I'm being myself when the camera is rolling.
Scott Borchetta
It doesn't matter if it's social media or radio media or television media - it's all media, and it's all marketing. It's about understanding where your fans are. And when you have infiltrated them, and they're satisfied, and there's demand, how do you grow it from there?
It's a rare opportunity when you can do something for the greater good.
There's no reason people should be hungry in our country. It's not acceptable.
You can come after me all day long. I don't care.
My father was in record promotion in Los Angeles. He worked for Mercury Records, Capitol Records, and RCA Records. My parents divorced when I was about 9. In 1978, my dad moved to Nashville and opened an independent record promotion company, Mike Borchetta Promotions.
When you break an artist, you learn a lot.
There are a lot of similarities, even though we're in two different businesses: There's the Taylor Swift business and the Big Machine Label Group business, but there's a huge intersection there. When we're together, it's limitless.
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.
Auto racing has been a big part of my life since I was very young. When the car feels right, it's like, 'We've got a big machine.'
When I started the label, I stopped racing. Even though I have a better chance of getting hurt walking outside and falling down the stairs, if I had gotten injured on the racetrack, people would be going, 'What is this guy doing?' So I had to grow up a little bit.
I'm not a politically correct person.
I'm not a 'practicing' musician anymore. I played bass and guitar. I still pick up a guitar around the house every once in awhile.
I've always thought we've done our best work when everything is on the line.
I've always thought that I've had a nice gift for putting the right people together.
Our focus is still on country, but, really, on whatever music our artists are making.
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.
I grew up in Southern California, so there is just a part of me that is a Hollywood rocker.
If you listen, people will tell you exactly what they want - whether it's a business relationship or a consumer relationship.
Most of our artists are songwriters, so the songs are still central to all this. If you don't have great songs, it doesn't matter the marketing or how many times you are on TV; you can only polish it so much.
In 1985, I went to work for MTM Records, Mary Tyler Moore's Nashville record label, and stayed three years. After that, I spent two years as an independent promoter, then worked for MCA Nashville Records, DreamWorks Nashville, and Universal Music Nashville.
The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores.
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California in the 1970s. My friends and I were into bicycle motocross and into skateboarding in empty swimming pools. Those activities shaped my generation.
It's such a loud world out there, so it's important to be able to be ubiquitous across formats.
I learned that you could beat the big guys with desire, passion, and hard work.
Can a label group by itself scale to make a sensible business? I don't think so.
With the launch of Big Machine Premium Vodka, we are now offering a superior product that perfectly complements the music we take such great pride in.
Every day is an adventure, and no two days are ever alike.
You can have all personality in the world, the looks, etc., but if you don't have the songs, it doesn't close the deal.
If you think back to the beginning of the label, we knew we had to strike quickly and aggressively and go for the brass ring.
For the label to grow, it has to have great executives who understand the culture, understand the mission, and can lead. I don't want to be part of every decision.
Part of the mission of Nash Icon is taking away some of the day-to-day, hand-to-hand combat that you have to do to continue the mainstream country-radio relationship.
The nicest thing that my friends who've known me for 15 or 20 years say to me is, 'Man, it's crazy that you're the same guy.' It's like, 'Which guy did you expect me to be?'
The reality of recording, it's one of the most intimate things that an artist ever does because if you do it right, you're exposing yourself, and you're expressing your emotions, and those are the key attributes to a big record that really connect with people.
I think when we do our job right, our artists don't sound like anybody else. I have a real hard time with voices that sound like other big voices.
I don't want to worry about someone calling me and going, 'You better find a way to get another Taylor Swift record out this quarter.' When there's that kind of financial pressure dictating your path, it's hard to take creative risks.
I go by the rule of Gretzky: you gotta be there before the puck gets there, or you're going to get beat.
Season 1 of CTV's 'The Launch' exceeded our wildest expectations!
If we don't have great music, we're not any company.
What's on the edge? What's next? That's where I think I do my best work - if I push my whole team to the edge.
The last thing we want is for radio to say that they can't afford to play our artists and turn off the pipe.
I attended College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, Calif., for a year, but college wasn't for me. I was curious about life beyond Los Angeles.
The world isn't all happy, shiny people, and great art doesn't come from vanilla. Great art comes from people with a point of view and are very passionate.
If you stand for something, that means there are going to be people who support you and people who don't support you.
You have to be responsible to yourself... but that doesn't mean you can't have a point of view about something.
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.'
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.
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.
