Phylicia Fant, Amazon Music‘s Head of Music Industry and Culture Collaborations, forged her early career path during an electrifying time in the Atlanta culture and music scene.
In 1996, when she was starting her English degree at liberal arts school Spelman College, the Summer Olympics landed in the city, and local acts and labels like Outkast, Goodie Mob, LaFace Records, and So So Def were releasing seminal records.
After growing up in the comparatively quiet city of Marietta, Georgia, Fant was now part of street teams, going to clubs and performances and getting a front-row seat to the buzzing Atlanta culture she’d heard about back home.
“I was no longer adjacent to all the music and all the experiences, I was actually now living in Atlanta proper,” she says. “The people that I was hearing about on the radio were now part of my everyday life.”
Since graduating, Fant has worked her way through a number of exciting eras at record labels. She started at Universal in New York where she was hired as a publicity assistant at Motown Records. It was a time when the neo-soul movement was burgeoning and the label was working with acts like Erykah Badu, india.arie and Brian McKnight.
After 10 years, Fant’s next stop was Republic Records, where she worked a diverse roster that included rock bands Godsmack and Three Doors Down as well as Lindsay Lohan. When Sylvia Rhone became President of Motown, Fant took the opportunity to work with Rhone and acts like Kid Cudi, Melanie Fiona and Kelly Rowland.
Her work, fusing publicity and lifestyle marketing, and bringing elements including fashion, film, and TV to artists’ careers alongside music, caught the attention of Lyor Cohen. This led to her moving to LA and working at what was then called Warner Bros. Records. There, Fant’s roster included the likes of Prince, Jason Derulo, Andra Day, and Gary Clark Jr.
That role honed her skill at breaking artists through brands, events, and sync opportunities, which set her up to later join Columbia Records as Head of urban music, where she worked with Lil Nas X, Polo G, Lil Tjay, and Beyoncé.
A conversation with Amazon’s Music’s then VP, Steve Boom, led to Fant creating the role and title she wanted at Amazon to combine the platform’s knowledge of music and how it could collaborate in culture.
“Amazon had had its music team for 10 years so my particular role was to foster different collaborations within communities as we strive to become a more diverse platform,” she says.
“As my role has expanded, it’s about how we collaborate with artists but also how we collaborate with gatekeepers and entities in culture to bring Amazon to a full actualization of cultural profitability.”
That currently includes work on new technologies that aim to provide the best music and experiences for consumers, various projects for Black Music Month and Pride Month, a new season of Amazon Music Live, a recent livestream of Kendrick Lamar’s concert at the LA Forum and an ongoing relationship with Beyoncé and Cowboy Carter.
Here, we chat with Fant about her career to date, how Amazon stands out from the competition, the evolution of the music streaming space, and more.
How does your experience at labels inform you in your role today?
Labels are often driven by gut and expertise. There’s a certain passion that you can never escape from working inside labels. There is a culture that allows constant conversation and energy, in the sense that you’re always going with trends.
You’re constantly paying attention to when it’s time to drop that record, when it’s time to pitch that artist or when it’s time for them to perform. You are really close to talent and that relationship of seeing someone who was in their infancy become a superstar.
And it’s not overnight. Sometimes it can be, if you have a hit record, but more than likely, it’s a development process and watching that person take steps to become someone who was performing to 100 people to now performing to thousands of people. There’s a certain intensity and closeness because you’re not working with a product, you’re working with a person. You’re dealing with their emotions, passion and insecurity.
“There is a benefit to being able to bring that perspective to a tech company, to bringing the emotions, the thoughts and vision of an artist and what they really want.”
When you are on the tech side, you’re dealing with algorithms, data and how people respond to a product. To me, this merger [between the label and tech world] is a perfect marriage in saying, How can I take what is happening at Amazon, who are constantly thinking about ways to make a product that allows consumers to enjoy music in various and special ways, and bring fandom and ignite that excitement? And how do I take my knowledge of how artists and consumers think?
There is a benefit to being able to bring that perspective to a tech company, to bringing the emotions, the thoughts and vision of an artist and what they really want, and also recognising there are so many things they don’t understand about how something works.
The education process is much more fluid for me because you’re almost like a translator. I’m often translating what goes beyond just streaming to what can this company help me actualize?
If you can pinpoint them, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned across your career?
There’s really no one formula. Artists aren’t monolithic, people’s listening patterns aren’t monolithic. So you have to be a person who wants to take the time to study the culture and pay attention to what’s happening in the world. Music is a conduit to more than most people give it credit for, it’s a constant mirror for what’s happening. Storytelling goes so far and music allows so many stories to be told at one time.
Because there are so many stories and life can change at any moment, I have learned, over time, that you can only control so many things. You never know when those pivots are going to come up. As a publicist, if you book an artist for a live television show, like Good Morning America, at any given time, something like the weather could change that booking. You’re almost biting your fingers thinking, If this person doesn’t perform, what’s going to happen to my career? What’s going to happen to their career? But there’s really no control over that.
All I can do is trust my instincts, and be a person that is open to communication from both sides, but also have an arsenal of creativity, contacts and trust in my vision for something. There’s always going to be naysayers to your vision but the more that you are in lockstep with said entity, whether that is the company you’re working for or the artists you are looking to promote, the better the outcome.
What happened when we had COVID- 19? When we didn’t have the ability to go to various studios and places to shoot the video? How did we keep going and thriving? Creativity will always thrive and that’s the same for artists and great music. It may take a different path, but great talent and great ideas always make it to the top. You just have to learn to trust your ideas and trust that if it’s meant to be seen, it will be.
What’s the best piece of career-related advice that you’ve ever been given?
It came from my mom. When you are in these buildings, trying to figure out yourself, you sometimes don’t know if you should conform to something.
I’m a person who changes my hair and clothes a lot and there was a moment where I felt like I got distant and lost my motivation. My mom called and said, ‘What are you doing? I haven’t seen you change your hair, you haven’t had your braids in.’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ She was like, ‘Well, what I have always raised you to be is authentic and you can’t let that part of you go. Once you stop being yourself, you don’t bring your best self to work and to the talent that you are working with.’
The industry has a lot of complexities to it, there’s so many social ills in the world, there’s so many things that are happening that might cause confusion and conflict and cause you to feel like, Where do I fit in? As a woman, and as a woman of color, there are things that hit me that can unlock certain insecurities.
I have to remind myself that your superpower is your uniqueness, the fact that you are this woman of color who has experienced things from a different lens, and I have to trust that that lens matters and that bringing that lens to the table is a good thing and not a bad thing.
It’s really a self-love conversation. If you don’t take care of yourself, if you don’t trust your being, then you don’t represent yourself and you don’t represent your passions well. You don’t go into that room and fight for the artists the way you could or even fight for yourself the way you should unless you are constantly reminding yourself that it’s ok to love the person in the mirror.
Amazon is amongst a few strong companies in the music streaming space. How do you see the platform differentiating itself from the competition?
One thing that I feel is so special about Amazon is that we are a streaming platform and so much more. We are live stream, we are merch, we have Prime Video, songwriting divisions, a community and a policy team. We are this company that can truly tap into every part of an artist’s psyche.
With an artist like Megan Thee Stallion, we are sponsoring her tour, doing merch with her and helping her build her campaign. We helped Beyoncé create her first event for fans with Renaissance and that pop-up experience. What that collaboration meant to say was, ‘Hey, we’re here for her merch, we’re here for her pop-up experience, and we’re also here for her charity events. We are also helping her get in the community.’
We are constantly letting artists know that we will be with you, in real time, to help you maximize your current state, your current vision.
Amazon has taken the time to take a step back and say, ‘How do we actualize an artist’s brand power? How do we maximize their want to be in the marketplace and strategize globally to do that?’ What we are striving to show is the ability to cross-collaborate and be more than one part of an artist’s rollout strategy.
How do you see the music streaming space evolving in future?
Amazon is thinking about different ways to bring fans to platforms and have unique experiences. As our product evolves, we are thinking about how we become fan-forward at all times and what we need to bring fans so they feel like Amazon is always in the conversation.
It could be experiences, it could be these moments where we are taking fans to see Billie Eilish go back to the first place she saw her original billboard. We’re giving them organic experiences that no one else is providing. We’re reminding them of fandom, reminding them of the things that make music so special. It’s on-platform and off-platform. We understand that streaming is one part of an artist’s evolution. Amazon is looking for all the ways to connect you to your fans, like festivals, live streams, merch and random pop-up experiences.
Outside of what you’re doing at Amazon, what is the most exciting development happening in today’s music business?
Artists understanding ownership and that their value is limitless. There’s this resurgence of creativity because everyone understands that, regardless.
“We are still figuring out AI and all the various things that are happening, but with every new technology, you push culture forward.”
We are still figuring out AI and all the various things that are happening, but with every new technology, you push culture forward. Amazon is just that, it’s pushing culture forward in all those ways. The exciting part is that, just like we didn’t understand streaming years ago, now we understand that it opened up doors for people to put their music in places and be discovered.
There are all these different platforms that allow artists to connect directly to a source and that’s what makes technology exactly what it is. It’s constantly pushing the conversation forward. Being a leader in that space is what makes Amazon unique because we will always be ready to answer the call to artist expansion and development.
What would you change about the music industry and why?
There are things that I love and things that I would never say I’m confused about. You get upset one day because there’s no record player but then the record player comes back.
I was sad that we were at home during COVID. There’s always something to be said about live experience and interaction, that’s my personal preference, but as soon as it was gone, we found a way to bring that back in a massive way and take something one step further. If you can’t be at the concert, now we can livestream it. Things are cyclical, it’s a constant situation of discovery and the push and pull of technology.
The thing that makes the music business great is that you can take an artist who no one knew, who was sitting in their basement, like Lil Nas X, and he can become one of the biggest artists in the world.
There’s always the power for a song to become a global thing that changes someone’s everyday life. That’s why music is such an important tool. I am always happy to be on the side of knowing that breaking artists is still possible. That’s the best part of the music business.
Music brings about conversation, growth and social change. There’s so much power behind it. I am forever excited to know there’s some other artists out there I’m waiting to hear about.
If you could go back to the beginning of your career and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
It’s a combination of showing up for yourself, not taking things so seriously, but also that there is magic in allowing things to happen naturally. There’s magic in knowing that everything’s just going to work out the way it should.
I know that might sound hypocritical or not easy for someone who is trying to get into the music business to hear, but there is no path to this. It’s about making sure that you show up for yourself and if you really believe that you want something and that this industry is what you want to be part of, you have to go and find those doors.
I remember what it was like to feel that passion when I went to my first concert in Atlanta and I recognize that the same people I was on the street team with were eventually going to be the same people I’m working with across the industry.
I never thought this English major from Marietta, Georgia would end up being this person in the music business, but if I think about all those moments of listening to vinyl in my room, what it was like to grow up in a church and be a part of the choir, and the excitement I had when recording my voice on whatever little machine I had in my room, I start to recognize what I was meant to do.
Once you trust that the passion makes sense and that it’s tangible, you start going for it, you start to join the organizations, meet up in the spaces and go to the venues. Eventually, all those things come together for the greater good of what you want to do.
Virgin Music Group is the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, which brings together UMG’s label and artist service businesses including Virgin and Ingrooves.
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