Lyor Cohen, head of YouTube’s music department, on the problems in his early days, about “Run-DMC”, the “Beastie Boys” and the future of pop.
Lyor Cohen has been YouTube’s global head of music since 2016. This means that on the Internet’s largest video platform, the 64-year-old is responsible for the streaming service Youtube Music as well as all forms of publication and exploitation in which licensed music appears on the portal. Cohen, who was born in New York to Israeli immigrants, used to manage the careers of hip-hop superstars like… Beastie Boys or Public Enemy pushed, later held high positions at music companies such as Def Jam and Warner. The meeting with him takes place at the Berlin headquarters of Google, which bought YouTube in 2006.