Jackie Chain f/ Jhi-Ali “Rollin (HSV Remix)”
What’s the dollar value of social media in rap music? As an artist, is “investing” (your time, others’ time, money) in social media [Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr] the equivalent of buying space on a (digital) billboard?
Or is there a tangible return? I don’t know the answer. But I’m also talking beyond downloads. Because those don’t pay the overhead. Don’t get me wrong, I think trading a download for a tweet, as Jackie Chain (or, probably, someone in Universal’s marketing department) did for his newest tape with the Block Beattaz. And yeah, I would like to know the eventual number of tweets that go out for it and how that compares to the number of downloads.
But still, that brings us back to downloads. And I just don’t think downloads are a particularly good way to measure your viability as an artist (unless a decent portion of those downloads are paid). And in the context of giving away free music:
download for an email address > download for a tweet > download for nothing
An email address is not especially valuable to an individual person (it’s a commodity and most people have multiple email addresses anyway), but if you collect enough of them, (and by collect, it’s important to realize that these people will have voluntarily given you some level of permission to contact them at a point in the future) you can start to meaningfully connect with your fans.
Realize I’m not telling anyone to spam people who download mixtapes, but, imo, it’s a hell of lot smarter to reach out to people who have GIVEN YOU their contact information than it is to seek it out online and spam the fuck out of whatever marginally hip hop-related blog you find.*
It’s somewhat of a novel approach to put out a mixtape of an artists’ past work** ahead of his major label debut by employing a Twitter-focused strategy, but I don’t think it’s something most artists will find success or sustainability in. It’s only marginally more valuable than just plastering the Web with your loose songs and random mixtapes and learning nothing about your fans (additionally, I think this strategy is better here because Jackie has reasonably good level of engagement with his fans on Twitter. Most artists don’t.)
So yeah, anyway, what I’m trying to say is, if you aren’t making the best sounding weed rap out right now, don’t ask me to tweet in order to download your shit. Peep game.
-SM
*With a typo-ridden form email about how you are “bringing back real hip hop.”
**NB: with one of the greatest production teams working right now
