Lyor Cohen, global head of music at YouTube, talks about the endless scroll, why artists struggle to make money, and the role of AI

'Don't make them chase the endless scroll. Make them chase the magic that we're all desperately in need of'

- Shephali Bhatt

Ten minutes into our interview, Lyor Cohen pulls out his phone and opens YouTube to play Fight for Your Right to Party. I hadn't heard the popular 1986 Beastie Boys track—one he backed in his early 20s, when hip-hop was still new and major labels had dismissed the song as "scraping the bottom of the barrel." Cohen bobs his head as the Google India rep and I listen to the party anthem of the late 80s America that climbed to rank 7 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1987.

Now 65, Cohen has spent over three decades in music, repping acts like Run-DMC and labels like Def Jam that helped define the '80s hip-hop era. He later led the Warner Music Group for nearly a decade, and for the past eight years, he's been the global head of music at YouTube and Google. Still, when asked about the platform's impact on the industry, he's clear: "Even though I work for them, I don't represent them, I represent the music industry."

"Indians 'see' music, they don't 'hear' it," Cohen says of the second-biggest music market by number of streams that ranks 14th in revenue terms as per the last estimates from IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). "But a 14-year-old kid from India who doesn't have a job yet but loves Badshah should not be disrespected, right? They're not paying with a subscription, but they're paying with their eyeballs, which makes them a valuable customer." Cohen believes Indian artists should push themselves to go global, citing the example of rapper Hanumankind, arguing that success in music is "not determined by a region, but by an artist's ambition."

Cohen was recently in Mumbai for the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) and spoke to Mint on the sidelines. Edited excerpts from the interview on the past, present, and the foreseeable future of the music industry: