#24 How the music business is a petri dish for journalism innovation with Cherie Hu

The ways we consume and create media and content continue to evolve at a rapid pace. The
Demystifying Media seminar series at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication
explores the impact of these changes across the communications landscape and finds new ways to
navigate forward.

Each term, we will bring several experts—media practitioners, academics, and researchers— _working
on the cutting edge of these global changes to campus to discuss the impact of the 21st-century media
revolution with students, faculty, and staff. Find our podcasts, interviews, and talk recordings on our
website.

Damian Radcliffe (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Demystifying Media Podcast. I'm Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers
Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon. My guest today is Cherie Hu, an award-winning
freelance journalist writing at the intersection of music and tech. Cherie writes regular columns on this
topic for Billboard, Forbes and Music Business Worldwide.

Damian Radcliffe (00:21):

She's also featured in Variety, Pitchfork, Columbia Journalism Review, the Harvard Political Review and
many other titles. Cherie has visited us this week in Oregon to talk about demystifying the music
business as a petri dish for journalism innovation. Cherie thank you for joining us.

Cherie Hu (00:35):
Thank you so much for having me.

Damian Radcliffe (00:37):

So let's kick off a little bit by talking about your beat. If we go to your website, you can see kind of
writing samples of the range of different things that you have written about. It's quite a broad church to
some extent. So can you explain a little bit about some of the topics you explore, and how you came
upon owning this beat?

Cherie Hu (00:55):
Yeah, very great. Very big question. So yeah, the umbrella term of music and technology can refer to all
types of different things depending on who you're writing about, which companies you're writing about.
Which publication you're writing it for. But includes everything from, bigger streaming services like
Spotify and Apple music to emerging technologies outside of music. Like virtual reality, augmented
reality, artificial intelligence, all that stuff and how that impacts the way we consume and create music.
Then also how artists are understanding this.

Cherie Hu (01:30):
So how are human beings, creative human beings then using this technology in their art and also in their
careers? So it's quite a wide range. How I came upon this as my beat was actually as a student. Just
going into freshman year of college, I wanted to work in the music industry in a role with that kind of
perspective. So my major was in stats and my minor was in music. From the very beginning I was
thinking about how you might combine stats and math with music and a career.

Cherie Hu (02:03):
I thought my dream job at one point would be to work at a company like Spotify in a data science role.
Which was still be really fascinating, especially now. Or a data analyst at a record label. I did do a couple
of internships in that realm. But that was also around the time when I was trying to play around with
writing more.

Cherie Hu (02:23):
I did realize that just in terms of how my brain works and what I want to spend my day doing is definitely
more of a mix of more creative versus purely quiet work. Instead of just like spending all day crunching
numbers, I definitely want to have one foot in that world but not 100%. So I just built up this experience
and this interest in my beat, and happened to completely fall into writing as a way to express that.

Damian Radcliffe (02:46):

Can you explain a little about how you fell into writing then? Because it is really interesting as you
talking about your academic path, not an obvious trajectory into journalism?

Cherie Hu (02:57):
Yeah, I think about the story all the time in terms of how I fell into it. Because it's definitely informed my
life philosophy in a way, my career philosophy. So junior year at a lot of different colleges and
universities is when recruitment season ramps up. Being a stats major, everyone in my major was going
to these finance and consulting recruiting fairs, which are really big. There's a lot of schmoozing that
goes on.

Cherie Hu (03:25):
So I was drawn into that, was personally a little disillusioned with that, and was like, "Okay, I'm not going
to go to any career fair for the rest of the semester and I'm just focused on my work and my classes."
But then someone messages me from the advertising media career fair. Which is at the tail end of this
whole season. They were like, "Hey Cherie, you should totally come to this. It seems like a lot more chill.
It feels a lot more like creative and open as opposed to very stickler and a very stressed and
environment. You should totally come visit." I was like, "Okay, sure, I'll come check it out."

Cherie Hu (03:59):
I'm wandering around the fair, and I walked past the Forbes table. There happens to be a magazine with
Katy Perry on the cover, and it was their annual celebrity 100 issue. I saw that and I was like, "Oh, I know
music, I can talk about it. I've played a little bit of it, I've researched it and worked a little bit in the
industry. I'll see what happens." I walk up to them, and I started having this really good conversation
with the editor there, who's actually my current editor now at Forbes, Zack Greenberg. He's the senior
editor of media and entertainment.

Cherie Hu (04:32):
At that time, they just happened to be looking for more people to cover music and tech, or the cover
streaming specifically. That was what he was interested in. So when I was telling him about my
experience and what I was passionate about immediately he was like, "You should consider submitting
samples and maybe contributing if looking for something to do."

Cherie Hu (04:53):
I was so surprised by that. I was not planning to do writing full time at that point at all. I had no idea how
Forbes' contributor model worked or anything. Or how you even start off as a freelance writer. So I'm
really grateful that he put that opportunity on the table saying like, "Hey, you seem to know a lot about
this space. We should definitely talk further and see what you can do maybe for us."

Cherie Hu (05:18):
So it was so many things had to come together for that to happen. So I had to go to this career fair at the
last minute. I almost didn't go, I had to stop at this Forbes table and have this conversation. I guess
that's informed my philosophy in the sense of, I very strongly believe in just pursuing your passion and
being true to it and continuing to express it and invest in it. But also be open to seeking opportunities
and constantly meeting new people and then eventually those two paths will converge in a really
positive way. That's just the philosophy that's guided my career ever since.

Damian Radcliffe (05:59):

We'll talk a bit more about your approach to the way in which you're managing your career and your
kind of portfolio and suite of different interests and outlets that you're writing for.

Damian Radcliffe (06:07):

But I wanted to almost take a step back before we do that to kind of talk about some of the interesting
parallels and analogies between where the journalism industry is at today and where the music industry
was at maybe five, 10, 15 years ago. Because I think there are some interesting parallels there and that's
something that you've talked a little bit about during your time here.

Cherie Hu (06:28):
Definitely, yeah. I think the journalism and music industries face a very similar problem right now. In
that people perceive the value of their core product to be essentially zero. So, in my talk here I talked
about how at the turn of the 21st century there were platforms like Napster that popularized piracy and
file sharing. Made it really hard for artists and record labels to start convincing consumers to pay $20 for
a vinyl record or even for a CD when you just access it for free and immediately on your computer. The
news industry, I feel like the, product of information and the quality of information, this problem is
exacerbated even more.

Cherie Hu (07:12):
People expect information to flow freely. They shouldn't expect to pay to just find out about what's
happening in the world. So that's a yes, that problem of trying to figure out how to communicate the
value of your core product I think is a commonality between the two. So that's one shared kind of
challenge. Then the other one is also just navigating platforms that might not have the same incentives
as your own as an organization.

Cherie Hu (07:41):
So in the media industry, obviously we're seeing this evolving every day with Facebook. Like how
Facebook has completely disrupted the way that people consume news and pay or not pay for news.
The fact that Facebook is capturing so much of the advertising revenue at the expense of these news
organizations. Keeping that revenue or even just like driving people to their site and controlling the
context around their articles.

Cherie Hu (08:05):
That's like an ongoing problem. Very similarly to how as an independent artist say you're posting your
music on Spotify, the way Spotify presents your music in the form of a playlist on its home page is very
much out of your control. They have complete editorial control over how their music is presented. I
know there are a lot of independent artists who sometimes have the sense of, they're releasing their
music into the void that is Spotify and hoping people will listen to it.

Cherie Hu (08:38):
Not really knowing how to get to that point, which is very similar to how I see some news companies
treating Facebook. What is the algorithm that will get my article to the reader that I want to reach? So
yeah, there are a lot of similar challenges. Then as a result, strategies that converges as a result of that.

Damian Radcliffe (08:56):

It's interesting, one of the conversations we've seen over the last couple of weeks has been, for
example, around one of these newer platforms, Apple news. Publishers saying, well this isn't paying us
as much as we thought. Or we're getting this kind of massive reach, huge amounts of user engagement.
But the conversion ratio for that in terms of dollars is a fraction of what we might expect.

Damian Radcliffe (09:16):

Of course many artists have said the same thing, that you can have thousands or millions of streams on
Spotify, Pandora and elsewhere. But the translation of that financially is not what I think a lot of
consumers might expect.

Cherie Hu (09:28):
Yes, for sure. I think it goes back to this concept generally of renting audiences is how I understand it. So
as an artist, as you're uploading music to Spotify, it's the business model isn't quite renting, but you're
accessing their audience. So yeah, but as you're paying to distribute your music independently through
like a third party distributor, you're renting access to the audiences on those platforms, and they're not
your audiences. They're the platforms audiences.

Cherie Hu (10:04):
I think this is the same question that journalists have been asking with Facebook and also now with this
Apple new surface is, what really is the added value of this massive reach versus having more control
over our audiences and being able to talk directly with them? I think in the music industry there are
artists who have been able to maintain a solid balance.

Cherie Hu (10:27):
I definitely think the worst case scenario for an independent artist for instance, is you upload a song to
Spotify and you get millions of plays randomly because you get placed on this one playlist that happens
to be popular on Spotify, like afternoon chill or something, which you know, tons of people are listening
to.

Cherie Hu (10:46):
But then you don't actually build any fans from that. So like the smartest artists have a really good
Spotify strategy in part because they are getting revenue from Spotify. So they want to, maximize that
but realize the value of owning their audiences elsewhere and sort of divide their energy accordingly.
There are definitely pros and cons to [inaudible 00:11:07] of those platforms in that sense.

Damian Radcliffe (11:08):

So what can the journalism industry learn from the likes of Spotify? I mean I think for me two immediate
things spring to mind around pricing. I think that's the kind of making the entry point affordable,
navigate some of the concerns that you outlined around the Napster and illegal file sharing. But also it's
really interesting to see some of the personalization they're doing, the way in which their data mining
the insights that they get from your consumption habits and then using that to create a more kind of
sticky experience. But I'd be really interested in your perspective.

Cherie Hu (11:41):
Yeah, I think there is a lot to be learned about. So this is just a philosophically interesting thing to me. If
you think about something like the New York Times, where I'm reading this book centering around
media history. Thinking about how for the longest time, I think maybe even now they still call their like
biggest editorial meeting of the day, the page one meeting. Because the front page obviously, because
they still have a print business, is so important to them.

Cherie Hu (12:13):
That is the definition that defines their brand and their reputation. Which is completely different now
from how their homepage on their website works. It's like updating all the time and every single day.
What happens now when the homepage of the New York Times in terms of which articles are curated,
it's the reader defining that, not so much the publication.

Cherie Hu (12:36):
So I think that is a really interesting shift in mindset. But also to give an example from the New York
Times that I think is super valuable and maybe does draw from what companies like Spotify or other
music platforms that are experts in personalization have done. I think the New York Times crossword
business is doing extremely well. Or like New York Times, I think they have like a separate cooking
vertical, like lifestyle verticals are doing extremely well.

Cherie Hu (13:09):
There are people who are valuable customers of the New York Times maybe without paying for their
news. They're just paying for crosswords and that's equally valuable. I think that's a lesson that every
single industry can learn in terms of, not just valuing one single type of transaction or one single persona
of who your customer is. I do talk-

Damian Radcliffe (13:34):

There's a value in niche there.
Cherie Hu (13:36):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. A value in niche and yes another, not to just give you another New York
Times example. But I think one of their most popular newsletters is the Game of Thrones newsletter. It's
just a send out that just has recaps and critiques of that show. It's very wildly popular and it's great that
they're serving that audience, even if it might not necessarily "serve page one." But just embracing all
these different niches, and all these edge cases and not seeing them as features rather than bugs.

Cherie Hu (14:10):
I think so in the case of the music industry, say I happen to really like both Lady Gaga and this very
obscure soul singer from the '60s or the '70s. A record store would be kind of confused. There'd be no
way to account for that diversity of taste. Whereas with what's been so great about what Spotify has
been able to build with their engineering teams is that those sort of edge cases and those anomalies in
your taste are not-

Cherie Hu (14:46):
They're, good and we want to embrace them and we want to create an experience that will cater to all
those layers and how you listen to music. Instead of just funneling you into one idea of what's the best
way or the only way to consume this media.

Damian Radcliffe (15:00):

When you're producing those stories, one of the things that was very interesting you talked about in
your guest lecture this morning, was you said that we don't hear enough or very often from the
perspective of artists. That so often the kind of the commentary and the analysis is coming from other
talking heads rather than perhaps the potential beneficiaries of this. Which are the people who are
making the content themselves.

Cherie Hu (15:22):
Yeah, it's such a fascinating gap. I think this is in part because of how people are perceiving Spotify. Or
all the news that has been coming up around Spotify is around how they are like a publicly traded
company. Now, it's all about what's their stock price. That determines their value and their success as a
company. So the people who you're going to interview for those types of articles are not artists.

Cherie Hu (15:49):
They're the investors or the people who are buying the stock or analysts, et cetera. Yeah, I think one
potential reason why people tend not to interview artists with these types of stories is, maybe that
there is this perception that's definitely rooted in I think outdated stereotypes that artists maybe can't
talk about business or maybe don't want to talk about business.

Cherie Hu (16:13):
It is true that there're some artists who just don't really care about that side of the industry, which is
fine. I don't think it's a requirement. But I think there is a growing number of artists who are increasingly
eloquent, and are willing to speak out and be more transparent about these issues. I think yeah, as
writers we definitely need to get past that.

Cherie Hu (16:33):
But yeah, so I think it's a combination of how Spotify is perceived as a company, and whom people think
can deliver the most like valuable commentary as a result of that.

Damian Radcliffe (16:45):

How easy is it to have those kinds of conversations? Is the same level of controls through PR people that
you would get at a corporation or large business, or is it different? Because my perception would be that
actually the levels of control are probably greater. But I don't have any evidence for that.

Cherie Hu (17:03):
Greater for artists.

Damian Radcliffe (17:04):

For the artists that it'd be just really hard to be able to talk to an artist, to be able to reach out and
directly engage with them.

Cherie Hu (17:10):
Yes. It is very difficult if you want to talk to a major label artist for the most part. This is actually really
fascinating to me. Because if you think about the music industry, you know the impact of Napster,
Limewire, all these peer to peer file sharing platforms. Essentially disinter-mediated the recorded side of
the music industry such that artists can just distribute their music directly.

Cherie Hu (17:37):
Or a growing number of artists like feel that they can do that and have a direct line to their fans and the
recorded music side. But in many instances, the media and PR side of things has the same level of
bureaucracy that it had just five, 10 years ago. I think some people, because of how the recorded side
was essentially mediated. A lot of people have made the argument which is part valid that, "Oh, as an
artist you can also manage your social media yourself and talk directly to your fans."

Cherie Hu (18:10):
Which is a huge added benefit. But I think as more and more of these platforms have come up, and it's
increasingly challenging to manage all of that. How do you approach crisis management on social
media? That is something that I think publicists and PR firms, that's where the expertise still lies and
they still provide value.

Cherie Hu (18:33):
But I think just because of the sprawling nature of social media, PR is still very bureaucratic. So yeah, if I
wanted to talk to-

Damian Radcliffe (18:39):

Chance The Rapper.

Cherie Hu (18:43):
Chance The Rapper, yes, even someone like Chance The Rapper. He is a very interesting example,
because he and his manager care so much about their brand. To the point where they actually, a couple
of years ago, they asked MTV news to take down an article about them because it was a negative review
of the album.

Cherie Hu (19:05):
To me it wasn't like that particular scathing or anything, it was just someone who was a fan of Chance
expressing his viewpoint on why he didn't think his album was particularly good compared to previous
ones. Then he, Chances' manager, immediately struck back. They had a partnership with MTV news for
an appearance of their TV shows. They were like, we requested that you take down this article.

Cherie Hu (19:28):
But, but yeah, so with Chance it would be, I'd probably have to go through their ... They probably have a
publicist or a peer company that they work with, and Chance doesn't do that many interviews even,
which is interesting. I think previously artists would feel really pressured to do a massive press tour
ahead of the release of a single or an album.

Cherie Hu (19:52):
But increasingly artists can be their own press or their social media channel is their own press. That does
happen a lot of times where other publications will jump second hand on something that artists post in
social media as breaking news. So, once you have that power, you become a lot more selective about
the types of coverage that you pursue in the mainstream press as a result.

Damian Radcliffe (20:15):

It's interesting you've drawn parallels between the way in which independent artist or artists are
managing their digital footprint and online profile with the way in which freelancers could do that. It
sounds as if that has influenced your own approach to some extent as a freelancer.

Cherie Hu (20:30):
Yeah, definitely. I think the way that it's influenced it the most is just in including readers more in my
process. Just having a direct line to them. Building a direct community and as opposed to, it isn't quite
like a completely perfect analogy. But as opposed to relying on a publication to do that for me and to
build the audience for me.

Cherie Hu (20:56):
The same way that a major label might take care of building an audience for an artist, that the artist now
controls all of that. But yeah, I think-

Damian Radcliffe (21:04):

So can you give us an example of a story you've worked on where you've deployed that approach?

Cherie Hu (21:09):
The approach of talking directly with-

Damian Radcliffe (21:11):

Yeah that participatory manner, which I think is really interesting.
Cherie Hu (21:14):
Yes, definitely. So let's see. Okay, so this is kind of meta I guess, cause we're on a podcast. But I wrote an
article about how a lot of musicians were starting their own podcasts. This is a practice that's actually
pretty common on Twitter. But I just posted, "Hey, I'm working on a story about musicians starting their
own podcast. I would love any recommendations for things to listen to or if you start your own podcast,
we'd love for you to reply and to share why you're doing this."

Cherie Hu (21:47):
I ended up getting a ton of different responses. Much, much more than I ever would have gotten than if I
had just decided to talk to the one or two people that I knew that were at the intersection of music and
podcasting. There's just a whole world out there that I didn't know about it all that really influenced my
reporting on the topic.

Cherie Hu (22:09):
I include a lot of this podcast in my piece. So I thanked a lot of those people that contributed for their
feedback as well. So that's just one example. Another example on my Patreon page. So on Patreon, and
on Twitter as well, I do this occasionally. Just posting polls, this is less on gathering factual information
and more on taking the pulse on how people feel about a particular story. Which I think is super
important. Just as an example I did do this a lot with the Spotify and Gimlet and Anchor acquisition.

Cherie Hu (22:48):
There's a ton of talk on Twitter about it, and I was very actively trying to get different people's
perspective on the topic coming from all different backgrounds of the music industry in a public forum
like on Twitter. Which I think is really valuable. Whereas I think the traditional approaches, you choose
your sources privately and you talk to them privately.

Cherie Hu (23:11):
I do understand the mindset of not wanting to share your ideas too soon, and then not wanting to put
them out to the public too soon. But I think in terms of just generating ideas, making sure I'm accounting
for perspectives that I might be leaving out just because of my own blind spots. I think Twitter and other
social media platforms are really useful for that.

Damian Radcliffe (23:33):

Then in terms of interesting innovations or things that are coming down the line, what's on your horizon
in terms of how the music industry is changing and the big, I guess consumer led, but also kind of artists
influenced changes that we might see in the next few years? How's the industry going to change?

Cherie Hu (23:50):
Yeah, so I think one of the changes that was written a lot about last year, and I think we're still in the
early stages, is the rise of smart speakers. Voice activation as music consumption. Because if you think
about if you have an Amazon echo device at home and-

Damian Radcliffe (24:09):

Playing music is the most popular activity when people aren't actually consuming things like the news, is
ranked much, much lower.
Cherie Hu (24:20):
Yes, for sure. It's so fascinating. That's the case for a lot of emerging technologies as well in terms of
music being the first use case that people go to. Then if you think about the friction or lack thereof in
consuming music through these smart speakers. It's just Alexa, play music or Alexa, play this artist. No
more like tapping on a screen. There's no visual interface at all.

Cherie Hu (24:43):
I feel like a lot of artists and labels have formulated their marketing strategy on these streaming
platforms around just having a visual interface. So what happens when that leaves, is that bad for
discovery? Some artists have argued that people are just going to stick with their old ways. How do you
create a compelling discovery experience around that? I think it's a super interesting question.

Cherie Hu (25:06):
Then in a similar realm of smart speakers, I think there's more of a demand to create more
conversational content around music. I think it's a minor use case, but I think will grow actually with rise
of podcasts. So there may be a possibility where if you're a big fan of an artist you can ask an Amazon
echo device or ask Alexa, "Hey, I want to find out more about this song." Then have a conversation with
an artist whether pre-programmed, or this is like maybe going way too deep.

Cherie Hu (25:42):
But I'm very fascinated by voice synthesis technology, being able to recreate a human's voice using AI,
and all the things positive and negative that come along with that. So that's one element, just like these
new experiences that devices like smart speakers entail. Another technology that I'm really interested
in. So I'm equally fascinated by it and also skeptical of it. That's the world of virtual and augmented
reality.

Cherie Hu (26:19):
I'm fascinated by it because just being able to step into a virtual world other than your own. Just as
easily as putting a device on your head or stepping into virtual room, what have you, and creating these
new worlds from the ground up. I think that's very appealing to artists.

Cherie Hu (26:39):
Going back to the question of how do you control the context around the way your music is consumed.
What if you could build a whole world around your music? This is one startup called the wave VR that
essentially they've worked with this artist named Toki Monster who's an electronic musician. Worked
with her just to create this interactive VR version of her album cover, which is super colorful, very
animated.

Cherie Hu (27:05):
You could walk into this world and like play around with different elements of it, and it would trigger
certain sounds from the album. So I think people are still trying to figure out the business case of that. In
part because very few people still own VR headsets. But just the concept of that and the value it can
bring for artists and fans I think is really compelling.

Damian Radcliffe (27:22):

Excellent, it sounds like there's lots of interesting things for us to keep an eye on it. Of course, YouTube
also innovating lots in this space. So you've just dropped a podcast, you've just started a Patreon
account. What else is next for you in the next few months?

Cherie Hu (27:35):
That's a very good question. Yeah, so the Patreon is just barely a month old, so I have to see how that
grows. But I'm thinking a lot about different ways to include my readers in my process. So towards the
end of next week ... So I have four tiers on my Patreon page ranging from $1 a month to $40 a month.
People on the $40 a month tier have access to monthly video hangouts with me.

Cherie Hu (28:06):
This is something that I'm testing, but it'll just be an hour of a video hangout. Where it's essentially like
an open office hours, where they can ask me any questions about my writing or about just like the
business of freelancing as well. Hopefully I'll have more structured and target hangouts as well.

Cherie Hu (28:22):
So people, might like, what's the feature of Spotify. Have that be the topic of the hangout. So I'm
experimenting with that. I definitely want to continue freelance writing for as much as I can, exploring
writing for different publications. I think it's amazing training for me in terms of, I guess as an example,
the way that I write about music and tech for the Columbia Journalism Review is very, very different
from how I'd write about it for Billboard. It's like two fundamentally different audiences, but equally
interesting to me.

Cherie Hu (28:55):
So I want to keep kind of exploring and expanding on the audiences and the perspectives that I'm
including as a result of that. Yeah, I guess the podcast and the Patreon are both very new at the
moment. But I hope to keep working on them and seeing how they grow.

Damian Radcliffe (29:11):

Excellent. Well, we wish you the best of luck with that and thank you again for traveling. Took a long
time for you to get over into Oregon. But we're delighted that you were able to make it. Thank you so
much for the discussion today.

Cherie Hu (29:22):
Thank you.

Damian Radcliffe (29:23):

Just a reminder that you'll be able to find Cherie's guest lecture and more materials from her time
during her visit here to Oregon on our website, demystifying.uoregon.edu, that's
demystifying.uoregon.edu. In the meantime, it just amazed me to thank once more my guest today,
Cherie Hu, thanks for joining us.

Cherie Hu (29:39):
Thank you.
Damian Radcliffe (29:47):
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