Jim Lucchese Talks About Being an 'Artists' Advocate' and How He'll Approach Berklee Presidency

In a letter Jim Lucchese wrote to the chair of Berklee’s Presidential Search Committee last spring, he starts with a disclaimer. His life’s trajectory “seems more certain in hindsight than it did at the time,” he writes. But a theme comes through: He’s been continually searching for ways to support artists who’ve had the courage to live creative lives. 

Lucchese, who becomes Berklee’s fifth president in January, doesn’t really consider himself one of these artists despite his decades of gigging in local bands—“I’m not calling myself a drummer when Omar Hakim is a block away,” he says—but rather an advocate for them. 

It’s this mission that Lucchese brings with him to Berklee, along with decades of expertise in helping artists through his work as an entertainment lawyer and then as an entrepreneur at the Echo Nest, Spotify, and Sofar Sounds. In a Q&A, he shared how he plans to approach his presidency and what he sees as his immediate priorities, as well as those for Berklee, while also acknowledging that many of these initiatives are already underway. 

Can you tell me about your early experiences with music? Was your family musical?

My father never had any formal training, but was a natural drummer. He had a hand drum and he always played it. So I started playing when I was young and my parents were always incredibly supportive.

How old were you when you started playing drums?

I was around 11. I always gravitated to drums, and my parents were great and tolerated a drum set in the house the whole time I was growing up. My instructor had a relationship with Berklee. He’s the one who suggested I apply for a scholarship to the Five-Week program. I got it and attended. That was a transformative experience for me that began a decades-long relationship with Berklee.

Do you still play drums?

I’ve been playing locally and regionally for 25-30 years. Berklee is a common thread among nearly everyone I’ve played music with, whether they be alumni or faculty. For example, the last gig I played included two Berklee faculty members and three Berklee alumni.  

What have you learned about the music industry from your time gigging?

All of my work has been driven by a deep respect for independent working musicians. They give cities their soul. They make all of our lives better. I believe everyone relies on local musicians and creatives, but there’s certainly a risk that we, as a society, could take for granted that they’ll always be there. I'm motivated by a desire to hopefully help make the path for independent musicians a little easier and more sustainable. Playing music and building many of my closest friendships with local and independent musicians definitely informs that work.

You started your career working in music as an attorney. Can you tell me about that?

I decided to go to law school because I wanted to directly work on behalf of artists. I knew what I wanted to do as a lawyer before I even applied to law school. Also, I wanted a deeper understanding of copyright and IP as technology was creating new opportunities for artists while also really changing the overall landscape. It became clear to me that if you wanted to create opportunities for independent musicians using technology, you needed to understand copyright and IP. And that’s why I went to Georgetown [University’s] law school. After that, I worked at Greenberg Traurig as an artist-side transactional attorney, where I primarily represented musicians, with an additional focus on emerging music technologies. 

How did you go from that to the Echo Nest?

Funny enough, playing music was integral to how I met the founders of the Echo Nest. I played in a quartet with a wonderful pianist who was getting his MS degree at MIT, and his father—also a great pianist—taught at MIT. The two of them said, “You should meet these two musicians at the Media Lab who are trying to apply their research in machine learning to fix music discovery.” I did. I found their vision incredibly exciting and we really hit it off. 

Another music connection…our first institutional investor at the Echo Nest was a former road manager of another band I’d played with. So, I guess some of those gigs paid off.  

“All of my work has been driven by a deep respect for independent working musicians.”

At that time, music discovery and recommendation was based on a retail mindset: “If you bought this, you might buy that.” But there was no understanding of the music itself, and recommendations had a heavy popularity bias because recommendations were mostly influenced by purchase frequency—which was the same way it worked for a blender or a pair of jeans. That’s the problem that the Echo Nest sought to solve: to more deeply understand the music itself in order to make what would otherwise be considered niche music, or an artist who’s putting out their first record, as visible and easy to discover as an artist on the Billboard Top 100. Tens of millions of songs were coming online, but if they weren’t understood and visible to recommendation systems, it would be nearly impossible for those artists to find their audiences. 

So, at the Echo Nest, we built a music discovery platform that tried to understand music the way that you and I do, but at a scale to understand over 50 million tracks. We built a business powering music recommendation and other music data applications for hundreds of music apps, focused on serving artists and audiences who were previously overlooked by traditional radio or the preexisting music-promotional infrastructure.

Did that work continue when you went to Spotify? 

Spotify was one of our earliest customers, and then in 2014 they acquired the Echo Nest. When we became a part of Spotify, we launched new features like Discover Weekly and Daily Mix. We also launched Fresh Finds, focused on helping you find music that’s still under the radar. 

Then a colleague and I started the creator team at Spotify, which was focused on building services directly for musicians. We started by launching what became Spotify for Artists, giving artists deep insights into their listeners on Spotify—how their music is being discovered, how it’s being shared, fan activity, and where their fans are around the world. 

We also launched Fans First, enabling artists to reward their top fans with presale access to tickets and exclusive merchandise. These rewards drove over $100 million in nonstreaming revenue for musicians. 

So your career started out with helping listeners find music that they might like from undiscovered artists, and then you went to Spotify, and then to Sofar, where you were doing the same thing for live music.

As a lawyer, I was directly representing musicians, from independent artists just starting out to artists touring stadiums. At the Echo Nest, we were a group of musicians focused on music discovery. And then at Spotify, we were building ways for artists to better understand their fans and connect with them. 

And yes, what attracted me to Sofar was the importance of live [music] for independent touring artists. Sofar Sounds is a global live music community that has put on over 40,000 small concerts in nontraditional spaces across about 400 cities around the world. As you know, performing live is the largest source of revenue for the vast majority of artists. Cities have become more hostile to small, independent venues where you’d pay five or 10 bucks, the room would draw, and you would just go discover music live. There are a whole lot of reasons why that is, but what attracted me to Sofar was that it was a community-based approach to creating spaces for live music discovery, something so important to artists who are building a fan base organically in their hometown or getting in the van and building an audience through touring.

This is a nice segue to your upcoming presidency. How do you think that you’re going to use these lessons to inform how you approach leading Berklee? 

I would say first is to listen and learn. I come with experiences and perspectives across a range of creative industries, but my background is still narrow compared to the incredible creative breadth of the Berklee community. So listening to students, listening to faculty and staff to better understand the biggest opportunities and challenges they are facing is my top priority. You’ve got to start with a really deep understanding of the people you’re here to serve. 

“Listening to students, listening to faculty and staff to better understand the biggest opportunities and challenges they are facing is my top priority .”

Another area of commonality between my background and Berklee’s is not being afraid to be first. Not just seeing trends in creativity and creative industries but anticipating them and then making the space for our amazing faculty and students to shape—not just navigate, but lead—what’s coming. One of the things that really excites me about Berklee is the long list of firsts, and the constant embrace of what’s next, the drive to be innovative. So creating places for great thought leadership to prepare students, faculty, and staff to continue to drive the future of creativity is a key priority. 

You’ve been involved with Berklee for a while. You’ve been a part of BerkleeICE [Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship], the presidential advisory council, POPP [Pre-College, Online, and Professional Programs]. How did this involvement come about? 

I first met [former Berklee President] Roger Brown when I was at the Echo Nest, and he invited me to join the Presidential Advisory Council. Of course, Berklee already had a major impact on me as a younger music student, so I was thrilled to get involved in some way. From that connection, I got exposed to BerkleeICE, which was very connected to innovation and new opportunities in and around music created by technology. So that was a natural fit for me. Around that time, I told Roger that I wanted to have a bit more of an impact, and he introduced me to [POPP Senior Vice President] Debbie Cavalier who asked me to serve on the POPP advisory board.

What have you learned about the Berklee community over these years?

Three things come to mind. First, the breadth of creative excellence is humbling and still surprising. I’m talking about the incredible stories of Berklee faculty and staff and the impact that they’ve had with their creative pursuits. But also how they are multiplying that impact through instruction across such an amazing array of disciplines.

Secondly, Berklee is the creative heart and soul of Boston. And I still think there’s even more opportunity to amplify Berklee’s creative impact on the local community. 

And lastly, Berklee’s impressive global impact. Berklee’s role in shaping global music and culture, and the international network that it’s built—as well as the impact Berklee alumni have had all around the world—is something that drew me to Berklee and something that I want to continue to foster and develop.

I know you might not be able to answer this yet, but do you have any long-term priorities for Berklee?

I feel like I have a lot more to learn, but my priorities align really well with the work that’s already been done in the unified strategic planning. A few areas that come to mind are encouraging progress that increases access to Berklee and continuing momentum of meeting more of the financial need of incoming students. I want to help ensure that students have an exceptional and singular experience that’s really rooted in preparing them to go out in the world and to make an impact. And, therefore, postgraduate success is a priority. I’ll also focus on the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and making sure we unlock the full potential of the merger. 

Those are areas in which I’m going to focus a lot of my efforts. I also think there are amazing opportunities to continue to look at Berklee Online, which has increased access and successful completion in a lot of different ways. But meeting students’ needs is really going to be top of the list, and one of the ways that you do that is to ensure that faculty—and that’s why students are here—have what they need to do their jobs well. 

How would you like to see Berklee’s relationship with its alumni evolve?

Berklee alumni are an incredible group of people who are really defining creativity and the creative industries in virtually every discipline. Connecting with alumni and finding ways to bring them together more, to be more of a resource to that community and create even more connectivity among students and alumni is a priority. I’ve spent a lot of time building products and services for creative communities, and I see the Berklee alumni network as such a community. I do see a through line between serving our alumni and continuing to improve postgraduate success.  

What do you do in your free time?

My wife, Tomasina, and I go to a lot of shows. Actually, we go to a lot of shows as a family, too. I have three kids. My son, Jude, just started college in California. This summer, we went to the Outside Lands Music Festival for a couple days. I have two daughters, Anna and Violet. One’s a junior in high school and one’s a sophomore in high school. So really, when I’m not working or playing music, I’m hanging out with them.