine Osazuwa

Not sure if there's one thing. I feel like... I think it would be if there's one singular thing would be to basically reward your talent. Essentially. So talent can be artists, talent can be executive, but it is to reward them. And reward can be monetary, can be a promotion, can be opportunities for more education, opportunities for more conferences, but there's this component of complacency the industry has as a whole, like I said, where everyone's like, a million people have this job, so I don't care what you do. Therefore turnover rates are high, therefore people are not innovating in their company because like, why would I do that, they're not doing anything back for me. We would see, in the same way it goes for the artists, the biggest success stories as artists get all the attention. The ones that went from 10,000 followers to 20,000 followers are not getting nearly as much attention as ones that already had 200 million or whatever it might be. And so if the industry was much more gracious and much more willing to give back and support their employees, I there would be a lot more basically a lot more innovation, lot more revenue generated even though from the outsider standpoint it's like, why would I spend any money or invest that are going to work anyway? It's like, I genuinely feel like if people invest in their employees and like you see it from tech quite often, mind you, like tech has its own issues, but you know, the high pay, the good office environment, the free lunches, the free breakfast, all of these things end up trickling back down to the

Christine Osazuwa

Biggest companies working and the people making the most changes and doing really cool stuff basically. And so if the industry can take something from the tech world, it's just like investing your employees. So if you invest in your employees and you invest in the artists who basically are de facto contractors who are just employees as well, you're going to get a lot back out from them. And right now that's not how it's working basically.

Jakob

Amazing. I actually think that's a really interesting answer. I think that my experience with the industry is that you get rewarded when you earn it, but not earn it necessarily on your own work, but based on how the external factors react to what you've done. Obviously that has its merit in, know, in sort of market dynamics. But it's also a bit short-sighted. Like, that's not necessarily how great stuff happen. Oftentimes it's things that are out of the ordinary. It's the things that challenge the status quo. It's the things that does not get the initial positive feedback that creates these big opportunities. And not to draw a direct parallel between those two things, but there is zero to very little structure.

Christine Osazuwa

Mm-hmm.

Jakob

Proactively supporting the next generation of talent in music as I see it. So I think that's an incredibly interesting point that I need to reflect upon.

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah. And I think that what you're saying, completely agree that is often people are rewarded for the smash hit that happens, right? Which obviously it makes sense to, if someone has a massive single that does really well, it makes total sense to reward them, However, so much of that was out of their control basically. And so just because someone has smashed it once, it's not necessarily mean they're going to have a smash hit a second time obviously. So investing in what got us to that point, investing in the person, investing in talent prior to that is important. But also like the music industry functioned lot in the same way like VCs function in terms of like you sign a hundred acts and hope that one's the unicorn, right? Like it's an exact same structure. There's this running joke online where people are like, oh so artists as industry plant. And I always see that, always laugh because I always think, I've worked at major labels, right? I always think, if we have the ability to plant artists, why wouldn't we just do that every single time? Why? Like the presumption that you think we know what we're doing is really bold of everybody and I love that they think so highly of executives that we are able to just plant people into being successful but we certainly do not. I will never be the person I have worked on. I've worked on hit records. I've worked at the Drake's and the Kendrick's and I've worked them all you know like I've worked on huge records and I've watched Billie Eilish become a thing while I was working at Universal. I've watched it all happen but for every single Billie Eilish that we have we have plenty of artists that went nowhere and we were doing all the same stuff. And so a big part of it is luck, right? And so rewarding people for the success they had that was almost entirely out of luck is not, it's not fair basically. Because you never know who's going to produce that smash hit. And if you're only paying attention to them once they have the smash hit, how much stuff are you losing? How much innovation are you losing? How much talent are you losing because of it?

Jakob

Yeah, and I totally see that. And I think, you know, I haven't told this story for a while and it's not really that big or anything, but like I have my career in music, which I'm very thankful for, really from one episode. And it's very, very simple. Was making music at home. I didn't know anyone. My dad's friend came by. He worked in music. Was in Denmark. He sort of, he was the biggest music publisher at that point. And just gave me his card and said, me. That's it. That's how I created Music Starter. That simple. And it's a sort of a stupid analogy to this, but what I'm just trying to say is like, investment into like the small things and the big things are what gets people going. And I think that there's a reluctance to...

Jakob

How do you say this in the right way?

Jakob

There's a reluctance to losing things on behalf of what might be in music a lot. And obviously that card was not him losing anything, but it was a mentality of I can afford to be generous.

Christine Osazuwa

Mm-hmm.

Jakob

And we can't afford to be generous because at the end of the day, oftentimes it doesn't cost that much to be generous. And I think maybe that's sort of what I take from this conversation is really that last point you had, like investing in talent, rewarding talent, maybe even before you see that time will amount to anything. Does it make sense?

Christine Osazuwa

Mm-hmm.

Christine Osazuwa

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's, I completely agree, and I think it's just what we're lacking right now, right? And I think about, again, having been on the intersection between music and tech most of my life, I think about the things that the biggest companies in the world do, and they're even super flashy about it. I think lot of people know the cool and perly perks that the big companies get, but I think about, you know, big companies like Google or Amazon or even like Apple, right? Apple gave out a bunch of MacBooks or bunch of Mac computers 20 years ago. I remember the bright blue backed computers when I was, I don't know, seven in school. Talk about the longest con. It took 20 years for that to pay off for someone to go and then buy their first MacBook they could afford themselves, right? When Google wanted to break into... emerging markets, quote unquote, developing emerging markets, they started investing in internet access in those markets because that's how they were going to reach them. If there was no internet, they couldn't use Google. Amazon and Google, they have developer programs where they're giving scholarships out to kids that are going into school now so that when they finish school, they can be their employees because they're running out of software developers to hire. There's this obvious thing where it's like, well, if you just invest, you never know. Obviously, when they put up of computers in those schools 25 years ago. They didn't know whether or not people were gonna wanna buy, those kids are gonna wanna buy Macbooks one day. But there was that obvious investment, partly it's just like virtuous, like hopefully this pans out, but it's like, hey, we can do this good thing and if it comes back to us and it makes us billions of dollars, that'd be cool too. That I think tech is much more willing to do than music is willing to do basically.

Jakob

Christine, this has been amazing. It really gave me some great perspectives. I am very excited to hear how the whole conference goes in a couple of weeks. Measure of Music, I think by this episode, there's gonna be one and a half weeks left until it happens. So how do people find it?

Christine Osazuwa

Yeah, it's measuredmusic.com, or you search for measured music, obviously. The conference is virtual, the conference is free, it happens primarily on the weekend, so it's made and structured for everyone to be able to attend. Well, if you're in Asia, it's gonna be a little tough because of time zone, but for the most part, most of world, it's structured for people to be able to attend, so please do check it out.

Jakob

Christine, it's been amazing. Thank you so much.

Christine Osazuwa

Thank you, Jacob, this has been so much fun.

Jakob

Love it.