I love music, I love being around artists who make it and I love helping those artists make a living, creating. I grew up in Oklahoma working in record stores from the age of 15 to my early 30’s. That’s how I met the Flaming Lips - and began an even longer and more intricate voyage in this crazy business of music. The leader of our illustrious panel is David Katznelson - he’s in a lot of ways responsible for where I’m at now. He was the guy who convinced someone at Warner Bros. to sign the Lips.

My name is Scott Booker, I’ve been lucky to have a band like the Flaming Lips to be my entrance into the record industry. When I started working with them, they were seasoned veterans of the road warrior variety. Over the years, I’ve worked with many bands/artists and few have had the will to continue on like the Flaming Lips. That will is something that you can’t teach a band to have - they either do or they don’t. When they do - you can move mountains… and we have.

I also run a company with two friends called World’s Fair. We manage record labels, much like you do bands, we run them for the owners.

Our roster consists of the following labels: bbe || bella union || definitive jux || echo || fabric || great society || jeepster || pias || rough trade || unfiltered

World’s Fair has been in existence for about three years. We are currently working with dozens of artists ranging from Midlake, El-P, British Sea Power and the Postmarks to artists like Alice Smith, J Dilla and Snow Patrol. We’ve had to become experts in how to sell different genres of music as well as selling catalog items instead of new material. It’s been quite a learning curve - but it’s been exciting. I’ve watched us grow from 6 people to nearly 20. That I think is why I do what I do - it’s fun to build a new business and even more fun to help promote artists and music I really care about. I’m not a musician and never will be - so this is my niche and it’s the best way I can serve society - by bringing art to our culture - and helping shape our culture by getting as many people as I can to care about this art.