Scott Cohen

When Scott Cohen, BA Psychology ’89, moved to New York City after graduating from Mason, a chance meeting in 1995 changed his fortunes and launched him on a wild rollercoaster ride fueled by the hype of the internet’s early days. During this time, he met Richard Gottehrer, the legendary co-founder of Sire Records—home to such stars as The Ramones, The Pretenders, Madonna—who wanted to start a new record label with him. Cohen went all in.

Sadly, the label failed, leaving Cohen broke and the label without any prospects to promote its artists. Out of desperation, Cohen chose a new strategy. He would use the nascent web (no photos, music, or video) to reach fans. He connected a dozen computers manned by college interns to AOL via dial-up modems. Six phone lines, 12 computers, and the possibility of the future.

The interns targeted music message boards, sending personalized emails about bands on the label. The strategy proved to be magic. With a 100 percent response rate, messages started coming back, usually prefaced with, “Thanks for sending me an email,” as the emails Cohen’s team were sending were likely the first email ever received by the responder. Ten-dollar checks started coming in as people ordered CDs from bands they had never heard of before.

In 1997, Cohen and Gottehrer launched a new company called the Orchard, which was the first distributor of music on the web. While the idea was great, the timing was less than ideal, given that not many people paid to download music in the ’90s. Broke again, Cohen found himself $3 million in debt, homeless, and sleeping in the office. But when iTunes launched in 2003, his fortunes finally changed for the better. By this time, the Orchard was sitting on the largest catalog of digital music in the world.

A decade later Sony Music acquired the company. Cohen remained with the Orchard until 2019 and then moved to Warner Music as chief innovation officer.

In late 2022 Cohen announced plans to launch a fractionalized music royalties startup, JKBX (pronounced Jukebox).

Published in the college's magazine, Horizon, fall 2022.