re:invent(ed) Ep.2: From Syncs to Students: Marat Berenstein on Reinventing the Music Business
In re:invent(ed) – Episode 2, Nick Rosenberg welcomes Marat Berenstein for a candid look at how music careers are built today — from early tour life and million-dollar syncs he witnessed around Art Garfunkel’s catalog, to hands-on management, and now connecting students, executives, and opportunities at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute.
They break down the practical definition of a sync, how placements drive discovery, and why, in 2025, the most interesting “A&R” often lives at the distribution level — where data, development, and deals intersect.
They also talk community: why diverse rooms make better records, and how schools can serve as real pipelines for creative entrepreneurs.
re:invent(ed) Ep. 2:
Podcast Transcript:
Nick Rosenberg (00:00)
Hey, so I'm here this time with my good friend, Marat Berenstein. Like the bears. Is it like the Berenstein bears?
Marat Berenstein
It's exactly like the Berenstein Bears.
Nick Rosenberg
Is there controversy as to whether there's an A or an E? Have you heard about that whole thing?
Marat Berenstein
Of course, of course. mean, sometimes I hear about it randomly with like, if I'm eating out and someone, and I give the waiter of my credit card, they'll come back to me and they'll be like, hey, have you heard about the Mandela Effect? Well, was, so originally, here's the story, originally the founder, it has nothing to do with me, the founder of the brand. Apparently his name was spelled with an A. He was an immigrant.
And he had a teacher that wanted him to fit in and the teacher made him change his last name from an A to an E, which is the more Americanized version of the same, I believe, German last name. And then started the brand and it became big and we know it with an E because that's what the brand was started as. And then my understanding is that when this, when, when he passed away, his family who then took on the brand changed it back recently to an A. And that's why we think it was always with an A when it was with an E.
Nick Rosenberg
That could be it because that was one that I totally got that Mandela effect thing. Not all of them I don't really have a recollection or I haven't thought much. Like the Sinbad one, I don't know. I mean, that sounds vaguely familiar. But the Berenstein one, was like, yeah, it was Berenstein with an A. What gives? So no, I've been friends with Marat for a while and we first connected. It was when my brother, Peter Rosenberg, was, I guess, of first getting on Hot 97. It might've even been before he was on The Morning Show on Hot 97.
Marat Berenstein
He just started Sunday nights.
Nick Rosenberg
Yeah, I think he had just started on Sunday night. You recognize the potential.
Marat Berenstein
I realized us the potential and then I think we started following each other on Twitter. This was the good quote unquote good days of Twitter. The good days of Twitter and we connected on Twitter and then I knew that you and Peter were brothers and that you were a lawyer and then I knew you were working with up and coming acts, especially young rappers and emcees. And I knew that there was like a direct line between you and your brother. So you were an obvious person to hit up because I was, I was managing. He's a dear friend of mine. His name is Najee. I was managing him as as a rap artist. And I hit you up and I was like, this is a two for one special. We need a lawyer and we need to get on late night. Hot 97.
Nick Rosenberg (02:55)
100 % and we met up at a Starbucks by my office in Midtown, I remember.
Marat Berenstein
We did, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gosh, this was so long ago. This was such a long time ago.
Nick Rosenberg
No, this is like the early 2010s probably, maybe late 2009s. I don't know, late aughts. So here's what I remember from meeting you at that point. You were working with Najee. You were working with a producer, right? But at the same time, what was the producer's name?
Marat Berenstein (03:24)
He went by DB2, his name is Daniel Bazan Jr. And he graduated from Clive Davis Institute.
Nick Rosenberg
Right, he graduated from Clive Davis Institute. And I remember one of the first times we got together, you brought me over to the Clive Davis space at NYU. Yeah, the old space at NYU.
Marat Berenstein
That's right, the old space. The old space, yeah.
Nick Rosenberg
I guess, tell me a little bit about, well first off, I wanna rewind even further. Marat works in the music business. Everybody in the business knows him, right?
I mean, you get the best people, like you seem to know everyone. He just like sort of like looked at me asking, that's when I said that, but he knows it. But what was it that made you want to be in the music business? And I don't mean from a business standpoint as much as what was the music? What was the experience? What was the thing that made you say to yourself, I want to be around music, I want to be around art. I want to be around creatives. I want to be around people that I think are making cool shit happen.
Marat Berenstein
Yeah, that's a really good question. I didn't get a chance to pursue my own creativity as far as school went. I was sort of an immigrant kid in math and science. That's where you find immigrant kids. You're not gonna find immigrant kids in like the theater program typically in school, right? That's really a parental push to pursue something that's going to be stable. But I think when I was in college, I was around a lot of people and my friends had a band and I loved their music. And then couple that with the fact that I grew up on MTV on that generation and I was just enamored by all things pop culture. Hip hop was the most entrepreneurial thing happening in music with the rise of companies in the 90s and that kind of moguls, right, which are too problematic to talk about today, some of them. Literally today, so I'm not gonna do it. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And others. And I started just like, I don't know, I think it was the, I think I was answering the question of how can I be a part of it? I wasn't good enough to play as good as my friends were at their instruments.
Nick Rosenberg
Well, did you play anything? Did you play any instruments?
Marat Berenstein
Played trombone when I was a kid in school.
Nick Rosenberg
no kidding. Okay, I don't think I ever knew that.
Marat Berenstein (06:01)
Yeah, and it was fun. Yeah, it was fun. It was just the school thing. And then I meet people in college who are really good at instruments and are really good at songwriting and we love their songs. The girls we're trying to hang out with love their songs and I'm like, wait, how do I? And I'm like, I'm sort of like, I fit into this perfect image. He said Berenstein earlier. I kind of fit into this perfect image of an artist manager. Without knowing anything, that was enough for me to say, how can I manage you? Or can I manage you?" Right? And they said, yes, and they were just like the homies in college. And so we went on a quick run of like a few months. And I think once we booked our first show outside of campus, the band fell apart. So that was, you know, check mark. That was my first managerial. The pressure. We went downtown and it was just bad.
Nick Rosenberg (06:53)
Like outside of campus, the pressure was just too much.
Marat Berenstein
No, I mean, you know, no one knew what they were doing. We were kids in college, we had no guidance. I was not at a program that fostered and supported and empowered this. If one of our students at the Clive Davis Institute is like, hey, I'm managing a band and they're falling apart, they have a number of people that they can talk to and get a little advice, get a little wisdom. I had none of that. We went to like regular college.
Nick Rosenberg (07:18)
What college did you go to, remind me?
Marat Berenstein
Columbia, the engineering school of Columbia undergrad.
Nick Rosenberg
Right, yeah, there wasn't a big artist management program in that.
Marat Berenstein
No, not at all. I was procrastinating and not doing my statistics homework.
Nick Rosenberg
You know what's funny? It's funny about management is like, cause like I think my first job in the music business was like management also, right? Like was working with some artists that Peter had been working with, you know, in the DC area, among them Odyssey, who's like gone on to be like, you know, pretty major, pretty major guy. But like, it's funny.
Marat Berenstein (07:56)
So that's how I started. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Nick Rosenberg
Anybody can be a manager and I'm not taking anything away from you or me or other guests that I've had that that's what they started but it's like it's sort of like a lot of people I think get into it like that. They're like, you know an agent you have to like get a job at like a company, right? But a manager it's like you can get in and start stuffing envelopes, right or making phone calls or you know selling merch or whatever it is and like you can then be a manager.
Marat Berenstein (08:24)
You could be a roadie in your managing, you know? So that was kind of that. And then I graduated and I really didn't want to like apply or do a regular job for some reason. I was lucky enough that I was able to move back home with my parents. They live in New York and I was like, all right, let me explore what we can do.
Nick Rosenberg
Where in New York?
Marat Berenstein
Brooklyn. Yeah, yeah. so a few months out, I got this email from Columbia, from the Columbia Career Center, where I was involved with the Career Center as a student. Just knew the folks over there, knew the administrators over there, and they sent me an email. It was you know, it said a famous Columbia alum is looking for a personal assistant, someone that you would travel with and go on tour with. Well, they didn't say go on tour with. They didn't mention anything that like would indicate what type of work or industry. Famous Columbia alum is looking for a recent Columbia alum to work for them as their personal assistant. And it didn't say who or what. Right. And so of course I apply. And long story short, a week later, I learned the famous Columbia alum is Art Garfunkel of Simon and Garfunkel and the administrator that sent over that email put me at the top of the submission list and and I was I think I was the first call he made and he hired me on the spot and I went to work as art car I went from a band that didn't couldn't make it past like Morningside Heights to working with a literal legend.
Nick Rosenberg (09:55)
Like a literal legend. Like you kind of look like, you know what, kind of look like Art Garfunkel a little bit too. Like there's like maybe a little resemblance, which is good because he was the good looking one. He was the good looking one. That's why Paul Simon couldn't stand him, right?
Marat Berenstein
I'll take it and now you see a pattern where two for two get in where I fit in, right?
Nick Rosenberg
Right, exactly. That's now I'm sure, I'm sure we could do a whole podcast just talking about Art Garfunkel, but we're not gonna.
Marat Berenstein
Gosh, gosh. So that was really the start and really my education, my boot camp came from working with Art Garfunkel and his team because we did a Europe tour. We toured the states a number of times. I got to see what touring looked like at a high level. I got to be around professional musicians. I got to be around other touring professionals such as lighting directors and sound folks and tour managers, right? And then I had to tour manage at a certain point in the tour because our tour manager wasn't available for some reason, right?
So I got to learn a lot. I got to see a lot of cities and countries I would have never gone to. I got to see a lot of cities and states I would have never gone to because he was booked as a variety act. so his team at William Morris at the time believed, because this was solo, this was just Art, solo, right? And so we played certain cities where we played venues like the equivalent of our Carnegie Hall with the full orchestra, right? Like Art his band, and an orchestra. And so that was like quite cool. And then some cities it was just like Art and his band and we rocked it but we did festivals we did all kinds of things and then we I got a chance to do one Simon and Garfunkel gig they're not together you know obviously and and they got together for this one thing it was the Katrina relief show at the garden. So this kind of places it on the timeline of where we are. So I got to see them do three songs and raise money for Katrina. And I got to see that side of it. And that was even higher level, right? Simon and Garfunkel is like highest, highest level. then you have highest, highest level. And then you have Art Solo, which is still pretty high level compared to where I'm coming from, right? You're talking about two to 5,000 seat rooms, right? Art solo, Simon and Garfunkel together, those are arena shows, right? And the last time they did that was, gosh, I think 20 years ago, 2004. So that was my start. And that's kind of like being around them and being around Art. I got to learn about sync. I mean, their music has been synced in some of the most iconic films and television shows and commercials and like we can name movies like that that their music has appeared in right so i got to learn a little bit about licensing just like my god wait this is a thing i got to learn about touring i get to learn about record sales, right? They never had a problem with that. I got to learn about all kinds of things. So that was really my personal Clyde Davis Institute. That's how I learned. I'm not saying I understood it and knew how to be fluent in any of those things, but I got to hear about a sync that generated a million dollars. And I was like, my God, that's a thing. That's real money. mean, but that's in their world, right? You're not going to see that below that, right?
Nick Rosenberg (13:13)
No, right, it's not like you're not like if you get a music bid on like the Real Housewives of Oklahoma City, like you're not gonna get a million dollars.
Marat Berenstein
Slightly different, but that gave me lot of empowerment to be like, all right, look, if I start managing artists, I don't think we're going to reach the level of million dollar syncs I mean, you have to be a legend to get that. But we can make a living. And so that's how we started. And so I started managing Najii I started managing Danny and he was the, you know, he was the producer and the sort of music director. Najii was the lyricist and rapper. And we got a lot of syncs We got a lot of syncs. We never did a million dollars. Again, not many do, but we got a lot of syncs. We got a lot of movies and television shows and cool video games. And that was like, that became a thing. That became our avenue. That became, yeah.
Nick Rosenberg (14:03)
Right. And you, didn't you, didn't you do syncs at Decon? Am I making that up?
Marat Berenstein
No. I did. did. I had an arrangement with Decon, which is currently Mass Appeal Records. And I was based out of Decon and I generated syncs for the Decon roster at the time. So I wasn't employed by Decon. I was sort of operating from the office and I worked with the label on doing all their sync for the time that I was there. And that was quite fruitful. Those were a lot of sync friendly artists.
Nick Rosenberg (14:34)
Actually, let's tell, let's just, you know what, what is a sync?
Marat Berenstein
What is a sync? A sync is when a piece of recorded music gets placed with a visual on a timeline, right? So it is music synchronized to a visual in time. And so when that happens in our world, as you know, Nick, it is subjective. It is negotiable, I mean, to the extent of what the budget allows. But it could be great money. It could be great money for the artist. It could be great money for the songwriter. It could be great money for the producer. It could be great money for everyone involved.
Nick Rosenberg (15:16)
For everybody and there's music in literally everything all the time, right? These sinks are always happening. So every show that you see when you hear a little bit of music, it is, there was a sync there was a license that was negotiated. Unless it's like you happen to turn on a basketball game and you hear, know, Mobamba playing in the background. That might not be a sync.
Marat Berenstein (15:39)
Still a sync! Technically speaking, still a sync. It's a different way they arrived at it, still.
Nick Rosenberg
Well, no, I mean, it's like you heard it in the arena, like you just heard it as background noise, right? But if it's in, know, if it's playing, if they're playing it as a music bed, you know, going into a commercial.
Marat Berenstein (15:56)
Sure, sure. that was my tip to sort of go to what we thought we would talk about today. That was my act as a manager at the time, right? I was heading out to LA once a month. I was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles building relationships, some of which I have to this day, and some of them became really good friends of mine, but all the music supervisors out there, a lot of music supervisors are in LA, well, TV and films mostly in LA. And there's a few here in New York, there's a few kind of scattered throughout the States, but it's like 90% of the music supervision community is LA based. And so I spent a lot of time going to LA, building those relationships, coming back, generating syncs for my artists that would then create streaming opportunities, right? Because that was like sort of the rise of Shazam and now we're fully in the streaming universe with Spotify coming in full, right? As far as like usage goes. And so these syncs are kind of doing a lot for us, right? Like it's a cool little placement on maybe like an MTV show or a cool video game and then someone looks it up and then now they're streaming the music. And so that was our means to an end, if you will.
And at some point as I was doing that, I knew the folks over at the Clyde Davis Institute at the time. And they asked me if I would want to come in and start teaching a little bit. And I said, sure, even though I had absolutely no experience.
Nick Rosenberg
What is, so tell me, is, mean, we know, hopefully we know who Clive Davis is. What is the Clive Davis Institute? Tell me about that for a second.
Marat Berenstein
Yeah, the Clive Davis Institute is a four-year undergrad bachelor's or fine arts degree program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. It's been around for about 21 years. Mr. Clive Davis, who's 93 years young, endowed the program and it continues to support it.
Nick Rosenberg (17:47)
Is that in the, do you have to say 93 years young? Is that in like the brand guidelines?
Marat Berenstein
It is in the brand guidelines. Yes. If I don't, if I, if I don't say it, this, this, this podcast interview ends immediately. I mean, God bless. It's the second music program at NYU. There's a, there's a program that's been around over at Steinhardt that's been around for 50 years and that program is more like the sort of traditional schools we know about such as Berklee, such as USC, such as Frost, such as Belmont. Those schools are pretty much in the same category where their approach is conservatorial and they have business programs and technology programs and all kinds of great, great, great, great programs. Our approach is slightly different. We're looking at students as far as what type of creative entrepreneur are they, right? So we, most of our incoming students are artists, entrepreneurs, producer, entrepreneurs, songwriter, entrepreneurs, performers, DJs. And then sort of in the minority of our classes, we have the couple of people who would kind of be like you and I, who would be like, yo, I want to manage people, right? Like I'm going to fit in in that way, right? And then they have all the resources of the Institute. So we have a few kids who are journalists. We have a few kids who are trying to make a social impact. We have a few kids who are trying to be managers and then end up getting jobs in the business. But I would say the majority of our students would be forward-facing artists, producers, performers. We have a lot of great alums out there that we're very proud of. Grammy winners, Coachella performers, all kinds of people. Our most visible alum is Maggie Rogers. But we have so many more. I you mentioned Mobamba. Take a day trip. The producers of Mobamba are alums of the program, right?
Nick Rosenberg (19:35.03)
Yeah, I don't think I knew that Take a Day Trip were alums of the program actually.
Marat Berenstein
There we go.
Nick Rosenberg
So you knew the people there, right?
Marat Berenstein
I knew some of the folks there and they said, hey, how would you like to come help us out and teach? We have a high school program that needs a teacher. And so I said, sure. And then I was immediately terrified. I'm like, what am I doing in front of kids? I don't know anything. I mean, this wasn't even imposter syndrome. This was like, I don't know anything. Just imposter. Yeah, there's no syndrome involved. I don't know anything.
Nick Rosenberg (20:10)
But you actually did, that's the thing. you say that, we joke, but you didn't think that you knew necessarily, but you knew a lot more than you think you did.
Marat Berenstein
Well, the way I looked at it, yes, thank you. And the way I looked at it is I was younger than I am right now. And so I was just like, look, you know what? I might not be the expert. I might not be the veteran. I've been a few steps ahead of you guys. So I could just talk about that, right? And so that gave me the fuel to show up and teach, to show up and teach a room.
Nick Rosenberg
Right, it's like, I know that you don't know how to get from where you are to where I am. Right, I might not know get from where I am to where Clive Davis is, but I don't have to worry about all that today. All I need to worry about is getting you from where you are to where I am right now, and that I'm confident I can do.
Marat Berenstein
Absolutely. That was a very eloquent way of putting it too, better than I did. And so that's kind of how I looked at it. And then I started teaching the first high school program in 2012. And then I immediately caught the bug and I said, hey, can I teach more? And I started teaching more. And over the course of the eight years that I was there, I ran both of our high school programs. I taught classes on licensing, on sync. I taught classes on management.
Nick Rosenberg (21:28)
And the high school program is Future Music Moguls, right?
Marat Berenstein
That's the free program that meets in the spring. And then we have a summer high school camp that we're about to welcome and start this year's program. And so both of those programs are really cool in that they serve as pipelines. So we have students that we met in those programs that then go on to do the four-year undergrad. And so some of these students we know for six, seven years. And that's really, really cool to see their growth and development. But yeah, I left. My sort of claim to fame is I would wrangle people to come in and come speak. You came a bunch of times. One of the people I helped get to come speak was Pharrell Williams and we went viral. And so you were busy that day. You said, look, I can't come see if you can hit P and I did.
Nick Rosenberg
To be clear, you got Pharrell because I was not available, right? That's what it was. So you were like, was like, I'm sure he's not, he's not, he's not got nothing to do. He'll be interesting also. So how did you go viral?
Marat Berenstein (22:32)
We did a master class. We paired Pharrell with one of our faculty members, Bob Power, which is incredible. Bob Power.
Nick Rosenberg
Bob Power. Former client of mine, actually, Bob Power. Yeah.
Marat Berenstein
Really? Great. Small world. Yeah. And, and Bob, of course, comes from the world of A Tribe Called Quest. So he's known Pharrell who's been around those guys since Pharrell was the age of our students. Right. And so the idea was we do a masterclass. This was really like before everything became a masterclass. This was like before the company Masterclass even existed. And so we're to do a masterclass. Pharrell is going to give our students feedback. And so we have an internal process for how we go about sourcing the students. And so we went through that process and then three students were selected. Three different kinds of artists were selected to play Pharrell music in the studio with Bob. It took place on a Saturday, so my future music moguls got a chance to be there as well and experience it. And we put cameras on it and it ended up going on Pharrell's YouTube channel where it still lives. And one of the students that played Pharrell music was Maggie and she played him a brand new song that no one had heard, she just finished it. It wasn't out. It wasn't even like done. It wasn't even like mixed or mastered. She just wanted feedback. And so he loved it so much that ironically he gave her no feedback, right? And that's the whole moment. That's the sort of, he turned to her and he said, I have no notes. And that moment and this song being awesome, went viral. We didn't cause it to go viral. We didn't think it would go viral. We saw it in the room as it happened. We thought it was really, really cool and special, but we have cool and special moments that happen every single day. Just they're not on camera and they're not with Pharrell Williams, right? And this moment was just really, really special. It's sort of when the video came out, it immediately, we saw that the needle was on that timestamp where she's playing in the song. We saw that that's all that's in the comments. We saw that that's where everyone's going and no one's watching the rest of the video. To this day, I don't think anyone seen the rest of the video. It's like a half-hour video. And then a couple of months later, just like a day or two after Maggie graduated, which is just the timing couldn't be more ideal, right? Someone posted the video on Reddit and they said that Pharrell cried. He didn't cry, but that's what the headline said and everyone clicked on it and that's when it went viral, viral, hitting millions of views in one day. And so look, that literally put Maggie on the map, right? Because now the entire industry is just like going after her. And then she ended up doing everything correctly and she licensed her music to the labels and the publishers and she's done it all right. And very, yeah, mean, was, look, she was in the best new artist category at the Grammys and she, listen, she lost to Billie Eilish, right? And the others in that category were Lizzo and Lil Nas X, right? So put her in that, you know what I mean? Like that's, yeah, she's all right. what, what, what, what the other thing that it did is it put this little tiny program that's been like screaming at the top of the mountains. We're like this industry program and we're so cool and different and entrepreneurial and boom, it puts us on the map. So now the whole industry knows who we are. And now they're interested in engaging with our students.
Nick Rosenberg
But they didn't know before who you were. mean, it's called the Clive Davis School.
Marat Berenstein
Yeah, but now there's money to be made. Right? Now they're like, the Clive Davis School just produced a proper star.
Nick Rosenberg (26:25)
Right, and it's not like, the Clive Davis School, you know, we'll do them a favor and show up and do blah, blah. Now they see what the value add is, right?
Marat Berenstein
Absolutely. Absolutely. And remember every company but one is, it gets to say they missed out on engaging and signing and working with Maggie. Right? Every company but one will have that chip on their shoulder. Right? So every company but one on the label side, and then every company but one on the publisher side will then be like, we missed out.
Nick Rosenberg (26:55)
It's funny, like, so many moments, just sidebar, it's like, I don't know if you've had this experience, but it's like, a lot of the times in life, I feel like it's the moments, the things that you miss out on that make you want the next thing. And that make you chase after it, right?
Marat Berenstein
Sure, sure, sure. So that kind of became our thing. And then I was there for another two years and then 2018 rolled around and just, the best way can put it, it was just my time to go. It was a great eight years. It was a great run. We did all we could. I did all I could. thought it was just my time to go. And while I was working at the Clive Davis Institute at that time, I was managing, right? And I'm now managing other clients. I'm now working with someone called MatFX. And then we started working with you, shout out MatFX. We started working with you officially as well. You joined the team. And so now I'm doing more and more in management. And so I think I'm leaving this to do one thing. What I really didn't realize what happened was once I left Clive, I really didn't last managing very long after that. I kind of just timed out and I just woke up one day and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. It was literally the opposite feeling I had when I wanted to do it back in college. And so I stopped managing.
Nick Rosenberg
It's like a hustle, man, like 15, 20%, 25%, whatever you wanna call it. gosh, somebody needs to make a lot of money and it needs to be consistent for that to be worthwhile. It's a struggle. mean, it's not.
Marat Berenstein
You need luck. It's one of the things where you actually need the variable of luck to do well, right? And so I left and I said, you know what, let me pursue other opportunities. Let me consult. Let me try to find an adult job somewhere in tech. And I just sort of went on the on a search, guess, maybe soul searching as well as job searching. And so I ended up doing a number of things. I worked for an audio file app called Rune. worked for, spent a year working in Saudi Arabia on building their music education initiatives. I worked with that.
Nick Rosenberg (29:13)
What? You worked in Saudi Arabia. That's wild to me. That's another podcast also. I mean, like just to talk about Saudi Arabia.
Marat Berenstein
Let's bookmark those two. We're gonna come back for another Garfunkel episode and I'm gonna come back for a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia episode.
Nick Rosenberg
You never went with Art Garfunkel to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Marat Berenstein
No, no, no. Gosh, the way things are heading there, they might just book him and invite him. So very quickly for the listeners, very quickly, 2022 was year two that music and pop culture and movies and things that we would categorize under the category of tourism, such as sports and wrestling and F1 and golf, were allowed and empowered and boosted in the sense that the country was spending unlimited money on building those things out, right? They went from just zero to a hundred and they...
Nick Rosenberg
Right, like literally starting a golf league.
Marat Berenstein
Literally, literally, how about this? Literally building a music venue. There were no music venues there, right? Think of it like that, right? And so a lot of this has to be hired out and deployed. And I was part of this global team that got to work on a three-day music education conference because they don't have an NYU Tisch. They don't have a USC. They don't have a Berklee. They will. That's all probably coming soon. But we had to build a space for music education. And look, we flew people out. We put people up and my broader team built what I think is probably the world's largest music festival and both the conference and the festival since 2022, that was the year I was there, have gone on and just only gotten bigger and bigger and bigger every year, right? Because every year they're getting more and more things. They just want people to come and enjoy the country and think of them when we think about where to go for cultural tourism, for fun, for music, for that kind of stuff. So that was 2022. 2023, I did a little work on the education side with TIDAL, the streaming service, and then I was sort of planning out my 2024 and just lining up projects and I was thinking about coming back to teaching and what I didn't know what happened kind of happened. At the Clive Davis Institute, which I was still considered like still a part of in a sense, right? Because now my former students are like becoming my friends and I know all the teachers and I'm still following along, right? Like I want them to do well, it's fam. And so Nick Sansano becomes chair. He's been with the Institute since day one, literally built it. And so this was his turn in the leadership position. And he comes from the world of Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad. And so he became chair. The school was approaching its 20th anniversary. And so he gave me a call and he said, what are you doing? And why don't you come back home and we're going to create this role for you. And the role is partnerships and industry relations. So it's non-curricular. I am now in this.
Nick Rosenberg
Perfect for reinvented. I mean, they invented a role for Marat.
Marat Berenstein
That's it, that's it. And so we're still inventing it in the process. The role becomes official this September. So it's current title is Strategic Partnerships and Industry Relations. I've been working in it for about a year and a half. It's been going well. We turned 20 and then we turned 21. And so we playbooked what we did with Pharrell. We created multiple residencies from artists to producers to executives. We brought in a number a historic number of industry guests this past year because we as a program grew the Institute. And moved into a big location in Brooklyn. The biggest location we've had with four stunning recording studios, everything you could think of as far as equipment goes, from gear to microphones. We even have the Beastie Boys studio like in full. They donated a oscilloscope, which used to be in downtown Manhattan. Rather than shutting it down, they donated it to us.
Nick Rosenberg (33:20)
So you just basically moved all the stuff and made it like the room that they had in downtown Manhattan and relocated it to Brooklyn.
Marat Berenstein
Correct. Correct. I mean, to the point where the board had to be craned in through a building window. The building is really special, has a lot of New York City history. It's the former MTA headquarters. There's a Clyde Davis gallery in the building that's open to the public. There's a venue in the building that our students use and we use. It's the former loading dock for, I guess, the money train where they used to bring the money through pre-metro cards. So we got this beautiful building. We're turning 20 and we have a new leader. I join, I come back. So this is one of those times where you leave a job and you don't think you'd be back. But this incredible moment came about and I couldn't say no. And the opportunity was just too cool to pass up. just, I immediately, Nick and I were on the same page, Nick Sansano, our chair. And so we were like, let's have some fun. Let's welcome everyone back because we're also coming out of two to three years that I'm just gonna go on record and say we're pretty miserable if you were at school, right? And I'm talking about the Zoom years of 2020, 21, and 22 when COVID hit. So I wasn't at NYU, but I got to see what was happening at NYU. And those were not fun years. Those were not fun years.
Nick Rosenberg (34:45)
You sort of got out at a good, you sort of like, your hiatus was sort of at a great time. You didn't realize.
Marat Berenstein
Perfect timing. I remember thinking, gosh, I don't want to be teaching during this time. It's it's soul crushing, right? And so this building wasn't being used, right? These studios weren't being used. These spaces weren't being used. And so that became part of the impetus to create this role that I've been working in. And so it's been really, really great. We've done a lot of fun things. There's a lot of great things we're looking forward to in the next year and in the coming years as well, as we're growing and just kind of, yeah, it's been really, really fun. It's been fun.
Nick Rosenberg
So that would make me think the fact that the Clive Davis Institute has continued to invest and invest more in educating, know, forging young minds, if you will, that kids still want to work in the music business, right?
Marat Berenstein (35:42)
applications are through the roof Nick. Through the roof.
Nick Rosenberg
Because like, yeah, because I always want, I'm always concerned. I was saying to my last guest that I have this like concern that kids aren't as into music as they used to be or in the same way, because there's so many other draws on their attention, right? Like they can be into games or TikTok videos or whatever weird content. like, I don't know, I feel like culture when I was growing up, when you were growing up, was culture and music were sort of tied together. Now I feel like you can sort of be, you can have an identity without music being tied to it, right? Like you can be goth, but that's not tied to music per se, which I always find kind of weird because it's like, no, what do mean you're dressed like that? And it doesn't mean you like a particular kind of band. So like, what does that do?
Marat Berenstein
Well, remember, I talk to you're a parent. I talk to parents all the time, right? And in this role and in my previous role, and I worked with the high school programs especially, and after 21 years and after seeing Maggie and Take a Day Trip and so many others, right? I sort of liken it to college sports. And I say, look, think of us as a D1 championship program. Think of us as UConn, right? If you want to think about who we attract, right? There's no people that are just like, I'm a hobbyist at basketball and then end up playing for Yukon. No, these kids, these men and women who end up at Yukon, they've been playing and training since they were children, right?
Nick Rosenberg (37:12)
Right, that's all they want to do. Right, yeah.
Marat Berenstein (37:24)
So we attract the equivalent in music. And remember, we are international, so it's not just limited to the state, so we can attract students from, well, I don't know how that's going to go with current state of affairs, but we have always been international. And so the kids that are applying, these are beasts. These are killers, right? Like the competition is so crazy because they're so good. They're so good.
Nick Rosenberg (37:41)
Are most of them, are most of the musicians, singers, songwriters, what have you, who also are interested, they don't want to just go to conservatory though, they want a more, like a wider...
Marat Berenstein (37:52)
Wider is good. We are a holistic program. So everyone has to take everything. So if you're, if you're a business kid, you're still taking critical listening, you're taking music theory, you're taking production. and if you're an artist, you're taking the business courses, right? And so then you can kind of go down a rabbit hole and take the more advanced versions of what you want to do. And then you're graduating still as an entrepreneur, right? You're like, Hey, I'm going out into the real world and here's my business and my brand. And, know, I need help. so we have a mechanism for that we call that professional development and my role engages with that quite often. And that really just means bringing in great people such as yourself, such as a lot of our friends who work at the great companies from streaming services to distributors to labels and publishers, and just having them be around our students, having them give them honest feedback, having them find interns, right? And so we find that careers really are built in that grind.
Nick Rosenberg
Right. And I would imagine, you know, for all the people that you know from the industry and work with and the companies that are involved, you know, being around young people, young creative people, young diverse creative people, there's so much opportunity in that. It's like, you know, one of the things that I think that people don't realize, you know, all the stuff that we're talking about with DEI now and the blowback, it's like, you know, forget about the equity piece. Right? Not that I want to forget about that, but diversity and inclusion makes organizations function better. Right? Having diversity in terms of backgrounds, economic background, know, ethnic background, age, what have you, those ideas make things work better. Like that's like the premise of the United States, but it's like we've gotten so caught up or not us, not you and I, but other people. It's like they've lost sight. There was a reason why companies jumped onto this. And it wasn't just because they were trying to be PC, right? No, it's good for Coca-Cola. It's good for the Army. Not to turn this into politics. This is not a politics show, but you know.
Marat Berenstein
For sure, for sure. No, no, no, but if you think about music, it's a collaborative process, right? Songwriting, producing, engineering, performing, these are collaborative processes, right? What can make collaboration better than diversity? Nothing, nothing.
Nick Rosenberg
A hundred million percent. I'm going to ask you another thing. What are some of the challenges? OK, so you were at Clive Davis before and you're there again now. What are some of the challenges, whether it's post pandemic, post, you know, academia blowback, what have you that you're dealing with now that maybe you weren't dealing with before or maybe that you were dealing with before in education and in particular education, music education and music business education. Anything sort of jump out at you?
Marat Berenstein
I mean, the, the, the big, you just said, let's not get into politics. I'll just quickly mention it. The big elephant in the room is the biggest challenge. If you, if you get anyone who works at any private education program on your podcast, they will tell you that the biggest challenge right now is the, what's happening with, this administration versus all of these schools, including NYU. That's the big one. We'll leave that. with, as far as the-
Nick Rosenberg
Right, the idea that money, the fact that money could be cut off by the federal government who funds all these big institutions that affect everybody at these institutions, the students, the faculty, every department, every program, whether it's music business or farm animals.
Marat Berenstein (41:43)
Correct. That, the loss of money and then the loss of international students. Those two things will literally destroy the education system, right? We'll leave that at that because we don't know what's going to happen and we don't have any answers for it either. As far as the music business and music education goes, we've seen so many shifts, right? And so we saw the shift to the streaming era. We saw the shift from the blog era into the streaming era where like a lot blogs are now sort of playlists, right? And that kind of, we saw that shift, right? And now we're witnessing a really crazy shift. And the crazy shift now is a lot of the value is no longer with the labels. The majors are fine. They're literally becoming financial mechanisms, right? You're just, they're offloading humans. They're offloading humans and they're acquiring catalog. Yesterday's Warner announcement was that, that they are acquiring a lot of catalog for a lot of new money that they just raised and that they're letting go of a lot of humans, right? So they're doing two things. And if Warner's doing that, then Sony's gonna do it, Universal's gonna do it, right?
Nick Rosenberg
And that's gonna extend to A & R. To the extent that A & R is not already just looking at, isn't just money ball, right? It'll be even more money ball. And you just are acquiring things, buying low, selling high, that's the end of it, you know?
Marat Berenstein (43:10)
And, that's, that's the shift, buying, buying low and selling high, that's only available to entities that have the funds to do that. We're talking about small labels. We're talking about indie artists, right? So all of that value now, I think shifts from the streaming services, because the streaming services are massive corporations as well. Right. We're talking about Apple, we're talking about Spotify. We're talking about Amazon, right? The real value now lives with the distributors. And this is just my opinion, right? So I think that A & R now is happening at the distribution level, which everyone now still has access to. So now you have different distributors that are kind of functioning more in the way that labels used to function.
Nick Rosenberg
It's funny, the person, my last guest was JJ Jensen from Foundation, who I know you've met before. And we talked about, yeah, we talked about what distributors do and what he does and how uses it. But it's like, look, we talked about Gazi. I mean, look at Gazi, right? He's on the cover of Billboard. mean, he's like the toast of the industry, right? And he runs one of the biggest digital distribution platforms.
Marat Berenstein (44:22)
Which now functions like one of the coolest labels to exist, right? And so he's a great example of this. He's a great example of this.
Nick Rosenberg
Right, right. Great, no, I'm glad you said that, because I haven't really thought about that. And like, that's a good, you know, the reinvention of the music business, like shifting from labels to distribution. Yeah.
Marat Berenstein
And then, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's the other shift that we're seeing, which you just mentioned, is that we're seeing a lot of veteran A & Rs leaving the label system, right? Because what they do is no longer the sport that the labels are playing in, right? The labels want quick burns, right? And that's your money ball on the sort of new, on the frontline end. And then they want passive income and that's your money ball on the catalog end, right? So they actually do not need the kinds of A & Rs that, you know, found artists and developed artists like Bruno Mars, Lizzo, you know, those people are no longer, their services are like, hey, thank you for your service. Here's your retirement package. No longer needed, right?
Nick Rosenberg (45:30)
What about the A &Rs at places like Alamo or 300 or you know, I don't want to say 10k right because that's basically Atlantic at this point, right? but like those sort of um, you know the younger kids who were like finding these new mostly rappers and signing them there's felt to be some there seems there seemed to be some A & R in that a lot of it was numbers But there seems to be something a little bit more to it
Marat Berenstein (46:03)
I think you're right. And that's a great point. And I want to say that that's coming still through the distribution side, right? Everyone you just named, they have a distribution division and they're watching that division. And that's not hard to watch. You don't need to be out. You don't need to go see someone play a club. You don't need to just like meet someone in the studio. You're just pulling up an analytics thing on your email or on your app. And you're like, hey, what's at the top of this chart that is our own distributor, right? It's our own minor league.
Nick Rosenberg (46:31)
Right. Right, it's funny and like the labels minor league sometimes won't even be using the label system to distribute. Right, the distribution might run through Empire or through Orchard, which is always sort of, I'm like, that's sort of a farm team for the label now.
Marat Berenstein (46:49)
And it's like the thinking is let them absorb 100 % of the risk. And so now as a label, you have no risk because to be a great A & R, you had to risk it all. You had to say that this thing that is weird to everyone is not actually weird. It's genius. And then eventually. And then when the whole world goes, holy shit, they're not weird at all, they're genius. You look like a genius, right? And we know those folks. We know those folks. We're friends with some of those folks.
Nick Rosenberg
One out of 30, but the problem is it's like one out of 30 times everybody says you're a genius, right? And then the other times you just blew a million bucks.
Okay, tell me about three albums that you've been listening to recently. Maybe not albums, maybe it's artists, whatever. Three different things that you've been listening to, why you're listening to them, and why you're into it.
Marat Berenstein (48:16)
I'm gonna open Apple Music so I can tell you.
Nick Rosenberg
That's fine. I mean, I don't expect, people ask me this question all the time and I'm like, I don't know. What do I listen to? Like Public Enemy? Like, I mean, could say that at any point.
Marat Berenstein
Okay. Okay. Listening to the new Clipse. Whole album's not out yet, but still listening and listening with anticipation. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. So we'll do this. Yeah, I cannot wait. I can, and I need it. I need it. listening to, we're gonna take a completely different turn here. Listening to Graceland. Listening to the Clipse. And then I just gotta be really honest with you because we're friends. As my third album, you know what I've been listening to? I've been listening to Pod Save the World, Pod Save America, and a bunch of others. I just, it's weird when times get like this. I make myself listen to music, so I just name two of like the greatest in their genre, like Paul Simon and the Clipse right? As medicine, because I need it, but I find myself just trying to listen to people that can give me some kind of semblance of like sanity and explain some of the things that are happening. So for my third album, if I may, I named two political podcasts.
Nick Rosenberg (49:45)
That's fair, I'll take it.
This was super fun. Thank you, man.
Marat Berenstein (50:25)
This was super fun. Thank you, man. I'll come back anytime. All right. Take care, Nick. Bye.
Nick Rosenberg
Good bye. Thanks again Marat!