Since late November, Sony's hacking has left the company naked and exposed to gossip and debate. One interesting find suggest that Snapchat's CEO Evan Spiegel is planning to start a record label.
On June 5th, Spiegel had a meeting with Dennis Cooker, Sony's President of Global Digital Business. Most of the discussion from that meeting was leaked after Cooker shared the details of the meeting with Sony Entertainment's CEO Michael Lynton in an email. Lynton happens to be a Snapchat board member and rumored to be the company's first major investor.
According to the emails, Spiegel was adamant about doing more research to start a label so he can “focus on the artists he wants to use the platform to promote.” His opinion of the Music Industry also suggests he wants to try his hand at a new endeavor, but nothing has happened yet. Cooker explains to Lynton in the email that “he (Evan) doesn't want to start a music service” and “he thinks every music service in the market is shit and he wants to be a curator.”
Time will tell if Snapchat moves towards a way of syncing their social media with music and expanding their promotional advertisements even more. Recent “story” snaps over the past year have included pictures and videos from events shared with all users that highlighted certain events or holidays.
Read the full email from Cooker to Lynton:
“Michael,
I was only able to see Evan for about 30 minutes yesterday but that was enough time for him to express his thoughts and leave us with some things to think about if there is going to a music play within Snapchat. He didn’t end up showing some of the developments in the platform that may benefit music but referenced them in the discussion. First, he thinks every music service in the market is shit and he wants to be a curator. He doesn’t want to build a music service but he would like to have a Record Label so he could focus on the artists that he wants to use the platform to promote. He also wants to participate in the upside that he will create by promoting them on the platform. He later backed off a bit from being a record label to maybe testing the concept first. Obviously he doesn’t understand some of the important nuances around the business about what rights a record label does and does not have.
I appreciate the introduction. I am going to go back to my team with some of these concepts and see if we can get creative in how we could get something to work here that is in the direction of Evan’s vision and get him more exposed to what we can bring to Snapchat. We have a lot of ideas of our own but I don’t think Evan will engage in our ideas until we try to move something forward that he wants to accomplish.
Please let me know if you want to disc”
