We’ve seen some pretty interesting music technology advances via applications on smartphones this year, but would you ever believe that the photo and video sharing app Snapchat wants to create it’s own record label?
Yeah, you read that correctly, according to a report from Business Insider, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wants Snapchat to create its own record label, which has been allegedly revealed through an e-mail conversation that leaked between Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton (who sits on Snapchats board) and Sony’s President of Global Digital Business Dennis Kooker.
The message from Lynton to Kooker recounts of a meeting that Lynton had had with the Snapchat CEO Spiegel, in which Spiegel expressed that “he [Spiegel] thinks every music service in the market is shit and he wants to be a curator.” The leaked e-mail continued, “He [Spiegel] 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.”
The full e-mail does not disclose any detail of how a record label can benefit from Snapchat, but perhaps it could be something like sending snippets of songs or videos of new tunes of artists on the label when users receive snaps from their pals, or perhaps Spiegel is just a little too ambitious and is desperate to be a top dog.
Here’s the full leaked e-mail:
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 [sic]
