When Ian Schwartzman first met Joe Budden just over a decade ago, he told the veteran rapper exactly what was on his mind. “I hated Joe’s music, and so our first meeting was me telling Joe that,” says the founder/president of management company/label To The Top, 38, who now co-runs Budden’s business empire as CEO of The Joe Budden Network. “But I was always interested in him, because I felt like he was like a hip-hop Howard Stern, and I wanted to build a media broadcast lane with him. He said, ‘Normally I would tell you to go f— yourself, but I like that your head’s in that place. What I’ve been doing isn’t working, so I’m willing to be open.’”

Thus began a business partnership that has lasted a decade and has grown from Schwartzman — who also manages DJ Premier, Remy Ma, producer Brady Watt and NFL player Zaire Franklin — starting as Budden’s music manager into a culture podcast empire; the two ultimately launched the Joe Budden Network and built their company into a $20 million per year business, Schwartzman told the New York Times last year. Along the way, Schwartzman and Budden have helped define, and then redefine, the podcast business. They started out by licensing a show called Everyday Struggle to Complex; then launching a podcast on SoundCloud before moving to an exclusive licensing deal with Spotify; then going direct to fans via Patreon, preaching a DIY attitude to their thousands of loyal listeners and viewers.

For Schwartzman — who runs To The Top alongside his business partner Keeb, head of technology Tyler Dilks and PR guru Matt Conaway, and the To The Top record label in partnership with DJ Premier — building the Joe Budden Network has been about more than helping to pioneer and perfect the video-podcast-as-essential-viewing furor that has taken over media in recent years. It’s also about showing fellow creators that there’s a different path to success than simply signing away the rights to content in exchange for an upfront advance — a lesson he learned early on as manager for Brooklyn rapper Papoose, who turned to independent distribution after being cast out of the major label system and found it more lucrative than he expected.

“My model is very much long-term business over chasing checks; I’m not into a quick buck to get over the hump,” Schwartzman says. And he finds similarities in his approach to the podcast and media creator business in the music business, which has seen artists gain much more power and leverage by building huge audiences on their own in the streaming era. “I’m very much into finding ways to build recurring revenue and long-term money and building businesses,” he adds. “And I feel like the ecosystem has shifted towards my mentality as opposed to how it was 15 years ago.”

What did you learn working with Papoose?

He’s the one who opened the door for me. I used to call him 20 times a day, and finally, after calling him for a year, he was like, “All right, you can manage me.” Everything from there, I learned a lot about how your position in the industry as an artist directly correlates with what opportunities you get.  

I couldn’t get him a major label deal because no one was interested. So I said, “Let’s go get a distribution deal.” Ingrooves Fontana handled both digital and physical, and he got to maintain ownership in the IP. We did an 80-20 deal — 80% went to Pap, 20% went to Ingrooves — and we sold, in two weeks, 20,000 copies. In the major label world, you’re getting dropped. In our world, with an 80-20 deal, we made like $300,000, and we were winners. And that opened my eyes to distribution. 

When you met Joe Budden, were you trying to get into the podcast media business, or did you see that as something that was specifically great for Joe?

When I started managing him, he had done a few episodes of his podcast, but that’s not what I saw. I had seen him on Love and Hip-Hop. He had a short stint in 2004 on WBLS as a drive time radio host. And I’m like, ‘Damn, he’s so entertaining.’ In 2015, when I started with Joe, I wanted to find a client that I could get into broadcast and media with. I ended up doing Joe’s last album 10 years ago, and I got him to do his first independent distribution deal, with EMPIRE and Ghazi. We recouped the same day we released, and I got Joe to buy into this whole independent thing. And when we were on our U.S. tour to support that album, he looked at me, like, six shows in, and he’s like, “I’m done with this. I’m going with your plan. Let’s focus on media, TV and content.” And I was like, “Say no more.”

Early on, you guys started it as a video podcast. Now, almost every podcast is video. Why did you guys want to do video from the beginning?

I was like, if we put it up on YouTube, how many more people are going to watch the video once a week? It’ll make the podcast bigger. And they were watching you on Everyday Struggle — why are we going to keep that from them? And I don’t want to be braggadocious, but I feel like when we did that, we changed podcasting forever. 

The Spotify deal was audio-only, so we kept it on YouTube. Spotify flew us out to L.A., and we worked out a license deal with them. Probably the most valuable part of the deal was, I made them match, dollar for dollar, what they were going to pay us in marketing dollars that I had to approve. I wanted to feel Hollywood, so I needed them to spend money to not just promote it on Spotify, but to make this look like it’s something very special. We had billboards across the country, and we changed their business forever. We were getting a million listens an episode.

What did you learn from that experience with Spotify?

A big part of our negotiation was, we wanted to see data. What I learned was that people were listening. What I learned was that the big companies like Spotify and Apple make very little money on streaming because they have to give all their money to the labels. And what I realized was, when they have original audio, it offsets what they owe the labels. It flipped their deals. They were using us to negotiate their music deals, and they were also getting rich off of this medium of podcasting.

The rumors of IPO were coming down the pipe, and I was like, we don’t have equity in this. We had no ownership. We were getting paid pennies compared to what was happening inside the building. And what I learned from the data was our average listen time was over two hours per listener, and we’re talking about 800,000 people an episode. So when our deal was up, we started negotiating, and at this time, everyone’s coming after us. Amazon threw us an enormous offer. Spotify came. I was like, “Joe, let’s go D2C. Let’s let the fans tell us what we’re worth.” I reached out to Patreon CEO Jack Conte, and I was like, “I think we’re bigger than any deal they’re going to give us. I want to know what our support looks like.” But I told Jack, I’m not coming over there for just the upside of the deal terms. We want to own a piece of Patreon. And it took a lot of talking and negotiating, but he agreed to it.

How difficult was it to get the paywall strategy correct?

We had a lot of meetings at Patreon before we launched. We asked them what worked for their most popular shows, and we also used our own discretion. We looked around, and we were like, “How do we build our own Netflix?” It was trial and error. We just added to it. We started with $5, $10 and $25 tiers a month, then we added the $50 tier, and this year we’re going to make some changes, too. Our goal is always, how do we make the experience for the viewer and listener better? They’ll be loyal to us forever if we really give a shit, and if we do, every opportunity we want will eventually come in front of us, and I think it’ll be multiples of what people are taking just to pay the bills. So that was our model.

How have you continued to expand it?

I would say 99.9% of it is the free funnel in quality content to a wider audience. And there’s a huge community around our show and around our network, so if you have something exclusive, like we have on Patreon, the free members aren’t going to want to feel left out of the conversation. We had partnerships that were helpful with Spotify, Revolt TV, Amazon, Love & Hip-Hop. Two months ago, we ran our first national TV campaign for prime time on CNN, ESPN, Fox, NBC, ABC. We have three different shows. But honestly, word of mouth is so valuable. It’s been our biggest marketing tool, and still is.

How do you feel this business compares with your previous experience in the music business?

Everyone’s chasing quick checks, as opposed to treating it like you’re building a business. Most people are signing to these big platforms, the Goliaths, because there’s no risk, and in that way, it’s very much reminiscent of the ‘90s and 2000s old-school record deals. But there is a small group of content creators, media brands and podcasters that are seeing the potential and the upside of controlling your IP and doing this yourself. And we’re doing everything we can to lay out a blueprint. 

Thousands of people listen to this podcast for two hours apiece. There’s a lot of power that comes with that. How are you dealing with that?

I think podcasting and media creation is the future of our universe, the way we communicate with each other. So I feel an enormous sense of responsibility to not only have an entertaining show, but also be thoughtful of the messaging we’re passing along about what’s important, and what to look out for. Back in the day, you couldn’t put out a record unless you had a label. Today, you can go online, create a YouTube presence, an Instagram presence, and make money directly off of passive ad revenue or direct sponsorship deals. And there’s a lot of power in that, and I think it’s going to lead to a revolution in what we see in our workforce. 

There’s a revolution going on, and I see podcasting and media creation as being more popular than music in the future. Podcasting is modern-day television. It’s all melted into one, and the creator dictates the terms, not the network anymore. I think we’re going to start seeing teams like Joe and I that are as big as Disney. Those are our aspirations. We want to be a Goliath, but we want to do it independently, and we want to do it on our own. And I think we have a responsibility to deliver the information to the listeners and viewers on how they can build something themselves, and at least alert them to the options they have, because the future is bright.

What we are looked at [as] is a media network. What we really are is a data company that is taking the information and creating and curating around the facts. We’re not guessing anymore. The one thing that every creator has now is information. We want to become a household brand, but we want to be an institution for what the future of creators looks like, and that takes doing more than just making content.

It’s obvious now, in 2026, that the music industry is in the midst of an AI revolution — but for Universal Music Group’s chief digital officer and executive vp, Michael Nash, AI is a disruption he’s been waiting on since the 2010s.

“We actually had brought some gen AI companies to [a] company conference in 2019, and we were playing the output of the music models for our executives, who at the time were saying, ‘That doesn’t sound very good. I’m not really sure where this is going,’” Nash remembers. “But I believed that there were [going to be] significant implication[s].”

Now, looking back on it, he feels that this proactivity is why the world’s largest music company is “in a position to focus on the opportunities” that the new tech poses now — as well as its risks.

These days — after announcing deals with Splice, Klay, Udio, Nvidia, Stability AI and many more — it is clear that UMG is interested in partnering with as many AI music companies as possible, as long as they get a proverbial “seat at the table,” as Nash often says, to make sure its interests are kept in mind.

What’s one of UMG’s most important interests right now? Getting platforms to agree to a “walled garden” approach, meaning that users of an AI platform can play with AI music in the service, but cannot take it out of the service. To Nash, non-compliant AI companies are “effectively us[ing] artists’ content and their brands to create derivatives that [are] going to compete with the artists on other platforms” like Spotify, Apple Music or TikTok.

“We didn’t think that made any sense [to work with companies who disagreed with the ‘walled garden’], [and] we didn’t feel like when going to artists for their support to opt-in to these services that it was going to be a very compelling pitch,” says Nash.

In the latest episode of Billboard’s music business podcast, On the Record With Kristin Robinson, Nash details how UMG negotiated some of its most important deals of the last decade, how it feels about the future of AI music — and why the company actually removed its music from TikTok in 2024.

Watch the full episode below, or find it on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

This week will mark the two-year anniversary of UMG removing its music from TikTok after licensing negotiations fell apart. Set the scene for me. What was the lead-up to making the call?

Michael Nash: Well, it was developing over the holiday season…We were in a process of trying to sort out what direction we were going to take in the negotiation, and the negotiation fell apart. Importantly, there were economic principles that we were very focused on…There was a proposal [from TikTok] that the service would use AI music in a way that went far outside of what we thought really made sense for us to support in the interest of our artists. And specifically, what they were proposing is that creators would be able to generate AI content, and that AI content on the TikTok platform would get paid on the same basis as artists’ [music]. It would dilute the artists’ royalty pool. We felt that that was a hill we would die on. We felt like that was a drop-dead issue in the evolution of AI. If we got to a point where artists’ royalties were being displaced by pure AI-generated content, that was going to lead to a completely unacceptable outcome. So we took a very, very strong position, and the standoff materialized.

Looking back on that, it was so important [to do.] From that time forward, it’s been a focal point of so many of our [streaming service] agreements….Since reaching that new agreement, TikTok has been a great partner…We came out of it in good shape. I think, Lucian told me, [this was the] only time in his tenure that he’s ever reached a point in a negotiation where there was no go-forward. The only time he has had to go dark on a platform. It’s certainly the only time that happened in my tenure with Universal Music. A very unusual situation.

Ultimately, when you got to a deal with TikTok three months later, did you get what you wanted, as far as forbidding the AI content dilution?

Yes, we got the best protections that we had been able to obtain to that point, and they remain some of the best protections that we have in any agreement with the music service, in terms of AI protection and what we call anti-dilution, meaning our royalties won’t be diluted by pure AI content.

From my vantage point, it seemed like UMG was losing leverage as the “boycott” of TikTok went on. Top UMG artists were finding ways to continue to promote their music on the platform instead of standing with the company and its choice to remove music. Olivia Rodrigo, for example, used some UGC remixes of her songs that hadn’t been removed. Then, Taylor Swift was a really big turning point, in my view, because she found a way to put her catalog back on there to support the upcoming release of The Tortured Poets Department. I’m wondering, did UMG artists finding ways to stay on TikTok hurt your negotiating position?

That’s a very interesting way of packaging up the different developments we were having at the time. I would say ultimately, the fact that we got a really good deal going forward, and we were able to secure the single most important strategic principle and a better agreement with TikTok overall, suggests that we had the right negotiation posture to be able to get to the outcome. Certainly, a company like Universal, with a large, diverse stable of artists, a lot of voices, a lot of perspectives, we understand the importance of access to that platform for our artists, and that’s why we worked really hard to secure a new agreement. I would say, by and large, there was a strong level of support in the music community around the position that we took, [which] was very helpful in enabling us to secure the right deal going forward.

Back when Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing disrupted the music industry, many criticized music’s response to it, which was largely to fight it and not accept that it was happening. Now, we are in the midst of another disruption with generative AI. I know the music industry at large has been very focused on messaging that it would not repeat the mistakes of the past. Can you compare and contrast then and now?

Some lessons were definitely learned. I think some [people] in the industry at the end of the last century were wondering if it would be possible just to turn the internet off. [Laughs.] Obviously, the disruption that came was profound, and it halved industry revenues on a global basis. And a lot of adjustments needed to be made to reconcile how you address disruptive technology.

The way that Sir Lucian, our CEO, puts it, is that it’s not only futile to oppose the evolution of technology, it’s counter-productive. If you go back over the last century…and you think about everything that’s happened with developments in technology…Ultimately, every single technology disruption over the last century has been really good for the music industry when the reconciliation is achieved and you understand how to surf the wave. A lot of that is because our artists are innovators, and our artists are central to culture, and technology and music come together in media culture in unique and important ways. It creates a lot of value.

UMG, along with Warner Music Group and Sony Music, launched a blockbuster copyright infringement lawsuit against AI music companies Suno and Udio in the summer of 2024, alleging that they were training on your copyrighted sound recordings without proper licensing. Late last year, UMG settled with Udio. I’m wondering why Udio came first. Tell me about coming to the table with Udio and why you felt like you could reach a settlement there?

At the beginning of this inflection point in the evolution of generative AI, we established a core philosophy…The North Star for us was to center the conversation on artists, defend their rights, protect their interests, and from that foundation, build out our creative and commercial opportunities… Always the perspective was ‘defense into offense.’

So I would say specifically with Udio, I give their CEO, Andrew Sanchez, a lot of credit for quickly coming to us with a perspective that he wanted to reorient the direction of the company, to come out of litigation and settle, but to focus on developing products that we really aligned with. The concept that they had around developing a super fan product that would enable hyper-personalization, a level of customization of the experiences and interactions with the music — I can’t go too much further, because the product hasn’t launched yet and plans are still confidential.

Almost all the value in the music ecosystem is established by two things. One, artists connecting with bands that love them, and two, fans participating in music culture. Concepts of products that deepen the artist-fan relationship and those that allow fans to participate in music culture really appeal to us as kind of hitting that sweet spot of how value is created. Credit to Udio and Andrew and the management of the company [for] working really hard to develop a compelling proposition, working with us to resolve the litigation and establishing this path forward. We’re happy to be in business with them.

I imagined the way that it went was UMG said, ‘We can settle, but here’s what we want.’ And then Udio said yes. I didn’t realize that it was the other way around — where Udio comes with a new idea to pivot, in fact, and it happened to align.

I think it’s possible to insert in that narrative that litigation is the mother of invention, a degree of necessity. There was a very collaborative dialogue. Early on, it was, you know, ‘[Here’s] five ideas, and which one seemed to be most interesting?’ We did have some very, very clear principles that are now manifest in what their plans are.

The ‘walled garden’ construct [meaning that generated works on an AI platform cannot be downloaded from the service and used elsewhere] is probably something that’s worth talking about for just a minute, because that’s not something that all the [AI music] services are planning on offering, but the ones that we’re supporting are planning on offering that.

Do you think that the lawsuit against Suno and Udio was impossible to avoid?

It’s absolutely an instance of, ‘Don’t claim a seat at the dinner table, and you’ll wind up on the menu.’ We had to take a position about the wholesale ingestion of our entire library of copyrights on which the value of our company is predicated as a training set. The rights and interests of our artists were not being consulted. There was no consent sought, no model around their compensation was offered. We had absolutely no position, [except] again, ‘defense into offense.’ You take a position around your rights and your interests, and then you sit down and work out what the win looks like on the other side of litigation.

WMG has come to a deal and settled with Suno, but UMG has not. Why haven’t you reached an agreement with Suno yet? Does it have to do with its lack of a “walled garden”?

First of all, I have to be careful because we’re in the midst of ongoing litigation…but I think that if I treated your question as a rhetorical question, I would say yes, having articulated the walled garden distinction and its importance [for UMG,] that’s kind of a hat-hanger in this discussion.

Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon is the latest musician to voice his support for those protesting against ICE in Minneapolis and across the United States.

At the NMPA & Billboard Songwriter Awards on Wednesday (Jan. 28), the two-time Grammy winner accepted his artist-songwriter of the year honor with a rousing speech hailing the importance of using one’s voice to push their community forward.

“I just wanna make a note that this also represents another kind of observer, one with hard hands,” Vernon mused. “One that’s in the streets of Minneapolis and many, many cities in this country right now. An observer, with a capital O, with hard hands, is somebody that stands on the corner of their community and blows the whistle and makes a noise. That’s their purpose … and they are using their voice. So, I am incredibly humbled to be an Observer and to stand in the service of humanality.”

The largest songwriter-focused event hosted during Grammy weeks, the NPMA x Billboard Songwriter Awards hosted scores of A-list guests from across the music industry at the Avalon Hollywood. Known for his immersive, genre-bending catalog, which includes a Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit thanks to his featured turn on Taylor Swift’s “Exile” (No. 6), Vernon’s latest honor comes on the heels of his Sable, Fable LP. Released last April, the set topped both Americana/Folk Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums, peaking at No. 11 on the all-genre Billboard 200. At Sunday’s Grammy ceremony (Feb. 1), Sable, Fable will compete in the best alternative music album category, while lead single “Everything Is Peaceful Love” squares off in best alternative music performance.

Never one to shy away from politics — he performed at a hometown rally in Wisconsin for Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign — Vernon’s acceptance speech comes just a month after he teamed up with Gracie Abrams and Aaron Dessner for “Sold Out,” an anti-gun violence song.

Wednesday also found Grammy-winning rock guitarist Tom Morello announcing a benefit concert of solidarity and resistance for Friday (Jan. 30) at First Avenue in Minneapolis. All proceeds will benefit the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens recently killed by ICE agents. The same day, Lizzo shared a passionate video on social media addressing the “injustice” of those ICE shootings.

Later that night, Lady Gaga (at a Mayhem Ball tour stop in Tokyo) and Pusha T (on the Billboard Power 100 red carpet) both spoke out against ICE. Mother Monster told her audience that her “heart is aching thinking about the people … who are being mercilessly targeted by ICE,” while Pusha plainly said, “Jan. 28, 2026, f—k ICE. Gotta keep it 100. Got to.”

Watch Bon Iver’s full acceptance speech below.

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