EP 61: Dan Runcie (Founder, Trapital) on the Business of Music and What Founders Can Learn from the Top Artists

Dan Runcie is a music industry analyst, writer, and the founder of the newsletter and media platform “Trapital.” Trapital focuses on the business strategies of hip-hop and offers insights into the intersection of culture and commerce in the industry. Runcie has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Billboard, and Forbes. Dan joins the podcast this week to discuss the business side of the music industry, specifically in the context of hip-hop artists. Logan and Dan go into the relationships between major record labels, Spotify and artists, the impact of TikTok, the current state of touring, how new artists are discovered, and lessons for entrepreneurs that can be learned from successful hip-hop artists.

(0:00) Intro

(1:02) Welcome Dan Runcie

(9:15) Primer on the music industry today

(16:19) The impact of streaming

(20:43) Artist-Label dynamic now vs 20 years ago

(30:55) Artists selling their back catalog

(35:35) Touring is broken

(40:54) TikTok's dominating influence

(46:05) Lessons entrepreneurs can take from hip-hop artists

(1:01:13) The Trapital Story

(1:12:47) The state of Trapital today

(1:15:06) Lessons internalized in creating Trapital

(1:20:48) Determining who is an interesting podcast guest

Show Notes:

https://trapital.co/

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky

Produced: Rashad Assir

Executive Producer: Josh Machiz

Music: Griff Lawson

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About the Show

Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

Executive Producer: Rashad Assir

Producer: Leah Clapper

Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky

Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1

Follow on Socials

📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow

📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow

🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow

About the Show

Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.

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