Pac and Dre said it best: "California...knows how to party.”I think I proved it this past week. Coming off an awesome shoot with Foot Locker for their Week of Greatness campaign (sneaker commercial of the year!) and a weekend exploring ComplexCon (the Super Bowl of culture), I’ve been on the West Coast playing hard and working harder. Needless to say, Long Beach is jumpin’.It’s fascinating to see the Internet come to life. ComplexCon remains thee place for the intersection of culture marketing and commerce. It felt like some of the key themes this year were the juxtaposition of nostalgia with the future. Everything either had a fashion-forward vibe or a retro element. From Def Jam 35 to Timex, Deathrow merch to the Budweiser Wasssssup booth, everywhere I turned I could feel my past wrapped in the future. The only thing missing, in my opinion, are luxury brands. A Gucci drop at ComplexCon would go gangbusters!The “NEXT Fronts” showed how Complex is a force to contend with on the original content side. They have a whole new slate of shows, documentaries, and podcasts and they’re doubling down on their massive hit, Hot Ones. Such a great sub-brand.On Sunday, I stopped into the Forum to see Kanye’s latest show, Sunday Service. It was like no other concert I’ve been too; an uplifting afternoon matinée that was a complete religious experience. The choir was beautiful. The set list slaps. It’s always a treat to see a Kanye reinvent himself. I’ve seen every one of his tours to date, starting with College Dropout. Never stop, ‘Ye!Now I’m in Palm Spring at Brandweek, a first-class gathering of top-tier brand marketers. It was awesome to mix and mingle with the folks behind AirBnB Experiences and the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich explosion. I still haven’t had one but now I know how they bodied it this summer, lol.I’m asking a lot of questions and taking a lot of notes. Key takeaways? The importance of Twitter and how it can help brands tap into cultural relevance. I find the success in leveraging online communities with purpose much more interesting than the TikTok craze that everyone is trying to get a piece of.I made my mark as well, of course, running a Monday morning symposium on fine-tuning your marketing strategy with music. And I published a piece highlighting the top arbitrage opportunity for advertisers right now: music!The Brandweek finale is tonight with the cover star and multi-hyphenated mogul, Swizz Beats, doing a keynote and DJing the closing soirée. Then bang, I'm back in NY for an evening and off to Buffalo for a big college show with the chart-blazers, DaBaby and Gunna. College kids have always been the music fans that know what’s next.
BEATS
Why Music and Musicians Are a Marketer’s Best Weapons With a microphone in hand (instead of a ball), Drake manages to sell out basketball arenas all over the world. Despite the selling power he and his peers in the music industry have, brands haven’t paid as much attention—or advertising dollars—to musicians, particularly in comparison with the money invested into professional sports. (Adweek)
Grammy-Winning Producer Swizz Beatz on Disrupting the Art World and Building a Powerful BrandKasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean is sitting in his favorite spot in the house, the left corner of a soft gray sofa, flanked by a bronze Nick Cave sculpture covered in buttons. Behind him is a black-and-white photo triptych conjuring the past, present and future. In another room, his wife, the singer Alicia Keys, trades “I love yous” with their 4-year-old son as the midday California light streams in. (Adweek)
Doja Cat Went Viral. Now What? A Hip-hop Meme Star Gets Serious, Sort Of, For Her Second ActWhile Doja Cat was writing her second album “Hot Pink,” the 24-year-old singer and rapper quit smoking weed. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised that, when the clouds parted, she found her songwriting much improved. Like the old joke about the Grateful Dead fan who gets sober, once the drugs wore off, she had higher standards for music. (LA Times)
How a Tech CEO Ended Up Writing Lyrics on Kanye West’s ‘Jesus Is King’The CEO of a computing company seems like a strange person to be writing lyrics for a major rap album. But with an artist like Kanye West, who has a fascination with the world of tech, and a history of collaborating with a variety of songwriters, musicians, and producers, it makes a little more sense. (Complex)
Is Ageism’s Foothold in Hip-Hop Observable or Internalized? In genres varying from rock & jazz to electronica, upcoming artists and their predecessors have reached an impasse that’s founded on mutual respect and a gradual passing of the torch. In hip-hop on the other hand, belligerence reigns on both sides of the fence. (High Snobiety)
No Music For ICE: Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis Explains Why Indie Musicians Are Waging War On Retail Giant AmazonYes, a faction of the music industry is waging war on Amazon, the biggest retailer of all, relating to a subsidiary of Amazon, Amazon World Service, which works with Palantir, a Silicon Valley data mining company that provides tech to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), effectively helping them to track immigrants and carry out deportations. Meanwhile, Amazon World Service is also developing controversial facial recognition software. (NME)
From MF DOOM to Kendrick Lamar: The Art of the Hip-Hop Concept AlbumMusicians are obsessed with making concept albums. It’s the ultimate mark of creativity, a test of vision, and cohesion. Yet, the challenge for a visual story told with music is simple; it’s an aural experience. You don’t have the privilege of conveying a narrative with a large number of words. (DJ Booth)
‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ Is a Hit With $600 Million Debut, and So Is the Music“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” has landed in a big way — scoring more than $600 million in sales after three days on the market. Produced by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, the “soft reboot” of the first-person shooter game was accompanied by a soundtrack released a week earlier and scored by Sarah Schachner, who enlisted legendary producer Mike Dean (Kanye West, Travis Scott) to help. (Variety)
How Major Labels Are Attempting To Juice Sales With Streaming CompilationsIn an effort to boost streams for older songs in their catalog, Universal Music Group is now attempting to circumvent streaming's grip on the playlist game by releasing hundreds of label-exclusive playlists that are classified on Spotify as compilation albums. (Fader)
Creative Ways to Advertise on TikTokWith 500 million users worldwide, TikTok offers the potential to expand your business’s reach exponentially. Although the platform’s current advertising offers are in a sort of trial period, marketers and musicians alike are eager to secure a seat at the table. (Symphonic Distribution)
29 Ways To Market Your Music ImmediatelyWith this set of actionable bullet points, Chris Robley fires off twenty-nine ways in which bands and artists can promote their music right now. (Hypebot)
The 17 Best Apps for Musicians in 2019There are apps for music production, tour planning, songwriting — you name it. We put together this guide to give musicians an overview of the best apps that can help them at each stage of the music-making process. (Sound Charts)
How Streaming Killed Underground Micro-LabelsThere were no Spotify discovery algorithms to guide you to The Tower Recordings, there was Andrew behind the counter at the record store. There was no Bandcamp tag you could follow, there was a genre-specific college radio show on between 11pm and 1am on Tuesdays. Bands and fans, reviewers and DJs, were all beholden to labels, whether that was Warner or Foxy Digitalis. Labels of all sizes were more than vital, they were it. (Now Toronto)
Penny Fractions: Does Your Data Mean Anything? Maybe Not so much.The Spotify for Artists page right now says: “Over 200 million fans are waiting for you. Sign up to Spotify for Artists and make the most of your music.” Are there really 200 million fans out there for a single artist? Of course not. No, that is a number for advertisers and investors to know the company’s reach. (Penny Fractions)
Tidal Brings Its Streaming Music Service To Waze Navigation AppHigh-fidelity music streaming service TIDAL has announced an integration with the Waze navigation app, making it easier for drivers to pull up their favorite albums and playlists while on the road. The new integration joins a number of other streaming services that are already available directly through the app, including Spotify, Deezer, and Pandora. (SlashGear)
Purged: How A Failed Economic Theory Still Rules The Digital Music MarketplaceUnless you spent a lot of time listening to early ’00s techno-utopian babble, the Theory of the Long Tail probably means nothing to you. Yet if you live in the US or Europe and you run a digital music label, you’re living it – or the fallout from it – almost every day. (5mag)
Why Music Streaming Could Really Do with a Disney+The music and video streaming markets have long been best understood by their differences rather than similarities, but the flurry of video subscription announcements in recent months have upped the ante even further. New services from the likes of Disney, Warner Bros, Apple and AMC Cinemas point to an explosion in consumer choice. (Music Industry Blog)
Managing Expectations:An Exploration Into The ChangingRole And Value Of The Music Manager‘The past,’ goes the famous quote, ‘isa foreign country: they do thingsdifferently there.’ Certainly, when Ifirst started in music management,the day-to-day remit would beunrecognisable to the role Iperform now. Back then, the initial focus was on making dealsand building a portfolio of businesses aroundan artist. The industry revolved around physicaldistribution, and rights were mostly signed awayin return for upfront advances. Believe it or not,it was a more adversarial era. (The MMF)
BYTES
Gospel music insiders on the rapper’s turn to religious music and how his album relates to contemporary holy hip-hop. Guests: Root's Hasan James and The Journal of Gospel Music's Robert Marovich.
In an outdoor area of the Shangri-La recording studios in Malibu, two titans of hip-hop—rapper/singer/producer/November GQ cover star Pharrell Williams and legendary producer Rick Rubin—recently linked up for an Epic Conversation about, well, everything. Rubin takes the role of interviewer, and Pharrell the interviewee, though they both weigh in to establish their mutual love for the Shazam app, as well as some of the ’80s hip-hop and hip-hop-adjacent tracks that will always stick with them, like LL Cool J's "Rock the Bells" (which Rubin co-wrote and produced).
It’s 11pm on a warm Chicago night and DICE gets a call. Kanye West wants to throw three special parties to launch his new album. New York, Chicago and Miami. And he wants them to be exclusive to DICE. Why? Because tickets from DICE never end up in the hands of scalpers, only in the hands of fans AKA you guys.
To welcome in November, Dijon brought to the world another single to accompany “Good Luck,” “CRYBABY :*(.“ Make sure not to forget the classic emoticon. The track is emotional, powerful, and exciting. Telling a tale of empowerment, Dijon writes in regard to not being everything someone may want. (Ones To Watch)
This week's newsletter was carefully curated by the Nue Agency staff and our editor Rachel Meisner If you think we missed something this week or have any suggestions/comments for next week's newsletter, let us know!