Billboard: You left Universal Music Publishing Group in 2014. Why did you come back to music and to Latin music specifically?Throughout my career at Universal I was always passionate about Latin music, and I became immersed in the culture. And when I left, one of the things I did was keep the friendship withdone was harder than pulling off the Polygram deal. It took us two years.
It became a major focus for me and I had a lot of resistance along the way. I was called into a few corporate meetings when I was trying to make the Univision deal and I had to explain why this was so culturally important. And ultimately, we sold so much music that it was undeniable. But I was always looking for lanes the other majors weren’t in, because we were decades behind.Podcasts are exploding in popularity but the Latino side of podcasting is woefully underdeveloped.
Your podcasts are all hosted by celebrities. But celebrity is not enough to make a good podcast is it? Why do you think these will work? We have all sorts of formulas and algorithms we use before we make any decision. The five hosts we launched had over 25 million followers on social media. Before we do a podcast, we do a series of demo recordings to make sure there’s an exciting and compelling program built around what their fans love and are interested in. Their fans live on the Internet.
Podcasts are an ad-supported business in the U.S. Many of our hosts are known outside the U.S., but our initial focus is the U.S. because that’s where there’s revenue. If we’re able to generate the listenership, advertisers will come.We may. What we’re trying to do initially is come up with podcasts that we feel creatively and culturally work. It feels like an extension of what I did at Universal.