All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg · Wednesday, September 30, 2026
The Chainsmokers describe their early career strategy, which involved creating remixes and using a platform called Hype Machine to gain traction. Alex Pall would email bloggers personalized messages, leveraging their college connections to get their music noticed, which helped them achieve numerous chart-toppings on the platform.
“And so what we would do is we'd go to all these artists, because we loved all the music that was being posted on this chart, and we'd beg them to do remixes.”
“And then Alex went in the back end of Hype Machine and he found every kid that wrote for every blog that they pulled music from.”
“And, you know, we'd make this remix of a song they were already posting about, and then he would write them these hilarious emails, like super personalized emails.”
“And we went from in the first year of our career, pretty much being completely obscure to having, we now have like 30 number ones on that site because we were.”