cherie hu
@cheriehu42
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in the arena @water_and_music
New York, NY
Joined August 2014
Spotify now displays this "About recommendations" section in the menu for all its official and algorithmic playlists. The standout line: "In some cases, commercial considerations may influence our recommendations". Strange but really illuminating disclaimer
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a simple but illuminating model from @createos:.if you an artist in an 80/20 label/artist royalty deal with a $300,000 advance, $80,000 recording budget and $150,000 marketing budget, your music would need to generate over 500M streams before you make just $1 on the backend.
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Travis Scott in 2020:.- spiked seltzer with AB inBev.- McDonaldâs meal.- PlayStation creative partnership.- Fortnite shows.- HBCU scholarships.- 0 albums. maybe not so ridiculous idea: Travis Scott is the brand and corporations are the artists who want exposure.
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~wipes off sweat~. I compiled a 16-page, living directory of.- tools anyone can use to host virtual shows/meetups/panels.- virtual events that artists and companies are organizing in place of SXSW.- emergency-funding resources for artists. please share!!!.
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the fact that we got instant generative AI music before we got the ability for artists to cleanly approve or deny collabs on streaming services tells you everything you need to know about the music business.
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something that also seems to be missing from the Kanye vs Drake convo is that both are signed to subsidiaries of Universal Music Group (Def Jam & Republic respectively). regardless of whatever beef is there, Donda and Certified Lover Boy are commercially beholden to the same Man.
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my attempt to make sense of this somewhat incestuous new music-industry landscape:
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anyone who hates pop music should just try to write a pop song, that is all I have to say.
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just met a CEO of a âbig indieâ label who said that his company has walked away from signing several otherwise amazing artists because they had incompetent managers. really hits home how managers can literally make or break an artistâs career.
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I made a 40-page slide deck about music NFTs because. why not. all based on my own research, including:.- pricing/sales trends (~$70M in sales in the last 75 days).- top artists/genres/platforms/protocols.- emerging use cases. more!. please share :).
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feel like music industry convos could get a lot more interesting if our main frame of reference for success was not "breaking artists" â an outdated relic of an era where mass media dominated â but rather "sustainability on artists' terms" â a much more open/flexible design space.
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The Sony Music / AWAL news strengthens my theory that any tech company that tries to âdisrupt record labelsâ either dies trying or gets acquired by a label.
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playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist p.
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this episode, especially 64:00 to 178:00, is a must-listen for anyone interested in the politics and decision-making behind Spotify's podcast deals. (most important news is that The Joe Budden Podcast will no longer be a Spotify exclusive after Sep. 23)
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crowd at @a3c just started stampeding away from the stage, a few min into Lil Wayneâs performance. no one knows what exactly happenedâsome say a brawl spiraled out of controlâbut security is now evacuating the entire venue. i am safe and will update as i learn more.
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a conversation the music industry maybe isn't ready to have: a lot of the fastest-growing revenue streams for artists from the last year monetize community, not copyrights. crypto, Twitch, direct memberships, ecommerce â all fall under this category.
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If you are, or work with,.- A lo-fi hip-hop artist.- A lo-fi hip-hop label.- A lo-fi hip-hop curation brand. I would love to chat with you for a piece about the economics of the scene :).
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very few musicians think of themselves as "content creators," but that is what a pandemic without tours has compelled many of them to become. not good or bad, just a fact and what seems to me like a fundamental shift in approaches to early artist development and audience-building.
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SUPER interesting chart from @rostr_cc about which talent agencies booked the 2020 Coachella lineup. - 1 in 3 acts are signed to Paradigm.- WME got two of the headliners but only 16% of the total lineup.- Four agencies (Paradigm, WME, CAA, UTA) represent nearly 75% of the lineup
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I'm getting these emails now, so I guess it's official: I am SO excited to be teaching a course on music and gaming at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music next semester as an adjunct professor!! At last all my hours on the Switch will finally come into good use đ¤
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if an artist faces $10K in tour losses. to re-earn that from streaming they'd need ~2Mâ5M streams *on top* of their existing activity, and might not get paid for a few months. to earn that from a $10 album on Bandcamp they'd need ~1,000 people to buy, and can get that $ tomorrow.
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for some weekend reading, i present to you the absolutely chaotic mess of rights holders and music/tech companies all owning stakes in each other, 2023 edition â in 4 parts. pt. 1: the tencent music ouroboros, plus Sony adding Bandcamp (via Epic Games acquisition) to its arsenal
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I looked up "Drake Certified Lover Boy" on Spotify and the TOP result is. not the album "Certified Lover Boy" by a certain artist named Drake. but rather an album called "Drake" by another artist named "Certified Lover Boy". wtf is going on and why has Drake's team allowed this
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it is very interesting that when a rapper releases three "mixtapes" a year, we don't bat an eye, but when T Swift releases two albums in a year, it's a "paradigm shift". it's BEEN this way, is my two cents.
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I wrote for @billboard about what the music biz can learn from the streaming success of one of my fave artists, @TomMisch â especially the power of back catalog and artist-curated playlists in driving engagement and sustaining an independent music career:
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one point that I often forget is a standard part of recording deals is that advances are recouped using only the *artist's* share of sales, not total sales. i.e. if you get a $50K advance but only 20% rev share, your music actually has to earn $250K before the advance is recouped.
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In case it helps with perspective in the media salary conversation, I'm on pace to make ~$80,000/year from my Patreon page / newsletter. No health benefits, PTO, sick days or anything like that, but a business nonetheless. For anyone seeking guidance re: Patreon, my DMs are open.
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the Warner Music IPO happening the day after Blackout Tuesday is truly surreal. I don't think you can talk about anti-racism and black inequality in music without talking about how the money flows.
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has anyone made the point yet that the Spotify viral 50 chart is basically a TikTok chart.
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"where's midjourney/DALL-E/GPT3 for music????". it's coming, for sure (we're dedicating a whole season to it at @water_and_music). but i think ppl are underestimating how much more of an uphill battle it's going to be for music to get its "midjourney moment.". a short đ§ľon why. .
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i'm 25 now đľđť grateful to be alive, healthy + working on projects i'm passionate about. 2020 warrants celebrating with the simple things in life, like.- good food + coffee.- sleeping.- analyzing the major technological + commercial forces shaping the future of the music business.
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after working ~10 years in the music industry you realize that almost every conversation about "solutions" to its problems is a rehash of a convo that already happened 10 years ago. i'm glad these convos are happening but i'm afraid they represent a failure to learn from the past.
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you đ can đ own đ your đ masters đ and đ still đ have đ a đ shitty đ record đ deal đ.
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major labels are eating the blogosphere. streaming services are poaching journalists to help run their music podcasts. all the major trades are now owned by the same company. and, of course, newsletters. now is an ~ interesting ~ time for music media to say the least.
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mebe hot take. most music NFTs in their current form don't actually revalue music itself. they revalue the artist/superfan relationship, which is not the same as the music. collectors seem to talk so little about the actual music, but talk a lot about getting access to the artist.
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Spotify always centers the power of user-generated playlists in their ad campaigns and earnings calls â over 4 billion playlists made on the service so far! â but for years they have buried user-generated playlists on their homepage in favor of the ones they own themselves. .
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here is my FULL CHART â showing how music-industry power dynamics remain tightly intertwined among rights holders, big media/tech conglomerates, institutional finance firms, and even government funds. you can view the map here, with links to sources:
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I have been sitting on this for months, editing and re-editing, worrying it was too unwieldy or incoherent â but am finally sharing it w/ the world. I wrote about the music industry's biggest messaging problem, a.k.a. the corporatization of "independence".
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self-promotion feels weird right now, but I wanted to share the exciting news that Water & Music now has 400 paying members on Patreon. this marks just the beginning of my plans for building out a full-time, indie editorial operation dedicated to innovation in the music business.
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on my mind: the only people who have the bandwidth to experiment with new forms of money are people who already have money.
Imo, the biggest challenge in crypto is that the cards are stacked against people who don't have the time to learn. Staying alive is an all-consuming activity for people in developing countries.
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we at @water_and_music have been working hard on a new Web3 strategy that will serve as the rails for a new model of collaborative music-industry research, and are thrilled to share an early view of what this strategy looks like. introducing: $STREAM.
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one of the biggest mindset shifts for me over the last year as I have tried to grow an org⌠I used to think ideas were everything. now I strongly believe ideas come cheap, and the differentiation is at the execution layer. the best ideas die in bad systems for executing on them.
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one of the biggest surprises from my time so far teaching social media & music marketing at the college level:. even though artists are some of the world's biggest brands, and even though 40â50% of the most-followed accounts on major social platforms belong to artists. 1/.
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some personal and professional news: i'm officially writing my first book! it'll be published with @BloomsburyAcad ~2021, and will explore the parallels between musiciansâ careers and tech entrepreneurship, a topic iâve been thinking deeply about for years. i am SO EXCITED!!!!!!.
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Out of all the tweets and photos on my timeline, I have yet to see any handcuffs.
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it's 2021 and the major labels (Universal, Sony, Warner) and "big indies" (e.g. Beggars, AWAL) suddenly disappear from Earth. you are tasked with building the next generation of profitable, sustainable labels from scratch. how would you do it? would you even call it a "label"?.
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not enough people working in music/crypto today know about the extended graveyard of shuttered music/blockchain startups of the 2015â2018 era and the technical/political trials and tribulations they had to face in trying to work with the music industry and it's genuinely worrying.
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everyone's talking about the metaverse. but who's building. the fetaverse
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almost every incumbent music company (major labels, publishers, PROs) has launched a Web3 strategy in 2022. this is gonna make music/web3 REAL HAIRY â not even because of legal/copyright reasons, but because of clashes in underlying philosophies of what web3 even is. (mini đ§ľ).
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.@FWBtweets built their own token-gated ticketing app to handle RSVPs for their IRL events. now, several other DAOs will be using FWB's ticketing tech to power their own events at this week. SO dope to see open modular tooling built by + for communities.
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me learning about all the licensing involved in livestreaming concerts
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With the impact of IG livestreams and TikTok memes, it's clear to me that video, not audio, is now the leading indicator of mainstream digital music culture. For the most part, audio streaming services are no longer tastemakers. Instead, they reflect and catch up to taste.
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need to air out this extremely niche pet peeve that precisely 5 people will care about:. Statista đ is đ not đ a đ source.
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a common trend in music-tech:.đ startup claims to completely disintermediate/disrupt major labels and "free" artists' careers.đ because they need the $$, startup ends up striking operational integration with major labels.đ startup becomes a B2B product for incumbents.
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Soul is so good and will hit you in the feels. if you work in music, it will REALLY hit you in the feels.
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i am thinking of starting a new series just about analyzing cool academic papers that provide new ways of thinking about the future of the music business and artists' careers. an exercise in connecting bird's-eye-view theory to on-the-ground practice. would any of you read it???.
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Meek Mill and Michelle Phan in the same CH room with 20+ founders and investors and thousands of listeners talking about crypto. what a time to be alive.
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The music industry is also one of the few industries where many people are chasing the instant gratification of going viral "overnight" but then won't get paid for it for 6 months, and when they do they get paid 16 cents on the dollar đ¤ˇđťââď¸.
The music industry is the only business where people celebrate getting 16 cents on the dollar.
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random thought: I wonder how many albums that major artists finished recording 5+ months ago will either never be released or will have to be rerecorded because their original versions would sound too positive or out-of-touch if released today. like time capsules no one asked for.
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the fastest, most direct way to support artists and industry workers is to buy their products or make a donation through channels 1) that they own, 2) that take little to no revenue share from them and 3) that can be deposited into their bank accounts more or less immediately.
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Music is so behind the âcreator economyâ. Snap pays $1M a DAY to creators of viral videos. Some smaller creators have made 5â6 figures in a few weeks. But if your song goes viral tonight, you prob wonât see any royalties from it for minimum 2â6 months đ¤ˇđťââď¸.
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One thing I canât stop thinking about is how weâd all probably agree that music is not a commodity â it is art, a means of self-expression â but mainstream trends often pressure artists to default to commoditization in how their music is created, packaged, distributed & monetized.
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big lesson of 2019 so far: horizontal networking ⼠vertical networking.
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yo, I've been getting a *ton* of requests from music/tech companies who are expanding their content marketing and are looking for blog writers. I can't take this on, but is there anyone in my network who'd be interested in these kinds of opportunities? if yes please reply below!!.
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i've had a bunch of interesting convos recently with people my age (early/mid-20s) working in music about the absolute worst feeling of being jaded about the music business, especially when you're in love with the art form. for anyone who's felt this before, how do you fight it?.
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if an NFT doesnât sell out in 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 5 days, or 5 months, that doesnât mean itâs a failure! it could still hold unexpected value in the long term. excited to see more framings of NFTs beyond just the quick âdropâ model â almost like back catalog for music đ¤.
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SO excited to share the latest @water_and_music deep-dive: a surgical breakdown from @AmiMadhu23 of how global pop fandoms mobilize around new music releases. fans are basically running industry-leading music marketing machines on their own and they should be recognized as such!.
Today's global pop fandoms are more sophisticated and influential than ever â from Twitter fan accounts that often have more followers than major labels, to coordination of 24-hour streaming goals around new releases. @AmiMadhu23 breaks down how it's done:
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food for thought:. in the last 3 weeks, corporations / private equity bought Bob Dylan's publishing and Taylor Swift's masters, respectively, for a total of ~$600M. by my calculations that's more than all the money invested in music/audio startups combined this entire YEAR.
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There are almost as many people concurrently watching the Teddy Riley / Babyface IG live (~500K) as were watching the YouTube stream of Global Citizen's Together at Home concert when Taylor Swift performed (~550K). Two vastly different snapshots of online music culture right now.
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please share: I'm now seeking guest articles for my newsletter about tech's impact on the music industry, and will be prioritizing underrepresented voices in music/media. pay starts at $500 for 1K words. you can read guidelines and submit your pitch here:
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holy f**k moment: I now have 500 members on my Patreon page! Thatâs +100 members added within less than a month. I won't say too much other than this growth only inspires me to keep writing, learning and improving further. So, Iâll be doing more of that today. thank you â¤ď¸â¤ď¸â¤ď¸
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inspired by a recent post by @JuiceboxCA, I decided to take screenshots of the mobile homepages of all the major music-streaming services and compare them side-by-side. they literally all look the same.
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I said this on a media panel yesterday: I'm trying to stop asking, and am frankly tired of being asked, "What's the post-COVID future of X?" No one knows. Instead: "What has this experience taught you about the future you + others *want* to see, and how are you building for it?".
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to music-industry job listings that still say "must live in or be willing to relocate to [insert city here]" . why?.
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can we please get rid of the moniker âworld musicâ? in an era when k-pop, Bollywood, urbano + other regional styles top global charts, world music is mainstream music and all music can be music âof the worldâ no matter where it comes fromâmaking the âworldâ qualifier redundant.
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let's be clear: FN Meka was never an "AI" rapper. the persona's creative direction is still a manual process with clearly biased humans behind the scenes, and behind the cloak of "AI rapper" they probably thought they could get away with absolving responsibility to The Algorithm.
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holy shit holy shit holy shit. a DAO (@PleasrDAO) is the new owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. next step is DAOs beating out private equity firms to buy out artists' catalogs.
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Me:
some brutal assessments of âThe Big Dayâ and what it did to Chance the Rapperâs career in this lawsuit by his former manager đŹ
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