In Conversation with Anthony “A.D.” Daughtry
This past Friday, Intercept went Instagram Live with renowned music promotions executive Anthony “A.D.” Daughtry. Since beginning his career in the early 1990s, A.D. has helped build the success of some of the biggest artists in urban, hip hop, and R&B history, including Eminem, MC Hammer, Notorious B.I.G., OutKast, and Lil’ Wayne, to name a few. A proven authority in music promotion with decades of experience, A.D. will advise Intercept’s leadership on genre trends, promotional and marketing developments, and artists to watch.
Intercept: “Let’s get into it! To start, where are you reporting from?”
Anthony: “I’m in Miami, Florida. I’m originally born and raised in Washington D.C., and after I finished school at Howard University I moved out to Oakland, California to work for [M.C.] Hammer. I worked with him for about two years in the marketing department, so I was a part of the Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em album which sold 20 million, so I was a part of the marketing team that did that. I’ve got a lot of stories!”
Intercept: “After graduating from Howard University, did you know you wanted to work in music? How did your career transpire?”
Anthony: “Okay. Back in 1972, my mom was in politics in Washington D.C. There was this group that was performing down in Baltimore and my mom took us to meet them in their hotel after. The group was The Jackson 5. So that is why I got into the business. It was being around them. Because every time they came to the east coast we would always go and see them, and just spend time with them. That wasn’t really the first taste of ‘oh, I’d like to be in the music industry, but at that time I was thinking ‘I’d like to have a tour bus.’ Because we’d jump on their tour buses, and I said ‘I would like to do that.’
And from there as I got older, I got into a rap group and I was like naw, I can’t rap I need to do behind the scenes. And from there I had a group that I was working within the Washington D.C. area and I was taking them around to the various music conferences at the time, like the B.R.E., Jack the Rapper, Impact Conferences, and those were the conferences where everyone would come and network. And that’s where I met the people with Hammer, and they said ‘hey look A.D. we want you to come be a part of our marketing team.’ And so that’s what took place from ‘72 as I got into the industry and moved on up. And then from Hammer, it was on to starting my own street promotions company which was called Streetwise Promotions in the Bay Area. And the acts that I broke on the west coast were Biggie – his first album Ready to Die – Outkast, Craig Mac, Method Man, and Red Man. I was basically working all of the hip-hop records from ‘94 to about ‘98 in the Bay Area. And during that period was such an awesome time. I really enjoyed the music industry during that time.
And then from expanding my company and moving down to Miami, in ‘97 Interscope hit me up and said ‘hey look we want you to come work in our rap department.’ And I went out to L.A. and worked with Interscope on Black Eyed Peas’ first album, Eminem’s first album, Maya, and the Bullworth soundtrack, so it was Interscope starting back up with new acts. Then they moved me into being a radio rep on the west coast, and then they moved me to New York and that’s when I was working all of the Rough Riders, Eve…so I did that. I mean I could continue to keep going on and on!
After I left Interscope I went to Warner Bros. for a stint, did that for about a year, then got married and moved back down to Miami. I started working with Blackground Records that had Tony Braxton, Tank, then I moved over to Slip-N-Slide to help Ted out with Trina, and then from there, I went over to Cash Money to help Slim and Baby out with Tha Carter III album, then started doing independent work for E One, then started working with D.J. Khaled and Brain McKnight. I’ve been in the business for 31 years, boy do I have a lot of stories I could be on here talking all day long!
Intercept: “That is so awesome. And at the end of the day it’s all about that organic connection, right?”
Anthony: “Yes, and that’s what I would tell artists who are getting in the business now. Everyone looks at streaming, streaming, streaming. Yes. If you look back at Spotify in 2011, they probably had about 3 million subscribers. They’re saying as of September 18th of this year, they’re going to have 87 million subscribers. And the same thing with Apple. So streaming is where it’s at. Streaming is not going anywhere. I know some people who are old school like ‘no, I’m just going to do radio radio radio.’ Yes, we still need radio, because you want to look at the whole circle, the pie. One part of it is streaming. The other part is social media. Another part is radio. So you never want to leave anything on the table. The DJ will always be around. If you’re getting into this business, you can’t just look at ‘okay my music is up on Spotify and Apple.’ So you think that someone’s going to come and just stream your music? No, you have to promote it. Some artists who I’ve spoken to are not thinking about ‘okay, well I’ve got to spend money on marketing and promoting it.’ Well if you were at a major record company, they would have a budget set to the side to do that. But there are people who I speak to who will go and make the record and do the video, and I’m saying ‘why did you do the video? How do you even know if that record is going to be the one that works for you? Why are you going to spend that amount of money? Why don’t you test it with the DJs? Go to the record pool!’
What is a record pool? Groups of DJs who are part of the pool that spin at clubs, venues, bars, and lounges. So before streaming happened it was always radio or the DJ. I don’t care what party you go to, music is playing and a DJ is spinning your music. So, how about if your music is up on Spotify, and then you walk into a club and all of a sudden your music is getting played and you’re like ‘hey man, I don’t know you but how’d you get my music?’ ‘oh this record pool. I heard your music there.’
So now, what is the whole game about being in this music industry? Getting exposure. To get your music exposure now that it’s up on the platform, register your music with PROs and record pools. And then people say ‘okay now let me do the video.’ So you’re just looking at Spotify and YouTube, and now this problem with TikTok. Everyone is using TikTok to expose your music. Always understand that this business is always evolving and changing, and if you as an artist don’t know the changes, you’re going to get lost. You have 40,000-60,000 songs uploaded to Spotify per day. Now how are you going to separate yourself from that?
I told one artist I was working with out in the Bay Area named St. James that he should do a Monday music report. Give all of the information of what you’ve done throughout the week with your Spotify, with your Apple Music, with your Pandora, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Get all of the data. Take that data, put it up on your social media, and we’ll start giving that to the radio stations. Because the radio stations are inundated with so much music. So don’t just go to a radio station and say hey this is my music, please take a listen. You need to have some type of data, some type of information to let them know what’s going on with your project. So that’s what we did, and by doing that we saw other radio stations coming on. Give the information.”
Intercept: “What’s the difference between Intercept and everybody else?”
Anthony: “One thing is they’re hands-on. You have a problem? You’ll be able to speak with them, they’ll email you, and they’ll help you out with label support. I’m not trying to bash on certain names, but everyone else is just putting your music up on the platforms and that’s it. But with Intercept, they’re hands-on. And are able to help you navigate through this system. We’re trying to navigate through the music industry and Intercept has its fingers on the pulse, on the heartbeat of what’s going on. And all I want to do is just be an added feature or bonus to help out Intercept to continuously move through the navigation of the business.
I love the platform. I love everything that Intercept brings to the table. I know there are about 250 acts signed with Intercept, and I know that it’s going to grow. It’s going to grow because a lot of artists now don’t know this information. All they’re looking at is ‘I’m putting my music up.’ But it’s more than that. You need a team, you can’t do this by yourself. As I said before, in my 31 years in this business, I had people to help me along the way. It takes a team to be able to move your project. And that’s what Intercept is: a team. We’re here to help you.”
Intercept: “Someone from the audience said that they’re trying to build their brand before creating music. What are your thoughts on that?”
Anthony: “I would say come with the music first. Because if you’re building the brand, well what is the brand? For example, I’ll say McDonald’s is the brand. So if they just came out and started talking about hamburgers or fries, people would want to taste it. They need to taste it. So I would say if you have the music, your music is going to speak for itself. Put the music out there. And the thing is that nowadays people say ‘I’m going to go ahead and put an album out.’ Don’t do that. Put an EP together. You don’t drop the whole EP, put a single out first. Then drop the second song next, the third after, all spaced out, so now you have three records out there. Do you put money behind all three? No. Just one. Push the first single, because if you get the songs on playlists or so, now you have people coming into your profile that are monthly listeners who will be waiting for your next drop. So before you put money on the second or third, put money on the first to push as people are coming in to your profile. And if you know about playlists it’s only for one month, so for one month I’m going to see how the streams are going to work. Then on the second and third song, are people organically streaming that? Because they may say ‘oooh I like the third record more than the first.’ So now that you know that within that first month you’ve got three songs. Then if the third is doing better than the first, we start pushing the third single the next month.
Now once we do that, you can drop another record. I’ve done it and I’ve seen it work. I’ve done it on a smooth jazz artist who now has over 6 million streams on his album. Six million streams because we did that. That started last September, and by December he was already at a half a million on his album. Then the editorial playlists started picking him up. You come into the next year and in April we were at around 900,000, and he wanted to put advertisement dollars to push the song. I said ‘yeah, we’ll be able to get over a million.’ We pushed it, got over a million, and he has not had to put any more money into that record and it’s doing very well. I’m basically getting the artists started, and then you should be able to run and do it yourself. I’m helping you, now go. If you need me to be there to help you out I’ll do that, but it’s to the point where you should be able to run on your own.”
Intercept: “And that’s where Intercept stands. We want you to be able to do it alone but also have the team on your back.”
Anthony: “Right. Being in this business you can’t do this by yourself. No artist has done it by themselves. You’ve had a team of people, and as I said, Intercept is that team. I’ve known about other distributors, I’m not going to say the names, but when Ralph [Intercept Chairman] told me to look at the portal I was like ‘yo, man. This is awesome. I like this. I like where you’re taking this.’ Because what is the future of the music industry? It will always be streaming. By 2030 they’re saying that streaming will make 131 billion dollars. Not million, billion. Right now the one change that could happen to pertain to streaming is the royalty rate. A lot of people don’t know that the royalty rate with Spotify is straight across the board. So every artist is getting the same royalty rate that Beyonce’s getting. And the majors don’t like that. So this August or September, you’re going to see the majors coming at Spotify and Apple. And if they;re not going to change the rate, they’re going to say ‘pull our music off your platform.’
So that’s the only way of seeing a downturn for Spotify as of subscribers. Because as I said, as of September of this year, they’re looking at 87 million people being on that. Is it still going to stay at $11, or are they going to increase that. So streaming’s always going to be around, but you as an artist have to look at it as ‘where do I want to be pertaining to distribution?’ Because what some of these distributors have done with artists and some of the clients that I’ve worked with is pulled their music down from platforms because they’re saying streams are fake. No, that’s not what it is. It’s that these companies don’t want to pay out the money. And if you’re an artist going through Intercept, you’re not going to have that. Because the other companies do a sweep. I’ve seen it. It’ll be in the middle of the year and then at the end of the year, they’re pulling because they don’t want to pay that money. You want to be with a company where you don’t have to go through that. And Intercept is that. You don’t have to deal with the drama, and not getting paid, and you have people who are here to help.”
It was such a pleasure to host Anthony “A.D” Daughtry on the Intercept Instagram Live. Stay tuned for more from Intercept!