NIR SEROUSSI:
THE HITS INTERVIEW

Over the last two-plus decades, Nir Seroussi has been one of Latin music’s most influential executives. During his tenures at EMI Latin and Sony Music Latin, Seroussi helped catapult artists—who before his arrival were treated as purveyors of niche genres—into critical-mass phenomena. In his current role as EVP, Interscope Capitol Labels Group (formerly Interscope Geffen A&M), Seroussi has redefined how Latin music is developed and marketed in the U.S., creating an innovative organizational and operational business model within the major-label ecosystem.

What were your earliest experiences connecting with music?

I was born in Israel, and when I was 11, in 1986, my family moved to Venezuela. I was attending an American school and was listening to more American-based music, starting with hip-hop and then metal, which is how I got into playing guitar. I was the first metalhead and first kid to rock long hair in my school. Soon, other kids started approaching me, curious about the music. Not only did I introduce them to metal, I also convinced them to pick up instruments themselves. I started sourcing instruments from the most random and nastiest places to supply my new business as the local instrument dealer to my classmates. If someone showed too much enthusiasm, I’d persuade them to invest in a drum set, of course, for the higher margin.

How do you make the seemingly huge leap from living in Venezuela to attending the Berklee College of Music?

My mother was thinking, “What do I do with this kid? He likes music, but he’s got a knack for business.” During a trip to Israel, she spent a few days at the U.S. embassy browsing through hundreds of college brochures. When she finished, she handed me a booklet of the recently inaugurated Music Business and Management Program at Berklee College of Music and said, “This is it.” From my perspective, there was no resistance. Makes sense, combining music and business, I thought. Why not?

What were your Berklee years like?

It was the best experience. I met so many amazing people, many of whom are still in my life. I recently met up with Jay Fialkov, who still teaches the most impactful class I’ve ever taken, “Legal Aspects of the Music Industry.” Back then, he started a label called Dakota Arts. As soon as I heard about it, I would bug him incessantly, and I eventually convinced him to let me work at the label. That was my first experience in the business.

What did you do after you graduated from Berklee?

After graduation, while everyone else was heading to L.A., New York or Nashville, I wanted to go somewhere different. I had read about Ricky Martin having a global hit, and I thought, “I speak Spanish. Maybe I should give Miami a shot.” Once I graduated, I drove down and landed an internship at WEA Latina (now Warner Music Latina). I was the first one in and the last one to leave every day. I worked there for a few months, but I wasn’t feeling Miami at the time. One day I came in and told my boss, “Thank you, but I’m leaving,” then packed up my half-dead car and drove cross-country to L.A. without a plan.

What was your first break in L.A.?

I connected with Tomás Cookman, a veteran manager and entrepreneur, and a fantastic guy. He didn’t even know me, but just from a phone conversation, he said, “I’m gonna send your resume to my friend K.C. Porter,” who at the time was one of the biggest producers in Latin music. K.C. had just closed a joint venture with Universal Music Publishing and was looking for someone to run it. He basically said to me, “Here are the keys; go and figure it out.” That was my initiation into working at Insignia Music with K.C.

Up to this point did you know anything about music publishing?

I knew about publishing from school, but, of course, I had never actually done it. I was at Insignia for three years, and on so many levels, it was a life-changing experience. I got to see K.C. in action, and I inevitably ended up learning about publishing, working with writers and understanding the hustle of pitching. That kind of experience at Insignia ignited my passion to develop and work with creatives.

How did you get into songwriting?

I have both a curious and an impatient mind. I spent a lot of time pitching songs, and there was one instance when I knew exactly what this producer wanted. I tried to get the staff writers to come up with the song, but all day long I kept saying no to all their ideas. I finally decided to sit down and do it myself. At the time, I’d befriended a wonderful writer who eventually went on to become the Diane Warren of Latin music, Claudia Brant. We sat down to write this song together, and we got it cut. That’s when I caught the songwriting bug.

Why did you decide to make the leap of faith and leave the relative comfort of a steady paycheck to strike out on your own as a songwriter?

After I left Insignia, I received job offers from major publishers, but I didn’t want to commit to the corporate world. Instead, I partnered up with my good friend and college roommate, Chuy Flores, who is a phenomenal producer and engineer. We joined forces and worked together as independents for a couple of years. That experience taught me about the real hustle. I mean, try predicting your royalty checks every quarter. Good luck. I have a genuine appreciation for and serious empathy with creatives and what they go through, including all the rejection.

EMI Latin eventually came calling, accelerating your growth and understanding of the Latin music market. How did that opportunity materialize for you?

I used to pitch projects to a great executive named Miguel Trujillo, who was running EMI Latin’s West Coast office. One day he asked, “Would you ever consider working for a label?” I didn‘t really think about it too much, and I answered him intuitively: “The only way I would do it is if I can oversee marketing and A&R.” My logic was if you’re the marketing guy, you have no control over the product that’s being handed to you, and if you’re the A&R, you have no control over what happens with the product you’re handing over. A year later, he called and said, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have two job openings: head of marketing and head of A&R of regional Mexican. The bad news is that I can only pay for one, so you’d have to do both.” I didn’t blink.

Had you worked much with regional Mexican music?

At the time, I knew very little about regional Mexican, but I developed a very deep passion for it, and I spent a lot of time immersing myself in the culture. I had incredible mentors in icons like A.B. Quintanilla and Abraham Quintanilla, as well as Ricky Muñoz from Intocable. They brought me in and made it known, “You’re one of us now.” It was a beautiful exchange of ideas. They taught me the connection between culture and music. That’s the most important takeaway from that experience. You can apply that to pretty much any space, genre or country.

Also, back then, regional Mexican music was undervalued by the industry and treated as a second-class citizen. It didn’t receive the same media attention as other Latin artists nor recognition at important award shows, even though it had made up more than half of the market for years. We worked hard to tear down the walls, and with acts like the Kumbia Kings and Intocable, we were able to break through in a major way. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished.

You then moved from EMI to Sony BMG after they’d merged, and there was a wholesale restructuring of both companies. What state was the company in when you first got there?

Frank Welzer, who was the head of Sony Music Latin America, and Kevin Lawrie, who was head of Norte, a mix of U.S. and Mexico bundled into one, wanted to revamp the combined Sony BMG label and bring in the core team they saw running the West Coast at EMI. At the time, it was Miguel, Manny Prado, who is now with me at Interscope Capitol, radio promotion guru Karina Puente and me. We were basically building a West Coast for Sony BMG U.S. Latin from scratch.

What were some of your early successes?

We worked with so many great artists. Sergio Vega blew up; Vicente Fernandez had a huge comeback moment with Para Siempre, which was his biggest album ever. We also had Los Cuates De Sinaloa, Los Pikadientes de Caborca and, of course, Gerardo Ortiz. If you go back and look at the evolution of Gerardo Ortiz and DEL Records starting in 2010, that whole movement set the tone for what we’re seeing today in regional Mexican music.

Your tenure at Sony had two distinctive phases, your initial years starting in 2004 on the West Coast, and then your transition to Sony Music Latin in Miami around 2011, a time when Sony corporate was considering the elimination of the Latin division. How did things turn around?

There was a period where the music wasn’t quite hitting the mark. When you think of the memorable moments in Latin music from the early 2010s, not much comes to mind. We had Romeo Santos, which was essentially the standout story. Then you look at the industry; physical sales were dead and the outlook for the business was bleak. There were talks about shutting down Sony’s U.S. Latin operation. Fortunately, Afo Verde, head of the Latin Iberia region, along with Maria Fernandez, who is now the COO, gave me free rein to figure it out.

In 2014, with the convergence of streaming and reggaeton breaking into the mainstream, an opportunity presented itself. It was the year Enrique Iglesias had the first global Latin hit of the streaming era, and J Balvin took off. From that point, we grabbed the bull by the horns. I had a tremendous guide, A&R Jorge Fonseca, who was appropriately nicknamed “The Sniper.” He helped bring in all the urban acts, like Nicky Jam, Farruko, Ozuna, Darell, Paloma Mami, Rauw Alejandro and many others. Thanks to brilliant campaigns orchestrated by Lorenzo Braun, who was our head of marketing, we became unstoppable. We had so many back-to-back hits, there were times when you looked at the charts of any Latin country and we would own nearly the entire Top 10.

The list of all the artists we signed from 2013 through 2018 is remarkable. We had amazing partners, such as Juan Diego Medina and La Industria, Inc. with Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo; Walter Kolm and WK with Maluma, Wisin, Carlos Vives, Silvestre Dangond and CNCO; Frank Martinez and Carbon Fiber with Farruko; Armando Lozano with Ricky Martin and Mau y Ricky; Fernando Giaccardi with Enrique; Andy Martinez and Edgar Andino with Yandel; Raphy Pina with Natti Natasha; Eric Duars with Rauw; Polo Montalvo with Pedro Capo and Kany Garcia; and Artie Pabon with Romeo Santos and Victor Manuelle. We partnered with Michel Vega and Marc Anthony when they launched Magnus Media and signed Gente de Zona together. We teamed up with Ben Tischker, Marc Jordan, Dr. Luke and the RCA team for Becky G’s successful Latin crossover. There were also Prince Royce, Bomba Estereo, Mambo Kingz and DJ Luian with Hear This Music, Rvssian and many others. My last moves included bringing in Bad Bunny’s debut album, thanks to my good friend Noah Assad of Rimas, and signing Camilo with Ricardo Montaner before he had released any music. We had a close partnership with The Orchard as well, and combined, we hit nearly 50% market share in the U.S. Latin market. I’m particularly proud of our contribution to the evolution of the music. We really made an impact by bringing pop and urban writers together for the first time via the Sony Secret Sessions, which were conceived by A&R Alejandro Reglero. That concept did not exist prior to 2014. Many of the classics from that era came out of these sessions.

You were red-hot at Sony and at the pinnacle of the Latin music market; why make a move at that point to Interscope and start all over again building something from scratch?

At the core of everything I do lies the question: How can I be the best partner to the artist? If I’m capped, then my abilities are capped, and the artist’s ability to grow is also capped. From 2015 to 2018, everybody wanted to sign in Miami because it’s the doorway to break in all the Latin territories, with the possibility of collaboration on the American side. Latin artists were gaining global recognition, and I strongly believed they deserved access to the same resources as any other superstar. The problem was that each side of the industry, both Latin and American, was missing half the story. Neither side knew about the culture of the other. The American side especially didn’t get it. Their solution was to hire someone with a Hispanic name who looked the part, maybe spoke Spanish, and then hand them a checkbook to go chase the artists. In the end, that’s a lose/lose proposition.

I saw a hole in the market to bridge the gap between the Latin and the general markets, and I didn’t see anybody in the position to create that solution. This idea excited me and occupied my mind right up until the point in early 2019 when I left Sony. Just two days later, before I even had a minute to think about where the ideal place and person would be to present this idea, John Janick calls me. This is very John. He’s always five steps ahead. I gave him my elevator pitch, and without hesitation he said, “I got it—let’s do it.”

In a business that can be so heavily siloed based on genre and expertise, the manner in which you’ve created a natural and harmonious integration of Latin music into IGA is groundbreaking. How did you go about creating this structure within Interscope, and which other executives were instrumental in this approach?

A lot of what other people are doing is chasing without fully understanding the context and the culture. The key is that we can’t be living on an island. We could never call it Interscope Latin, because that’s precisely when it becomes a satellite, and even worse, like a stepchild. We built a team of experts in the Latin space who are seamlessly integrated into Interscope Capitol’s general-market teams. The only thing that separates us is geography. Even though many of us are based in Miami, we work very closely with the entire staff in L.A.

It’s important to mention that every project requires a different configuration, because a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. When you have a Kali or a KAROL, there’s a difference in how you organize the team. You have different leads and different people who are spearheading the conversation, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have other parts of the company involved. You have to assemble the team around the artist’s needs, so we designed the operation in tandem with the artists that we were working with. You don’t take a blueprint from another label and just copy it. The whole point was making this a more thoughtful exercise. When we sketched out the plan in 2019, you had all this noise and the clutter of content and releases, and it was bound to get worse. We had to prepare for that.

Who are some of the key people you work with at Interscope?

We have an extraordinary team and support system. I have to give a shout-out to Steve Berman, our vice chairman, who’s been a tremendous mentor and cheerleader throughout our journey. Annie Lee, our COO, has been critical in helping us establish and grow the operation. Jason Kawejsza, our EVP and head of business and legal affairs, is one of the most creative dealmakers and effective deal-closers I’ve ever met. And I’ll never forget the countless times our CRO and GM Gary Kelly fought to ensure that our artists received the right treatment and the exposure opportunities they deserve.

We’re very fortunate to have Jose Cedeño as our GM. While we’re all passionate people, from an operational standpoint, I needed the brain of an engineer to help me create the structure and ensure that we have the right individuals in each role. Back at Sony, I brought in Jose to help me restructure the company when the business shifted toward digital. He may not have come from a music background, but he’s one of the best executives in the industry today. When I introduce him, I often say, “He’s the guy who does all the work; I just do the talking.”

Cristina Nadal, our first employee, played a crucial role in laying the foundation and now oversees all our DSP relationships. Austin Barmak, formerly the manager for KHEA, one of our first signings back in 2019, now leads our marketing team. It speaks volumes that someone who was previously an outsider, managing an artist during a fiercely contested bidding war, chose to join us. We also have Andrea Rodriguez handling all of our digital marketing; Manny Prado, who rejoined me last year from Sony to head our West Coast office; and Ray Velez, our star A&R, who’s been instrumental in developing Xavi. We also work with an exceptional group of executives across Latin America and Spain.

What were some of the key moments when it became apparent that what you and your team were building was yielding the results and workplace culture you’d envisioned?

The day KAROL G came in to sign with us, we were all sitting in a big conference room. She wanted to be at a place that not only understood her roots but also knew how to take her where she wanted to go next. Sitting there in that conference room with the team, I turned to KAROL and said, “You know, we built this for you.” It was also gratifying to get validation from her team, a collective of brilliant minds whom I admire: Noah Assad, Jessica Giraldo, Raymond Acosta, Ivan Alarcon, Juan Guillermo Rodriguez and Oswaldo Rossi.

Similarly, my pitch to Ivan Cornejo and his team, Pam Cornejo and WME’s Richard Vega, was that he needed somebody who understands both sides, because it’s very intricate. Somebody can easily box him in as, say, only a regional Mexican artist when he’s really more like a Johnny Cash. He’s a singer-songwriter. He’s Mexican and American.

There’s also Xavi, an artist we signed directly and developed from zero. We’ve spent two and a half years nurturing him, and in the middle of that he had a nearly fatal car accident that sidelined him for a while. It took a village patiently working with him to bring him up, along with his crew: Racson Lopez, Natalia Corona, Fabio Gutierrez, Marjorie Garcia, Michael Leonard, and WME’s Rob Markus, Richard Vega and Richard Lom. And now he’s the biggest breakout story of the year. It’s so fulfilling to be in a place where we can talk about these success stories, but it wouldn’t have happened without John’s and the executive team’s support .

Today, labels creating joint ventures and strategic partnerships with boutique companies is becoming more of the norm. Your own company did a deal with Los CT, headed by manager Emilio Hernandez and artist Natanael Cano. Do you see this trend continuing?

You have to engage with entrepreneurs; otherwise, you’re essentially isolating yourself in a bubble. This business is all about connecting dots. I’m not thinking about this transactionally. At some point, these relationships are going to pay dividends. If you approach partnerships with a purely transactional mindset, then I think you might as well pack up and go home or prepare to live with a sad-looking P&L.

Even with a solid grasp of the fundamentals, there are so many tiny variables that change daily. If I’m not connecting with people like Emilio and Nata, I’m cutting myself out of that information loop and bound to fail. When I look back at where the roster that we have now originated, most of it is tied to relationships that were cultivated, some of them many, many years ago.

Moving forward, where do you want to focus your own and your team’s resources?

This may be the most obvious thing to say, but we are going to develop artists and strive to be their best possible partner. That’s the answer today, tomorrow and in 10 years. I’m also dedicated to grooming executives and entrepreneurs. We’ve seen many cases of artists whose doors open, they ride the wave of momentum and then crash and burn. Artists need to be surrounded by professionals. Yes, it’s always going to be artists first, but this other part is equally if not more, important, because it’s so lacking. We need more skilled managers. We need more skilled agents. We need better executives across the entire industry.

Is your focus to sign artists only out of the U.S.?

We’re not just signing talent in the States. As trends evolve and global opportunities arise, we’re breaking away from the notion that if you’re based in the U.S., your focus is solely on this market. We encompass everything Latin, wherever in the world it makes sense. If you look at the charts in every Spanish-speaking country, you’ll see music from a variety of markets. It doesn’t make sense to be siloed in that way. We’ve done away with those boundaries, and, of course, we have great teams working in all territories. For instance, we’ve partnered with the Spanish label Sonido Muchacho on Judeline, a magical up-and-coming songstress from the coast of Andalusia, and with LionFish and Rebeca Leon on st. Pedro, a singer-songwriter from the Canary Islands.

Since starting at IGA, you’ve clearly had a lot of success while nurturing a vision of seamlessly introducing Latin music into Interscope. What is your apex objective?

We’ve accomplished our ultimate goal, which is to be deeply ingrained in the company’s DNA, just as we are. When you step into the building and ask any employee, “What types of music do you guys work on?” and their response is, “Oh, we do pop, rock, hip-hop, Latin, etc.,” at that point, you know you’ve become an integral part of the label, not just an afterthought. And what truly matters to me is how this strengthens our ability to be the best possible partners for our artists.

How has the recent formation of Interscope Capitol Labels Group affected what you do?

It’s a positive all around. In addition to working with the Interscope team in L.A., we now also get to collaborate with Capitol and Tom March’s team on some projects as well; for example, J Balvin. For us and our artists, it means more options and resources. Our ecosystem just got bigger.

It feels like a busy summer for Interscope Capitol Miami. Can you talk about some of the projects you have coming out?

We have albums from J Balvin, Ivan Cornejo, Xavi and Chino Pacas, in partnership with PFL and Street Mob. Tons of new music from Judeline, KHEA, ROBI, Gabito Ballesteros, Delilah, Los Dorados, El Padrinito Toys, Ptazeta, ARON, Teo Planell and ODDLIQUOR, among others.