Lyor takes his stand
Silence greets new YouTube global music boss
THE arrival of the sometimes abrasive, sometimes charming Lyor Cohen as the new face of Google’s YouTube was met with stony silence when On the Money called the record labels for comment.
Cohen, who used to run recorded music at Warner Music Group and helped put Def Jam on the map, has been running his own Google-backed label, 300 Entertainment, for the past few years.
He also suffered a pulmonary embolism and was hospitalized in April, but bounced back and is ready to take on a set of nightmarish problems — like persuading labels not to yank their videos off YouTube, for one.
Not a single label would offer any comment on his arrival as YouTube’s new boss of global music. But leave it to fearless music manager Irving Azoff to plant a flag, telling On the Money earlier this week, “As a prolific manager, label executive and label owner, Lyor has a long history as a defender of artist rights.
“We are counting on you, Lyor, to lead YouTube to provide fair payments to artists and give them more creative control. Congratulations, Lyor, I know you can get it done,” Azoff added.
It seems that more of the tech giants are looking to use the same strategy Apple did when it brought aboard music vet Jimmy Iovine, and what Spotify did when it hired talent manager Troy Carter. But OTM would bet the relationship between the record labels and YouTube is going to get worse before it gets better — with or without Cohen.
Inside Jobs
On the Money called it right even though we didn’t have any Anonymous sources.
In August, OTM wrote: “Laurene Powell Jobs (pictured), the widow of Apple boss Steve Jobs, has shown an interest” in Anonymous Content, the production and manage- ment firm behind the film “Spotlight.”
On Friday, Anonymous Content, run by Steve Golin, announced it has received a substantial minority investment from Emerson Collective, the organization founded and run by Ms. Powell Jobs.
Holy hell
James Grant — the man with the ever-present bowtie who correctly saw the risks in the mortgage market before the crash — has a blind spot when it comes to the High Holy days. The founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has scheduled the highly touted conference on Tuesday, Oct. 4, the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
“Is the Grant’s Fall Investment Conference really on the second day of Rosh Hashanah?” a private equity fund manager asked quizzically.
Many Jewish people observe the tradition of not working on Rosh Hashanah.
The conference atat Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel includes speakers Julian Robertson and Jeffrey Gundlach. David Stockman is scheduled to be the luncheon speaker previewing his book, “Trumped!”
In Pluto’s orbit
Ken Parks, , the former Spotify content boss who ventured into the streaming TV field, appears to be carving something of a niche for his Pluto TV. Parks told us the company now counts 4 million monthly active users. The Philly native has been in the job just over a year, doubling the number of users in that time. Pluto TV streams Bloomberg TV, Sky, NBC News and content from CNET, People, The Onion and highlights from “The Tonight Show Starring JimmyJim Fallon.” Parks told On the Money over lunch atat Michael’s that he hopes that 100 channels of free content can lure people to trade up to a paid version over time.
Hearing voices
What keeps Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi up at night? “As we move over to mobile devices, more transactions will be voice activated, and we would have a hard time making that transition,” he told the Skift Global Forum conference at Alice Tully Hall last week, The Post’s Lisa Fickenscher Khosrowshahi expects travelers to book, cancel and search for their hotels, air fares and car rentals by voice rather than clicks in the near future.
The problem is, “we are not well armed for that, but we are definitely thinking about it,” he said when asked what could make Expedia obsolete in the future.