At age 17, he joined the
New York hardcore band
Judge, where he played bass. In college, Pincus interned at various
record labels, including
EMI and
Jive Records. He was also a campus representative for
Atlantic Records and worked as an assistant editor at the
New York magazine after college. Having graduated from
Columbia Business School, Pincus worked at
EMI as a strategy associate. In 2004, he invested $5 million of his own money into
Songs Music Publishing with
Ron Perry, a fellow EMI alum. The two initially targeted
Christian rock and
hard rock musicians before looking into more commercial acts including
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and
Conor Oberst. Under Pincus' leadership, the label represented a clientele of 300 artists, including chart-topping musicians such as
Lorde,
Diplo, and
The Weeknd. In 2015, he testified before the
United States Senate to demand a revamp of the country's system for calculating songwriter royalties and warned against the encroachment of
Big Tech on the music publishing industry. In a partnership with
Barry Weiss, Pincus co-founded a new independent label, RECORDS. In 2017, Pincus and Perry were named to the
Billboard magazine's Power 100 list, which ranks the most influential businesspeople in the music industry. He sold the company in December 2017 for $160 million to
Kobalt Music Group. In 2018, Pincus joined
LionTree as executive-in-residence and took up an advisory role at
Snap Inc. He has been a member of the board of directors of the
National Music Publishers' Association, the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers,
Songwriters Hall of Fame, the financial services startup HIFI, and the music creation platform
Splice, of which he is also an investor. == Personal life ==