"People have to be smarter about how they A&R, and what they put out," he told the BBC. "Record companies need to catch up to that, someone needs to send them the memo."
Speaking of his time as label boss at Def Jam, he continued:
"I remember the first year I was at Def Jam we put out 56 artists. There's not 56 great artists in the world, and this is one company. One company operating for like, 80 artists in a year. That's just too many."
Now, we don't necessarily disagree with Jay-Z, but since the UK and European music industry seem to be doing much better that its American counterpart--they still have chain stores like FNAC, HMV, Virgin, and even a couple of Tower Records stores in Ireland, for example--they should take the rapper's advice with a grain of salt.
What advice does he have the crumbling US music biz?
That's something we'd genuinely be interested in hearing about.
