Harvey Mason Jr.

fans of music are consuming their content and we'll continue to look at that where everyone else decides to go it's hard to say but we are going to be at abc disney for the next 10 years all right harvey really great to get some time with you that is harvey mason jr he is the ceo of the recording academy

Thanks, Eli. Good to be here.

Everybody has got to talk about Eli and Eli. Why not us?

Well, it starts with our show and most people know us from our show, the Grammy show. We've been doing a Grammy show for 66 years. I've been doing them since, as you said, four years ago as the CEO. But the Grammy show celebrates music and lifts creators and showcases all the different genres of music. The recording academy that produces the Grammys generates revenue from that show.

And we use that revenue that's paid to us by CBS for a licensing fee to do all the programs we do throughout the year. So it's advocacy, fighting for the rights of music people, talking about AI. We're doing a ton of stuff in that space to make sure human creators are protected. Other copyright and intellectual property protections that we're working on.

We spend millions and millions of dollars every year advocating for the rights of music people. So that's one area. The other area is...

philanthropic organization that's within the academy called music cares music cares is kind of a give back organization for anybody who's a musician you don't have to be a member but if you're a professional working in the music industry and you need help if you are sick facing a drug addiction mental health crisis if you crash your car someone broke in and stole your guitar

These are things that music cares, takes care of. And again, millions and millions of dollars every year during COVID, we gave $50 million in aid to music people that needed help. And then we do a lot through our museum, education and preservation of music, making sure the next generation of kids is exposed to music.

And if I didn't have an instrument in my hand or didn't know about all the different genres of music, I wouldn't have had a career. So making sure we do a lot of work through that. And that's what was funded and financed by our show and our performance. So that's kind of the structure of the Recording Academy.

No, actually it strikes me as being incredibly aligned because the idea of the show is to benefit creators, even in just on its face, the show itself, we know the economic impact the show has to creators and songwriters, producers, engineers. All the ancillary or tangentially connected people that work in our industry all get a lift from our show. The streaming goes up. The consumption goes up.

The ability to tour goes up. So that helps the creative community. And then all the revenue that we create, and you said most of the revenue is what we put, all of the revenue that we put into it comes from that show. The major drivers for revenue for the Academy are the show, other Grammy week activities, ticket sales, and sponsorships, which really kind of happens during Grammy week.

So all that money goes back into serving the community. So for me, the only thing that's a little bit misaligned is the lack of information That the creative community has about why we do the show and that we even do these other things. A lot of people just think, oh, the Grammys are just the show. And I spend a lot of time and energy and we've got to do a better job of this as an academy.

Letting creatives and artists and producers know the reason that this show is so important is because it creates a bunch of money. hate to be so crass, but it's cash that we can use and deploy it back into our music community. So the better the show is, the better the ratings are, the more money we can generate from that show, more money that comes directly back into our industry.

It is.

Absolutely.

A thousand percent. And that's one of my big goals for my time here at the Academy is to make sure that we're not so reliant on just TV. Having said that, we are exploring a lot of different opportunities, how to best utilize the brand while still supporting music people and doing things within our mission. We don't want to just go... you know, sell coffee mugs or just do different random things.

We want to make sure it's on brand, on mission, this most coveted award, because it's our peers voting for our peers. So we want to make sure we keep that in mind. And it's got to be a part of whatever we do to expand. And I would love to talk about misalignment. I would love to find an additional way to generate a bunch of money and resources that we could use for our community. But right now,

Our deal with CBS is the thing that moves the needle the most for us and allows us to have the maximum impact within our community.

On the staff side, roughly 300 people between our different affiliates. As I said, it's the Academy, it's the Latin Academy, the Museum, and Music Cares.

It kind of fluctuates, but the majority of the people work for the Recording Academy. Approximately 200 people for the Academy, and then some split between the Latin Academy, the Museum, and Music Cares.