Without naming names, you can take some of the biggest artists of the last 25-30 years and point to those moments where they thought they were going to be movie stars, put the entire weight of a film on their back, and it failed. And some of them didn't recover from that.
A lot of times in a record company environment, it's, 'All right, go out on the road, go get some experience, come back in six months, and we'll see where we are.' I've erased that. Now it's, 'This is what we're working on today. I expect you to come in tomorrow and address this and be better.'
When we grew up, we couldn't wait to get our hands on cars, work with them, change the look of them. Now you see kids being like, 'I'll just take the Uber,' or 'Oh, I don't even have my driver's license yet.' I'm like, 'Ugh, who are you people?'
Winning 'American Idol' really anoints you the opportunity to have a great career; it does not anoint you a career.
So much time and attention has been spent on streaming that we've really gotten away from some of the things that we could have, energywise, put into working together with radio more closely for terrestrial.
Like everything at Big Machine Label Group, the music comes out when it's ready.
It never gets easier to break a new act.
It's just part of my DNA. I love racing.
Some people are just gifted with a great voice, other people are gifted with great emotion, other people are gifted with great engagement - when you find all of those things in one package, you have Taylor Swift.
We have a mantra at the Big Machine Label Group: Start with crazy and work backward.
We came up with all these crazy ideas that Taylor Swift could be the biggest artist in the world - and it came true - and that we could have five labels and become the biggest independent record company in the world - and it came true.
We decided when we were building Big Machine that we wanted to be a Harley or a Ferrari.
When we first started, I had the time to personally live every project. As I continue to build the company, I've learned much better ways to delegate and let the executive team run. It's just as exciting for me to see the executives succeed as it is the artists.
The Big Machine Label Group will continue to knock down doors to break female talent.
I don't know that you can set out to be a brand. For us, it happened very organically, and we never rushed it or leaned on it too hard. I felt a true culture had started to emerge several years into the Machine, so we started trying some things, starting with simple stuff like cool merch.
Sirius and XM went on air in 2001. It's taken 14 years for that to be a real business. It took them combining to be a real business.
I've had so many conversations with new artists trying to figure out their careers.
I've always thought that I've had a nice gift for putting the right people together.
Relationships feed on credibility, honesty, and consistency.
If you look at most of our roster, we've got great singer/songwriters. I'm always attracted to that.
