Shawn Granberry

Shawn Granberry is CEO of HipHopTV, LLC, an USA-based 24-hour live streaming online platform. The platform features original programming, custom playlists, licensed content, and music videos. Shawn is an entertainment industry veteran with more than 25+ years of experience, promoting music and the entertainment industry in the West Coast.

After college, Mr. Granberry worked as a close confidant to Shakir Stewart and also continued to produce events like, Def Jam’s, “How To Find A Mega Star”. Mr. Granberry also worked very closely with famed movie producer Robert Watts at Transformer Entertainment. While working with Stewart and Watts, Mr. Granberry began researching the new broadcast model now known as Over the Top broadcasting. After returning to UC Berkeley to fully study this model, Mr. Granberry founded Watch Now Networks, Inc.

Shawn met his passion while still in high school. Back then, he worked in the A&R department in his Uncle’s 2-Tuff-E-Nuff Productions where his mother was the CEO. 2-Tuff-E-Nuff productions worked with such artists and companies as Toni, Tone’, Tony, En Vogue, Madonna, Club Nouveau,Con Funk Shun,Timex Social Club, Regina Belle, Alexander O’neal, BET Networks, ABC and Fox Networks.

In high school Mr. Granberry also teamed up with Shakir Stewart to produce some of the biggest parties Oakland, CA has ever seen for high school students. Right after high school, while attending UC Berkeley, he continued his entertainment career by creating several very popular club nights and concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Granberry’s passion is working with inner city youth so he also founded The Scholar Athlete Union and Bears Youth Basketball with help from childhood friend Jason Kidd and works very close with Stanford and UC Berkeley faculty to help young people achieve a college education and survive the dangers of the streets.

About HipHopTV and how the project started

But when he was at DefJam, Jay-Z told Shakir, he was like, man, you’re way too smart to be running DefJam. You need to own your own company and do global things around the world. So that’s when Shakir called me, and we met in Las Vegas, and we, on a napkin, came up with the concept of HipHopTV. It was really transitioning from regular music sales into video. The video, the video aspect of it. So we wanted to build a global home of hip hop culture and use the latest technology to monetise the culture at the highest levels, making sure that the artists and creators of hip hop were compensated to the highest levels because now, technology was allowing this to happen, fast forward to today and we see where we at: we’re in an incredible space to actually make that happen.

HipHop TV solutions to help artists and musicians

Well I think that the key is that we’re in a serious sense of transition, where artists can take advantage of learning how to use tools that puts them directly in contact with their fanbase. Honestly, record companies are no longer leading anymore. The cost of production that you can do in your house, if you really know how to do it, is, you don’t need necessarily any help from a record company to create a high level of product, high level of music. To me it’s teaching the artists and giving them the tools to have direct relationships with their fanbases. So even in a covid crisis, we transitioned to online content. The key is, the closer you are to your fanbase, the more they will support what you do.