10 Questions with ... John Butler

1. How would you best sum up your music industry career journey in a couple of paragraphs?

It feels like big Venn diagrams where my worklife is a series of people, places and music coming together. The destination is the journey of the wonderful stuff that comes from pursuing the destination or result. I hope that I have made people's lives better in some way if I've come across them.

2. Of all your past gigs, which one do you believe served as the most critical catalyst to get you to where you are now?

My first job at TVT Records was foundational. There were a little over a dozen employees with a breakout act in Nine Inch Nails with more work that could possibly be attended to by three times that amount. My learning gift from that time was how to work with very little, under difficult situations and direction and how to improvise based on what information you had handy. You had to create something from nothing. However, the biggest takeaway for me was learning that communication skills and team building is essential to getting anything done.. My first day I was given a print out dbase4 sheet from a dot matrix printer with about 100 college radio station names, contact and phone numbers and I just was told to call them and talk music. At 22, I would have paid them to have that job.

3. Who have served as your biggest influences and most valuable mentors throughout your career?

The list is really long. I believe that mentors are regular people that act in the midst of situations to guide, so it's hard to pin down one, sole or a few people. People who have cared though are a few: Jack Satter, Ken Lane, Steve Kingston, Steve Leeds, Barry Weiss, Steve Taylor, Michael Tedesco, Danny Buch, Rick Stone, Grover Biery, Jeff McClusky, Mike Curb, Jim Ed Norman, Kid Kelly, John Ivey, Rob Wagman, Dan Michaels, Nick Barre, Those are just a few names of people that I can specifically point out who have in some way poured into me.

4. What could you see yourself getting into if the whole music thing hadn't panned out?

My dad was an architectural engineer and my grandfather was a master cake decorator for a popular Brooklyn based bakery for 30 years. I'm interested in both those disciplines.

5. You've been at Spotify for over a year now. Is the new gig experience about what you expected? Has there been a lot of unexpected along the way?

I expected a lot and it is more. The company is on the edge of culture in that it both reflects it and guides the discussion. It's a wonderful challenge and what we do is always new, getting better and getting stronger.

6. What's the most important thing you've learned about yourself in this new role?

That I can juggle far more than I thought I can. My background at small, independent labels where you had to create a market is truly helpful. You can get feedback from your work quickly and adjust accordingly. The things you are working on are living and breathing and the new role changes greatly with culture.

7. What has been the biggest challenge of transitioning from working with radio to now working on the streaming side?

Working with radio to develop artists is a filtered value exchange with different objectives. At a label, my work began when radio agreed to partner and you both take advantage of what each other provided together to meet altogether different objectives: Label = sales & charts. Radio = ratings & audience retention. Each has a different motivation with the artist in the middle. With streaming, the value exchange is without a filter. It's a simpler, direct and pure connection from artist/music to individual.

8. What have you enjoyed most about this change?

I enjoy the quest of understanding why songs resonate with people. Before I focused on how promotion may affect artist development and now I'm focused on artist development direct to fan and not working a chart and not focusing on who is wearing a meter.

9. There's a tendency to think streaming services and radio are harsh competitors. While that might be an obvious truth, how have you seen radio and streaming working in correlation with each other, and how do you foresee radio and streaming partnering more in the near future?

There are so many choices. Those that spend a lot of time listening and understanding how overwhelming things are for the least of those who consume content will win both the audience's loyalty and earshare. It's content and context and it all comes down to storytelling, specifically for the genre I serve.

10. What's one of the most interesting things about Spotify that the everyday non-Spotify-employee user probably doesn't know?

That everyone here is extremely gifted, diverse in background and in skill sets. If you get the chance to meet someone that works here, anywhere in the world, they are truly incredible people.