Ray J on his new streaming platform, Tronix

Ray J joins TheStreet to discuss why he’s getting into the streaming business and why it’s “the business to be in.”

Transcript

00:00So Tronics Network, you're the CEO, it's your new streaming service. It's almost about three

00:04months old now. So how are you finding the streaming media business? This is the business

00:09to be in, especially for us because we target an audience that we specialize in doing the best

00:15content for and we're in our own bubble. But what's good is that I don't call myself the CEO

00:22because I'm like the founder. My goal is to find the right CEO, find the right CFO, COO,

00:29and more importantly, the CMO. And so it's in its beginning stages, but I like to build it

00:33up for about six to eight months and then start to do the right hire because that's the only way

00:37to build it and put the right structure in. And why streaming media? Because the media business

00:42is not that great right now. I mean, cable subscribers are down, the streamers are all

00:47competing for one another. So why get into that space of the business? Well, it's good for us

00:52because I wouldn't call our content, well, I would call our content high drama. I use ratchet

00:59in the word because it gives you the exact definition of what it is. But there's only a

01:02few people who are proud of this kind of content that we do. So we're already in our own lane. We

01:08just have to stay consistent. And if we do want to evolve into what the bigger streamers are doing,

01:14then we would start doing scripted and big budget movies. But right now we're just

01:18solely into like this loud reality world and we have like a reality factor.

01:23And there was a time when content was king, right? But then we had all these streamers. And so

01:28now content, I mean, there was so many places for it to go. How are you finding getting content?

01:35Are you finding the content that you want? Yeah, well, we're producing the content,

01:39you know, it's all us from scratch. And our partners at Viacom, I love VT, I love VH1.

01:45I'm still in business with the linear networks. And so our skills, to me, go far beyond that

01:53because we can be more risky on streaming. So you just get it uncut. But I just nobody

01:59does TV like us. So Tronics costs what? $5.99 a month? $4.99 a month. Does it make sense to become

02:07part of a bundle? Right now we're hearing like streamers are trying to team up. Yeah. So does

02:15it make sense for Tronics, given your demographic, to team up? And what would you look for in a

02:21partner? Well, I think the goal that well, I'm 100% bootstrapped. And that's the scariest thing

02:26is to just put all your money into something and you're waiting for a profit. And it takes time.

02:32I think the bigger goal for me in all of these streaming platforms is to give everybody who's

02:36at their top level of reality, their own platform. And then everybody has their own bubble and their

02:42own network skewing to what their fans want to see. Then you bundle the whole package of the team,

02:48right? So you build every network from the ground up.