YouTube’s Lyor Cohen Talks Music-to-Tech Career Pivot: ‘They’re Still Trying to Figure Out Why I’m There’
variety.comFred Bronson Lyor Cohen, global head of music for YouTube and Google, and Diane Warren, songwriter extraordinaire, took the stage of the Musikaliska Kvarteret theater in Stockholm on Monday (May 23) to be interviewed by Swedish journalist Jan Gradvall.
Their appearance was part of the Polar Talks, a day of conversations annually based on the theme “the power of music,” according to Marie Ledin, managing director of Sweden’s Polar Music Prize.
The Prize was founded by her father, ABBA manager Stig Anderson, in 1992 to honor the world’s greatest pop and classical musicians and the Polar Talks were added to the agenda about a dozen years ago.Cohen’s interview kicked off the Talks as he answered questions about his life growing up and his current work at YouTube.
Asked what advice he would give to up-and-coming artists in the industry, Cohen said that people who work in the industry tell artists they should always be on. “One of the saddest parts of this era is these artists have to do likes, followers, subscribers and have so many duties in the social sense and last week I heard this man who was running a major record company say, ‘Focus on ‘occasionally brilliant.’ I found that perfect.” Gradvall wanted to know how Cohen became interested in rap music in its early days. “My brother was a wood shop teacher in south central Los Angeles at a high school called Verben Dei,” he responded. “He would take me to their basketball games.
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