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Five Quotes from Diddy’s “REVOLT” Cable Network Announcement

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: , ,

Yesterday Diddy announced the launch of his very own music cable network, Revolt.  I feel like owning a cable network is the 2012 equivalent of what it was like to own an urban fashion line in 1995. Diddy isn’t the only African American cable upstart trying to expand their brand. Tyler Perry, Magic Johnson, and even Martin Luther King III all have cable networks in development. And let’s not forget that Oprah still has OWN. (She could definitely share with them how difficult it is to keep a cable network afloat in the digital era.)

There’s not a lot we know about Revolt, but here are 5 quotes from Diddy’s video announcement that yield a little insight:

1. “The Revolution Will be Televised”

My cynical side is still aligned with Gil Scot-Heron. Cable television is a brutal business. Networks are competing with the internet, games, and everything else to attract viewers. And even if the [music] revolution were to be televised, I’m not sure that Diddy is the one to do it…anybody remember “Making the Band” and “I Want to Work for Diddy?”

2. “It’s the artists channel…a channel that will give new artists the change to be seen and heard.”

I’m just not really sure what this statement means to Diddy. Although if we take the long view of his professional career Diddy, or rather Puffy, has brought some incredibly influential artists to our attention (Mary J. Blige & Biggie Smalls among them). But again, if we narrow our scope to Diddy’s previous forays into television we have Da Band, Day 26, and Danity Kane. womp womp.

3. “Revolt will be the number name in homes for music on television”

Maybe. But probably not. Forget the other cable networks that used to program music. How will Revolt compete against the bevy of singing competitions that don’t have to be 24 hours and clock major viewership numbers every week. “The Voice” and its kindred may not be Revolt’s direct competition, but for some reason people *really* love these shows. And even with those shows aside, I’m predicting Revolt will *not* be bigger than Glee.

4. “Revolt will represent the soul of music that’s been missing for a long time.”

Soul as in heart? Soul as in emotion? Soul as in soul? Diddy is arguably one of the people who helped steer popular music into its current vapid and formulaic state. I’m not thoroughly convinced that he’s the best one to restore balance.

5. “FYI #Revolt is NOT a “BLACK NETWORK!” I just happen to be Black-Lol. This network is for all colors-all races…TechniColor :) RT!”

Okay I cheated #5  wasn’t in the video it is a tweet he sent yesterday after he posted the video announcement. I don’t really know where to start with this statement. I want to know why he felt compelled to make that clarification. Were people already comparing him to BET and TV One? Or were people asking him to bring back Rap City and Big Lez? No idea. But I’m guess we’re glad he made it known that Revolt is TechniColor.

I probably sound critical, but I’m no Sean Combs hater and nor am I rooting for Revolt’s failure. He hasn’t revealed enough about the network for me to feel any way about it really. If he wanted to, he could probably find a way to make Revolt successful. I guess above all, I question if he really wants to….

 

Hip Hop is #Tanning Silicon Valley…Kind of

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

…at least is is for Silicon Valley super-venture capitalist Ben Horowitz.

In a recent NY Times interview Horowitz explained that in the workplace he eschews managerial jargon and cliches by using rap lyrics instead.

Now I know hip hop industry executive/advertising guru Steve Stoute’s  “tanning” idea was focused on hip hop’s cultural impact on advertising and marketing, but Horowitz is an interesting example of how hip hop has insinuated itself into the holiest (and least Black) of corporate managerial ranks…Silicon Valley.

Just what does managerial tanning look like? Here’s an example:

Recently, for instance, one of the entrepreneurs that Andreessen Horowitz financed clashed with a disparaging board member. Mr. Horowitz advised the executive that he was being too deferential and needed to show his strength.

He said he sent the executive “Scream on Em,” a rap song by The Game, because its “superaggressive” lyrics — so aggressive that none can be printed in a family newspaper.

Fascinating. Horowitz uses hip hop lyrics as his default corporate communication. I wish there were audio of these communiques because I just can’t imagine how it sounds in the moment without sounding incredibly corny. But I like his logic. He says that all the books on business management are verbose and repetitive. According to Horowitz hip hop’s direct and graphic language allows him to convey his point succinctly. He not only uses it in verbal conversations, but often incorporates rap lyrics at the beginning of his blog entries.

Now while i find his incorporation of rap lyrics into his daily business conversations amusing, the real issue is the lack of African Americans tech innovators and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. According to the same NY Times article African Americans are less than 6% of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

It’s nice to see that hip hop has insinuated itself into the upper echelon of Silicon Valley management, here’s hoping that African American presence in Silicon Valley pushes beyond superficial tanning and that African American techies and entrepreneurs will soon join hip hop in the higher ranks of Silicon Valley management.

(Spotted in the homie’s D.L. Chandler’s piece over at Hip Hop Wired.)

**Special Note** If you’re in Houston today, go see Soul 4 Sale’s own, Langston Wilkins, give a talk entitled “Hip Hop: A Discourse on the Past and Present of the Cultural Influence”  TODAY at 6pm at the Houston Museum of African American Culture. Click here for more info.

Music Piracy versus the Music Industry [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 3 Comments Tags: , ,

I believe that people illegally download music because they can and because the industry hasn’t found a way to make it worth it to the consumer to pay for it. Pleas from musicians, and the RIAA alike, for consumers to pay for content has been met with mixed results. There was even this recent study that showed that the shutdown of file sharing site, Megaupload, hasn’t affected global digital piracy at all. What’s the answer to this question: how do you make people pay for something they can (easily) get for free? Obviously, the music industry hasn’t found an answer to this question or this post would be moot.

Although we all know people who illegally download or stream content, I thought this webpagefx infographic was interesting because it is a side-by-side comparison of the digital sales (mostly iTunes data) versus illegal downloads. I was still pretty surprised by the enormity of the disparity.

 

Thank You Don Cornelius

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

 

 

Unfortunately we were on hiatus when the legendary Don Cornelius passed away. But we wanted to take a moment to pay tribute to the man who brought Black artists and music into the homes of millions and helped expand the market for Black music.

Here’s a great business analysis of the impact of Soul Train.

Here is Questlove breaking down the cultural impact of Soul Train.

And here is Don Cornelius as we would like to remember him, dancing down the Soul Train line he invented.

peace. love. and soul.

VIDEO: Coca Cola + Mark Ronson = Olympic Gold?

By Fredara Mareva in Marketing, Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

There is a lot of discussion about the growing number of  alliances between brands and artists. Here’s an interesting MIDEM talk with Mark Ronson and Wendy Clark of Coca-Cola Music. In the video Mark and Wendy discuss their creative partnership for Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Coca-Cola’s goal was to create an ad campaign that combined sports and music. CC approached Mark with a cool proposition: travel around the world recording the sounds that Olympic athletes make while performing their sport and make a banging track out of it.

I gotta admit. I never thought a runner’s heartbeat, an archer’s bow, and hurdler’s stride could sound that fresh. Dope music aside, this talk is shareworthy because it gets to the heart of what brands like Coca-Cola are thinking about in these kinds of partnerships. Wendy explains in this video that as a brand with over 37 million Facebook fans, Coca-Cola is now not just the provider of syrupy sweet caramel-colored beverages, but they are content providers as well. It’s CC’s responsibility to partner with “master storytellers” to create entertainment that Coke’s fans value.

For Mark’s part, he sees this partnership as as the biggest global exposure he’ll probably ever get. His track is at the center of Coca-Cola’s Olympic campaign campaign, which they plan to activate in over 100 countries.The campaign will include a release of the single, a long-form documentary ont he making of the song, and countless commercials.

The global scale of this partnership is hard to match, but there are two important takeaways: (1) brands now see themselves not only as product providers, but as content providers and (2) if the music is great most people don’t care that it is associated with a brand.

Here’s the MIDEM talk:

Here’s a short video about the track Mark Ronson created:

 

whitney houston: past, present, and forevermore.

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 5 Comments Tags: , ,

 

 

Whitney Houston was….

a cultural phenomenon unlike any the music industry or American popular culture had ever seen. Her undeniable talent and model good looks demanded that we all made her music a part of our life’s soundtrack. She was everywhere and we followed her wherever she went.

It is impossible to overstate what it meant to see this beautiful brown girl from New Jersey in places where beautiful brown girls from New Jersey did not go. She was on the cover of Seventeen, the top of the Billboard Charts, and on MTV.

Clive Davis saw and heard her and knew she was the perfect crossover artist. She was on Top 40 radio during a time when only three Black artists were: Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney. She perfected the art of the power pop ballad. She didn’t dance, she didn’t do tricks, she didn’t have to, Whitney from Newark could sang.

Whitney Houston is….

being rediscovered for her vocal genius. For the first time in a long while we are listening to her again instead of watching her struggle. In this incredibly sad moment she is reminding us of how she, and she alone, can take a humdrum national anthem and make it a platinum hit. By revisiting her incomparable catalog of hits we’re letting younger people hear why we loved her so much…even as she struggled and fought to have a normal life.

In this present moment it is hard to explain what a game changer she was because we are so used to seeing Beyonce, Rihanna, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, and others everywhere. But every single one of them, in some way, is chasing Whitney.

Whitney Houston forevermore will be…

The Voice.

 

 

Eyeballs Versus Engagement

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

It is 2012 and everyone is working overtime trying to get their Facebook likes up, their youtube views up, and their twitter followers up. It makes sense. Lots of brands, musicians, and regular folx live by these numbers in order to prove how popular they are. But as one indie record label guy said to me, “all those numbers prove is that someone clicked a button.” Sharalytics is a great attempt to move past measuring clicks to measuring how people spread and connect with content.

Now I’m not suggesting the numbers are totally meaningless, but there is a deeper side that we should be interested in. I liken eyeballs with exposure and engagement with experience. In this video from last week’s  MIDEM conference. Wes Sansome of  Contagious Communications gave a great (and brief) talk at MIDEM on brand campaigns that he feels get it right. I love the way he describes their success formula: “interactive, relevant, and personal.” What I agree with most is his belief that *people* are at the center of marketing efforts, not technology or demographic categories. When people are at the center of fan initiatives it forces to you to think about what *they* would want or what would be useful to them FIRST. In this approach what matters is creating an experience that the fan/consumer values. Get that right and you’ll be building a base of loyal evangelists who will do most of the marketing work for you.

I’ll stop before this makes a turn towards a rant, but check out his talk…it’s all of 10 minutes long.

Jay-Z Goes from “Crooklyn to Carnegie”

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized 7 Comments Tags: ,

I planned to discuss something entirely different today, but I got sidetracked reading all of the internet fodder about Jay-Z’s performance at Carnegie Hall. For any number of reasons Jay-Z fascinates me. His journey from hustler to Hova is well-noted, but I am really intrigued how he has become the person around whom the narrative of hip hop turns. He has crossed over…and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way. There are courses about Jay-Z, he kicks it with Warren Buffet, he and his wife are among the highest paid entertainment couples, he’s a Broadway play producer. The list goes on.

Now he’s at Carnegie Hall. He’s not the first hip hop artist to play there (Wyclef Jean and Mos Def have played there as well), but he is the biggest hip hop artist to play Carnegie to date. Years ago I was fortunate to be a researcher on Carnegie Hall’s Honor Celebration commemorating the cultural impact of African Americans who have performed on its stage. Carnegie Hall has a long and illustrious history of hosting African Americans musicians that dates back to 1892. It has to mean something that arguably the most successful hip hop artist on the planet has now joined that list.

So I’m left with questions. I feel like this means something. Although I’m not sure what this moment means or how substantial (or not) it is. Is it just another marker of the mainstreaming of hip hop? What does it say that ghetto music is, yet again, being performed in tuxedos for swanky crowds? It’s worth noting that the proceeds from the Carnegie Hall shows go to the Shawn Carter Foundation which awards college scholarships to deserving high school students.

Hello World (Again)

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized No Comments

Our hiatus was a little longer than we planned, but our mission has not changed.
We are really excited about Soul 4 Sale being a space to discuss innovative ideas and technology, emerging music business
models, and the hard-working creative people who are making things happen!

Soul 4 Sale is an idea exchange, so we thrive off hearing your thoughts, questions, and
concerns. Thanx for stopping by and we hope you decide to stay.

stay tuned for greatness.

fredara & langston

When Radio Attacks!

By Langston in Uncategorized No Comments Tags: , , , ,

Entertainment website EUR Web is reporting that African-American based media-company Radio One has banned all of Matthew Knowles’ Music World related music from their 69 radio stations worldwide. The ban is the result of a lawsuit filed by Radio One’s sister corporation, TV One has against Knowles. Knowles’ gospel catalog (which includes Leandria Johnson, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, and Juanita Bynum)  has been removed from Radio One’s 12 gospel themes stations, while old music from Beyonce and Destiny’s Child have been yanked from their pop stations.

This situation is similar to the Houston 97.9 KBXX’s ban of Houston artist Trae the Truth. The Box, a Radio One station, banned Trae’s music after he made disparaging remarks about one of their DJs. In addition, The Box fired their own DJs for associating with him. This local radio banned significantly delayed the release of Trae’s forthcoming album, as his label refused to release the album without local radio support. In response, Trae sued 97.9 the Box for sabotaging his career. He eventually dropped the lawsuit.

As Fredara Mareva recently noted radio remains a powerful force in the music industry. Despite the presence of various forms of new media, radio is the key vehicle through music is mass disseminated. Bans, such as the ones imposed on Knowles and Trae, could have immensely damaging effects on the careers of artists and the vitality of labels. Despite the possible consequences, artists are not simply waving the white flag. In Houston, artists and fans responded to Trae’s banned by investing in independent and online radio stations. Even Matthew Knowles has noted that his ban has given him the opportunity to explore other media outlets. The power struggle between corporate radio and artists/labels can only help those outlets outside the commercial power structure.

Stay tuned for the outcome of the Radio One vs. Mathew Knowles drama.

5 Thoughts on PJ Morton Signing with Young Money Cash Money Billionaires

By Fredara Mareva in Uncategorized No Comments Tags: ,

So yesterday, the very talented musician/songwriter/singer PJ Morton announced via his Twitter that he’d signed with Young Money Cash Money Billionaires. Now I won’t front like I’m his #1 fan, but I am familiar with his music and I root for his success. But, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this deal gives me pause. Post pause these were my thoughts on it.

  1. Hopefully the New Orleans connection between Pj and YMCMB gives them a good understanding of each others. Since everybody is a N.O. seems like they should have a greater understanding of what the other party does well.
  2. PJ has an image problem. Lots of people incorrectly think he’s a gospel singer (it doesn’t help that his father is Bishop Paul S. Morton).
  3. Soul music fans are even worse than hip hop fans when it comes to policing associations. I don’t doubt that many PJ fans and the target audience for PJ’s music will react with skepticism, like “how you gonna sell me “Every Girl“  AND “The One?” The last thing either side wants to see is PJ singing hooks on Weezy songs or Cory Gunz verses on PJ songs. It’s a tricky balance that a company that is SO identified with a certain kind of music is going to have to adeptly navigate.
  4. YMCMB has been on an acquisition binge lately, so hopefully they’re implementing strategies that we don’t fully understand yet, but will make sense in the long run. Maybe
  5. These are the kinds of deals that could work. One thing YMCMB has excelled at is reinventing the “cash money” image and keeping its finger on the pulse of what’s hot. Unfortunately, one thing has repeatedly failed at is trying to branch out from its core pop hip hop sound.

So real talk. Against my reservations I’m rooting for this deal to yield positive results because if it does that can help raise profile (and profitability) of lots of other Black indie artists. YMCMB has the kind of money and resources that can help artists like PJ reach the next level. BUT the deal has to make sense and the music has to be fantastic. I just hope PJ gets to be PJ and do more than this:

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