Born In '88

Obama’s Spotify Playlist.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:52:48 -0500

Obama’s Spotify Playlist.

Frank Ocean and Data, Models & Decisions. This question was...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:43:00 -0500

Frank Ocean and Data, Models & Decisions.

This question was on my @MITSloan stats midterm. I’m convinced I got extra points for knowing the name of his album.

@KD: On Quora: Why didn't Watch the Throne leak?

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:27:00 -0400

Watch the Throne did not leak primarily because of the release and recording strategy. An album can leak due to a myriad of reasons but primarily the culprit is, the tracks pass through too many hands. Jay-Z insisted on recording the album in-person and reserved blocks of rooms at hotels exclusively for the album’s recording and production, i.e. “no mailing it in.” It caused delays but in addition to increased authenticity, it decreases leak risks. In the past, albums have been prone to leak during the mastering process by engineers. An easy fix to this is to use a trusted, veteran producer. In the case of Watch the Throne, Mike Dean was their guy. If an album has made it through recording and production leak free, high risk lies in the hands of the press and the CD manufacturing plant.

The audiences at the Watch the Throne listening parties were carefully curated to ensure only trusted professionals were in attendance; But when blogger DDot Omen snuck into a recent listening session and attempted to leak snippets of each track on his blog, he wasn’t celebrated by the music community, but instead berated. The culture surrounding “Watch the Throne” made it clear that if one were to leak the album, they would be nobody’s hero and antagonized immediately.

To avoid a leak via the plant, Jay and West used a graduated release strategy. They chose to first exclusively release a digital deluxe version to iTunes on Aug. 7. The physical copies of the LP will exclusively be available at Best Buy on Aug. 12 for the first two weeks of the release. Fewer web and brick and motar retailers means fewer hands. But even more, targeting the source of a leak should one occur becomes easier. As the result of excellent strategy, Watch the Throne became one of the first albums in a long time to release leak-free.

Why didn’t Watch the Throne leak?

Beyond Oblivion recently got an additional $77mil in financing...

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Beyond Oblivion recently got an additional $77mil in financing for their music licensing venture. Interestingly enough, their stakeholders include MySpace owners, News Corp. This sounds like a win.

Tyler According to Tyler. A work in progress. Re:...

Sun, 15 May 2011 14:31:00 -0400

Tyler According to Tyler. A work in progress.

Re: @kennethto reply below, yes, it is.

Will Ferrell says MySpace is dead. It was written.

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:32:02 -0400

Will Ferrell says MySpace is dead. It was written.

Amazon Introduces Cloud Music Service, 5GB Free Space. Moves.

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:54:37 -0400

Amazon Introduces Cloud Music Service, 5GB Free Space. Moves.

Mos Def x Lupe Fiasco x Kanye West Jazz Cypher

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:00:08 -0400

iamdonald:

Cypher at the Blue Note w/ Lupe, Kanye, and Mos Def

Fuckin Fire.

Three talented brothers.

Someone want to tell me why I wasn’t at that show? Reminds me why I do this in the first place. And they say live is dead.

Odd Future covers tomorrow’s issue of Billboard. Okay,...

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:10:52 -0500

Odd Future covers tomorrow’s issue of Billboard. Okay, I’m listening.

[Hi-Res Figure]: A Social Value Chain Model: Music Ed. Story...

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:41:00 -0500

[Hi-Res Figure]: A Social Value Chain Model: Music Ed. Story here.

A Social Value Chain Model: Music Ed.

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:35:00 -0500

A great artist doesn’t have fans, but brand evangelists. In “Direct Message From @JayElectronica: A Fan Engagement Case Study,” I explored digital brand engagement from the perspective of the fans. The above figure is a social media value chain model as executed by the artist. [Hi-Res]

Research in the economic impact of social media and direct-to-fan marketing is limited but artists like Lupe Fiasco, Nicki Minaj and Jay Electronica prove that strategic implementation of this marketing innovation will yield results. At a time where the record industry is in a severe decline, new and effective strategy is crucial to its turnaround.

Lupe Fiasco used his legion of fans, better known as “Lasers,” to petition Atlantic Records to green light his album. Similarly, Nicki Minaj’s “Barbies” fervently promote all of her projects. On Oct. 16, Nicki Minaj urged her followers to pre-order her album, Pink Friday, on Amazon. The status was retweeted 332 times and according to Topsy, there are 5,074 tweets mentioning the same Pink Friday pre-order link.

Minaj said in a MTV doc, ”My Time Now,” that immediately after tweeting, her album went from being No. 504 to No. 4 on Amazon’s best sellers list.

Plugged-in fans may not get paid for their services but they do see a return—recognition. For Lupe Fiasco, it’s starting a book club for his fans via Ustream and sparking debates on Twitter; Minaj actively retweets fans and responds to comments on Facebook; and Jay gives fans an all-access pass by instant messaging, Blackberry messaging, and Twitter following fans.

Web 2.0 even suggests that social media might help mitigate the damage done during a recession. Tight-knit communities can better weather an economic storm and social media facilitates this connectivity. In these cases a poor economy can motivate people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do for free—Think: open source software releases and live blogging—and for music, fan-sites and digital street teams.

By using social media—twitter, facebook and blogs— and other forms of direct-to-fan marketing, artists accomplish deep brand engagement and are more successful at expanding their reach and developing stronger fan bases that purchase faster and more often. But artists can’t do it alone, they need a team.

An artist manager is nice, but so is a digital marketing specialist. While a manger is out booking shows and studio time an artist needs someone building and maintaining their digital army. Many artists manage their own social media profiles but they will soon realize if they haven’t already that as their career blossoms, the time available for social media monitoring wanes. We’ve seen what the power of social media can do for an artist’s career but that kind of impact doesn’t happen on it’s own or overnight.

It’s 2011—build a team, build a brand and do it now.

Direct Message from @JayElectronica. A Fan Engagement Case Study.

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:21:00 -0500

Jay Electronica’s fan engagement tactics are very unorthodox and completely worth it.

My first direct message was from Jay Electronica in 2008, days after Christmas. I had just joined twitter and made the premature decision to follow every rapper on the network and Jay followed me back. Soon after, he sent a direct message—no words, just this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc&feature=related

It was a YouTube link to a music video of “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins—I’ll leave delving into the implications of this message for my readers.

Later that year, I was unfollowed. But I wasn’t alone. It was “The Great Unfollowing of 2009.” Jay Electronica unfollowed nearly all of his fans, truncating his follower list to less than 200. A year later, high off the heels of announcing his signing to Roc Nation, he followed everyone back—sort of.

In the small hours of Nov. 15, Jay Electronica announced he would follow back anyone who hit him up. And they did. Jay Elect was the proud recipient of over 1500 mentions just an hour after the announcement. He has since followed about 1600 fans, a Dave Chappelle impersonator, Joe Budden, and me.

Jay Elect also opened his AIM and ichat (SN: Jay Electronica) to the masses and encouraged fans to submit their Blackberry chat pins—a common practice for the crescent city emcee.

But is it worth his time? Affording fans access to everything from your AIM screen name and twitter direct messages to your cell phone pin? In a word: yes.

Jay Electronica goes the distance, and his fans take notice. Amidst the flurry of “please follow me” tweets were tales of Jay encounters by super fans.

Katie P. (@KPappsmear), of Los Angeles recalls a few Blackberry messenger conversations last year. While holiday shopping, Jay Elect messaged her about being nervous as he was preparing for a performance.

DJ Critical Hype (@criticalhype) got a few direct messages as well. Despite being an emerging DJ, he kept the conversation fan to artist. Student, Reggie Noble (@kidnoble) did too. He remembers the conversation feeling less like a fan to artist transaction and more like a normal conversation. He was spoken to, “just as a person.”

The most remarkable fan story came from Kevin Cooper (@cooperkm89), perhaps the biggest Jay Electronica fan on twitter.

Cooper has a Jay Electronica shirt he likes to wear to shows. Inscribed on it the infamous line from “Exhibit C”— “Call me Jay Elec-Hannukah / Jay Elec-Yarmulke…”— but more on that later.

At Cooper’s fourth Jay show, the New Orleans rapper pulled him and a crowd of fans onto the stage while opening for Kid Cudi in October at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).

“At one point during the show, Jay got back on stage and turned to me; And we proceeded to rap over his songs, face-to-face in center stage,” said Cooper chronicling his account.

“He was acknowledging that I knew all his sh*t, and that acknowledgment was much appreciated.“

But that wasn’t all. To security’s chagrin, Jay snuck Cooper backstage. No weed, no liquor, just talk. About music—fellow opener Chip the Rip and headliner Kid Cudi (whom Jay Elect had never met at the time). They even watched Cudi’s set together. Jay was intrigued by Cudi’s command of the crowd.

They soon after parted ways. Cooper could’ve joined Jay’s entourage for the night, but in fear of being a burden or exhibiting utter and complete stannery—he passed.

“I shook Jay’s hand, said great show once again. He asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’ To which I replied ‘Oh yeah!’ Or something else equally dull but spurred on by an awed star-struck state that had not yet dissipated,” said Cooper.

But wait, there’s more. Remember when Jay Electronica punched a concertgoer at a Disco Biscuits show in Chicago? Cooper does. And yes, he was wearing that shirt.

After what Cooper says were pleas by Jay to stop fans from throwing items at him, he punched a DB fan after being hit with a beer bottle. Everyone in the venue had turned against Jay Electronica.

Subsequently, Jay Elect spent the rest of his set rapping to a handful of his fans in the crowd. He even jumped passed the barricade for a proper introduction. And when it came time to perform “Exhibit C,” our boy Cooper was a star.

“He pointed directly at me and did the verse on my shirt,” said Cooper. “Basically reading the verse off of my shirt, so as to draw attention to it.”

“That was really cool of him to do.”

And on Nov. 15, Cooper got a follow.

Jay Electronica doesn’t have fans, but brand evangelists. He breeds them. It’s not enough to make music people enjoy. Artists who take the time to develop a relationship with listeners build a stronger fan base.

For a previously unsigned artist with a few sporadic releases, his following is remarkably strong. In the wake of Jay Electronica’s Roc Nation announcement, he gained about 3k followers and an additional 3k after tweeting about his following spree—he previously averaged a 450 daily follower gain and currently has a total of over 128k followers.

Prior to joining Roc Nation, Jay Electronica had garnered a magazine cover, a track ranked amongst iTunes’ top 10 selling hip-hop music downloads and “the most buzz worthy artist” title by numerous media outlets—success unprecedented by an artist with no formal projects released or a record deal.

Research in the economic impact of social media and direct-to-fan marketing is limited, but artists like Jay Electronica prove that strategic implementation of this marketing innovation will yield results. At a time where the record industry is in a severe decline, new and effective strategy is crucial to its turnaround—just ask Cooper.

“I still get excited thinking about it,” Cooper says. “I’ve seen Jay four times now, and I’ve learned that if you show your appreciation, he will acknowledge you and be grateful.”

“Yep. Jay Elect reigns supreme…over everything.”

—@SincerelyJane

Photo: pigeonsandplanes.com

Kanye West & Jay-Z’s “H.A.M.” A Marketing Spoil.

Dear @LupeFiasco, You’ve Been UnFollowed: Should artists keep their political views out of the public eye?

The Dom Kennedy Story: The importance of managing your brand.

If Twitter were 100 people [infographic]. Check out the peak...

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:43:59 -0500

If Twitter were 100 people [infographic]. Check out the peak days and peak hours, if you’re planning a twitter campaign, this data is useful for maximizing reach.

Diddy’s Web Conference w/Ustream Staff (video)

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:56:58 -0500

Diddy’s Web Conference w/Ustream Staff (video)

Muppets Parody to Kanye West’s “Monster.” Miss...

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:11:11 -0500

Muppets Parody to Kanye West’s “Monster.” Miss Piggy plays Nicki Minaj. #Icant

Kanye West & Jay-Z's "H.A.M." A Marketing Spoil.

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:51:00 -0500

On Jan. 11, Facebook crashed, or at least according to Kanye West. Around midnight, West tweeted a screen shot of an error page suggesting the famed social network had exceeded it’s bandwidth following the release of “H.A.M.”

Rap veterans Kanye West and Jay-Z had released the first track off of their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, on Facebook but to lukewarm reviews and even more lackluster buzz.

Kanye West x Jay-Z - HAM by uristocrat

Days before the release, West and Jay-Z announced on their Facebook fan pages that “H.A.M.” would be a midnight release via a page dedicated to their joint album.

And soon after, the blogosphere was pregnant with anticipation of the duet single from the rap titans.

Facebook users rushed the Root Music powered “BandPage” for the first taste of Watch the Throne and in the hours following the release, the album page had garnered over 32k fans and hundreds of comments. “H.A.M.” was all the digital hip-hop community could talk about in the small hours of Jan. 11 but the question still remains:

Why Facebook?

It appears as though the Roc camps are still experimenting with social media and digital distribution. West’s lauded “G.O.O.D. Friday” song series was released officially via his Wordpress powered site Kanyewest.com/goodfridays. In exchange for subscribing to his newsletter, a listener got to download each of the 14 tracks.

Jay-Z’s latest release was a feature on Roc Nation signee, Jay Electronica’s record, “Shiny Suit Theory.” It was released via file sharing websites and distributed on Twitter and popular rap blogs for free download.

When it came to recent LPs, both West and Jay utilized their official websites as the primary purveyor of album information and previews.

West screened his short film, “Runaway,” alongside a real-time stream of related tweets and a link to preorder, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on iTunes on his website. Jay conversely had a content rich, flash website, JayZHitsCollection.com, dedicated to his greatest hits album with links directing visitors to a Island Def Jam operated e-commerce site for purchases. In both sites, the integration of social media networks was cursory and limited to Facebook and Twitter.

Despite being home to over 600 million users, Facebook has never been the standard for music releases. Typically, artists have opted for their official websites, popular blogs, music social networks MySpace and BandCamp, and even file sharing sites like zShare and Mediafire.

Presumably, Jay-Z and Kanye West were at a loss for a Watch the Throne landing page. Rather than host promotions on their individual websites—despite the glitz of JayZHitsCollection.com, Jay-Z.com is as basic as an artist page can get—the two opted for Facebook. Kanye West’s fan page boasts over 5 mil users and Jay-Z’s over 6 mil so reasonably; Facebook appeared to be their best option.

But was it worth it?

Hours after the release, the Watch The Throne fan page had 32k fans and a day later had only increased to 76k with only 96k listens of “H.A.M.” That’s a low conversion rate for artists with millions of Facebook fans. Of the small percentage of the Kanye West and Jay-Z fans that joined the Watch the Throne page, few saw the need to even listen to the track twice, suggesting “H.A.M” was a musical spoil.

Even more, when Kanye West tweeted the official artwork for the single, the image got more views (99k) than the single got listens. West’s following on Twitter is less than half that of Facebook.

West and Jay utilized BandPage, a Facebook app also used by Rihanna and Drake, to debut “H.A.M.” It required users to “like” the page in order to gain access to the full track. Users can share the song with their friends but the player cannot be embedded outside of Facebook—#fail. About 20 hours after the release, the full preview was even truncated to only 90 seconds, or Jay-Z’s verse—ironically, critics argue that Jay’s verse was the only redeeming quality of the single— and fans were encouraged to purchase the song for $1.29 on iTunes as opposed to the commonplace, $.99.

For “H.A.M.,” the promotion was much like the song production, lazy. Jay and West relied too heavily on their existing fame and reputation and chose to phone it in. Outside of Facebook, there was little mention of the record. Neither West nor Jay-Z tweeted links to the Facebook fan page or prompted fans to purchase the single. There is a small, almost unnoticeable mention on Kanye West’s MySpace page and a sad blog post on Jay-Z’s official site but no mentions on Jay-Z’s MySpace page or Kanye West’s official website. Other networks like Last.fm have yet to be embraced by the two despite having a 1.7 mil (Jay) and 2.3 mil (West) listeners registered.

And what does this mean for MySpace?

Another nail in the coffin. MySpace is a go-to source for many users when it comes to music discovery and is unmatched in its ability to easily provide tracks, tour and band information but it’s popularity as a social network has been waning. Super rappers Kanye West and Jay-Z trading MySpace for Facebook is just a sign of the times. The company reportedly just laid off almost half of its staff this week and the parent company; News Corp. announced that it is putting MySpace up for sale.

But Facebook hasn’t done much to pick up the slack. Brands, musicians included, are limited in how they can present their product and have little if any options for page design. Simply put, Facebook is too boring for bands and its fan page structure doesn’t allow for much engagement and pales in comparison to Twitter when it comes to facilitating conversation. See also: Nicki Minaj. Her Facebook fan page posts every few days get an average of 1.5k comments each, on Twitter, no matter the hour, Minaj receives several mentions each minute, or over 5k messages a day. But I digress.

The jury is still out as to whether “H.A.M.” will do well sales wise. Last year no No. 1 singles off of the Billboard R&B or Rap/Hip-Hop charts made it to the top 10 on the general Hot 100; so if the Roc boys plan on changing this with Watch the Throne, they’ll have to come harder than “H.A.M.”

—@SincerelyJane

Reading is Fundamental.

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:35:38 -0500

The blogging hiatus is coming to a close, expect a new “case study” on Jay Electronica next week. Until then, go back and read some previous posts on the site, they’re most intriguing.

Dear @LupeFiasco, You’ve Been UnFollowed: Should artists keep their political views out of the public eye?

Jay-Z’s Shiny New Website. A Review: Shiny? Yes. Social media masterpiece? Not quite.

The Dom Kennedy Story: The importance of managing your brand.

8 Ways Cee-lo’s “F*ck You” Video Went Viral

5 Things That Went Wrong With Wale’s Mixtape Release

Stereotyping People By Their Favorite Rapper

Somebody, anybody, write about this! I would, but I’m...

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:35:16 -0500

Somebody, anybody, write about this! I would, but I’m swamped. Sigh.

NYT: Music Blogs Caught in Labels’ Piracy Fight

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:59:10 -0500

Thanksgiving Day had barely begun when Kevin Hofman’s BlackBerry buzzed. It was one of the technical operators of OnSmash.com, Mr. Hofman’s popular hip-hop blog, telling him that the site had gone mysteriously blank just after midnight.

At first I thought it was hackers,” Mr. Hofman said. But within hours a notice went up on the site saying that its domain name had been seized by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit of the Department of Homeland Security; it was one of dozens of sites shut down, accused of copyright infringement and selling counterfeit goods.

But Mr. Hofman, a brawny Long Islander in his early 30s who formerly worked for a major record label, does not think of himself as a pirate.

Read the rest over at NYT

I’m a NYT fan, even did one of their training programs, but this story is late man. I vividly remember having text, bbm and gchat ~~arguments~~ discussions over what this meant for hip-hop and blogosphere during Thanksgiving weekend. Why so tardy for the party?

Marketing vs Legal - The Record Labels' Internal War

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:46:19 -0500

Marketing vs Legal - The Record Labels' Internal War:

moearora:

Great post by super-blogger, Eskay.

Interesting read, might just have to write about it.

Born In '88

Obama’s Spotify Playlist.

Frank Ocean and Data, Models & Decisions. This question was...

@KD: On Quora: Why didn't Watch the Throne leak?

Beyond Oblivion recently got an additional $77mil in financing...

Tyler According to Tyler. A work in progress. Re:...

Will Ferrell says MySpace is dead. It was written.

Amazon Introduces Cloud Music Service, 5GB Free Space. Moves.

Mos Def x Lupe Fiasco x Kanye West Jazz Cypher

Odd Future covers tomorrow’s issue of Billboard. Okay,...

[Hi-Res Figure]: A Social Value Chain Model: Music Ed. Story...

A Social Value Chain Model: Music Ed.

Direct Message from @JayElectronica. A Fan Engagement Case Study.

Related Posts:

If Twitter were 100 people [infographic]. Check out the peak...

Diddy’s Web Conference w/Ustream Staff (video)

Muppets Parody to Kanye West’s “Monster.” Miss...

Kanye West & Jay-Z's "H.A.M." A Marketing Spoil.

Reading is Fundamental.

Somebody, anybody, write about this! I would, but I’m...

NYT: Music Blogs Caught in Labels’ Piracy Fight

Marketing vs Legal - The Record Labels' Internal War