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Top Story: The Drake Effect - Part One: So Far Gone and changes in the marketplace
Media Monday’s Vol. 5
Written by King Williams
Edited by Alicia Bruce
This is about the rapper Drake, memes, art, the internet, consumption, patterns, and amplification
On Friday, September 3rd saw the release of Certified Lover Boy, the 12th studio project released from the Canadian rapper-singer Drake. Upon its release the album set several all-time records in music. How we got here is a merging of several converging trends of consumption patterns, digital platforms, online amplification engines, the role of ‘art’, and strategic thinking coalesced. And many of the lessons from this article could be used to understand the Internet as a whole.
I. Who is Drake? And why are we talking about him today?
Aubrey Drake Graham is a former child actor turned rapper-singer who performs under the moniker ‘Drake’. Prior to becoming a music artist, Graham was best known at the time for his role as Jimmy Brooks, a basketball player and aspiring rapper on the hit second iteration of the Canadian teen soap opera Degrassi: The Next Generation in the early-mid 2000s. After leaving the show, Drake began a career attempting to become a legitimate rapper and singer.
Rapper turned singer
This combination of successful rapper and singer was unusual during the mid-2000s, as outside of T-Pain, who was a former rapper turned singer, there was limited success with the formula. After two releases, 2006’s Room for Improvement, and 2007’s Comeback Season, it seemed as if maybe the musical career of Drake would likely have stalled. It wasn’t until a key partnership developed through Jaz Prince, son of independent music label impresario James “J.” Prince, CEO of Rap-A-Lot Records. Alongside a series of free songs known as ‘loosies’ and a brief touring stint with Lil Wayne during the height of his career that things would shape up for Drake.
II. So Far Gone
It wasn’t until his breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone in February 2009, that the Drake era of dominance began. So Far Gone was released as a free digital download during the height of both the physical mixtape and blog eras of music.
The album featured more introspective lyrics combing singing and rapping from Drake with limited guest verses. This dual singing-rapping was widely criticized and not embraced by the hip hop community at the time, including both Lil Wayne and J. Prince. While also heavily borrowing Kanye West’s atmospheric production style from his recently released 808 and Heartbreak three months prior. With the icing on the cake being several additional Lil Wayne guest features and a $10,000, 15-second hook from Trey Songz for ‘Successful’. A single that was released just as Songz was approaching the hottest time of his career.
III. Drake arrived at the right time as the music industry was shifting, again
The marketplace changed from a paid a-la-carte system to freemium
The music industry’s greatest strength for almost a century was the album bundle. The ability to lock in a collection of music in a form physical media (typically a disk of some sort) required a mechanism to play the music (record players/tape decks/CD players), as well as physical medium to access new music (radio/television). Because of the lack of accessible mediums for music listening (radio, disk players), the supply of inventory could be managed, then micro managed for maximum efficiency.
Because of the album, record labels primarily made money from B2C transactions at retail (album/single sales)or merchandise. But labels then (and now) also make money in B2B transactions via third party licensing agreements, rights, royalties, and other fee based payment structures. All of these are much more valuable for successful albums which would usually have a collection of successful singles attached.
The freemium economy
The combination of Napster-like sites making music accessible for anyone who is willing to illegally download music for free and iTunes existing for anyone who wants to legally download music for a price changed the business model. A business model that went from all paying to no paying, the freemium economy was born. In the freemium model, consumers can engage with content at zero cost, should the consumer decided to spend, it must be only after the customer has engaged some form of free content first.
Within five months of So Far Gone being released free on the internet in February of 2009, it produced two radio singles, “Best I Ever Had” became the first song since Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat in 2007 to go from the internet to the Billboard Hot 100. With “Best I Ever Had” peaking at #2, “Successful” with Trey Songz at #17, and the loosie “I’m Goin In” featuring Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy at #40.
So Far Gone prompted a bidding war amongst record labels, prompting Drake to sign a multi-million dollar deal with Young Money Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music. In July of 2009, Young Money re-released an EP six seven songs, featuring four songs So Far Gone + “Goin In” that sold nearly 800,000 copies in four months despite it being free online at the same time. Customers sampled the album for free then bought the singles at iTunes and requested it radio. Demand met supply and nothing was the same since, the new business model of the freemium economy had arrived with debut of Drake.
The gatekeepers changed from radio/TV to online blogs to iTunes
So Far Gone arrives at the right place, at the right time. While the business model was changing so were the gatekeepers. The internet had an adverse effect on radio and television. This rendered the cultural hold of MTV/BET, magazines, the local music critic, and the local radio station as decreasing arbiters of choice.
With that change also came new rules on what music could sound like and who should be the stars. Yes, Drake was already on a successful Canadian television show prior to this but has two prior mixtapes and first attempt at an American single fell flat in the old model. Difference this time was a reconstituting his product for Internet-based consumers versus consumers of radio and television. And to do so, the most important cultural medium at the time, blogs, became a launching point.
The height of the blog era of music 2006-12
The blog era of music is often referred to the period of the early-to-mid-2000s/mid-2010s, where the cultural tastemaker shifted online. This was built off of the demise of Napster, and rise of peer-to-peer illegal music sites. Sites such as The Pirate Bay, Kazaa, Limewire, Bearshare, and others. These communities developed online chat rooms, college dorm rooms, specialty web pages, and social media 1.0 sites like MySpace.
The consumer of the free music was often younger, eschewing the iTunes Music Store altogether. In doing so, these non-traditional outlets gained more authority on music, music not often played on MTV/BET or mainstream radio. Acquiring new music through blogs (2DopeBoyz), specialty websites (Pigeons and Planes), online magazines (The Fader, Complex), mixtape websites (Datpiff), internet chat rooms, MySpace, or YouTube was how young people became informed about music. The blogs became the internet DJ and the internet Rolling Stone. For a new artist, to be featured on one of these sites could mean the difference between success and permanent obscurity.
IV. A Drake was bound to happen
Drake didn’t start genre-less music trend but So Far Gone definitely benefits from an era of changing musical tastes from a changing demographic of listeners. A group of mostly millennial listeners who freely listened to music regardless of the boundaries, genre conventions, and politics of years prior. Even if it wasn’t Drake, who became Drake, music was already heading in that direction. Hip-hop was readily flirting with other genres but never fully committing.
The 2000s were a precursor to genres rigidity failing
And the 2000s they were more crossovers among genres and performers the originally remembered. On the pop side you had Gwen Stefani, Fergie, and Justin Timberlake openly playing around with different sounds. The late 90s era of numetal blending of heavy-metal and hip-hop had reached its crescendo. While hip-hop itself was becoming more infused with R&B and melody.
Jay Z and Lincoln Park made a joint album, Nelly and Tim McGraw had a hit country single, Bubba Sparxxx created in advertently modern country hip-hop, Usher and NeYo got involved with EDM, Pitbull went from Miami street rapper to global Latinx pop artist, and should’ve been a sign of where things were going. Drake leaned in completely to the idea of being both singer and rapper, as well as guest performer using both of those styles on his own songs + others.
The marketplace wanted genre-less music, Drake arrived at the right place, at the right time
The blog era and illegal downloading sites prioritized new music, indie music, hip hop, alternative R&B, and music geared towards young people (EDM). So Far Gone, was the perfect album to meet the growing audience.
The album is a free hip hop mixtape, featuring a collective hodgepodge of indie music samples/songs from the likes of Swedish-pop singer Lykke Li ‘A Little Bit’, and Swedish alternative band Peter, Bjorn and John, ‘Let’s Call It Off’,” plus the über blog-approved Santigold, ‘Unstoppable’. In addition to Lil Wayne, Texas rapper Bun B, Atlanta R&B singer Lloyd, and national R&B star Trey Songz. All artists that were at the perfect X/Y axis of music at the time, it was a creative and calculated decision. It ushered in the current wave of cross collaborative, genre-less, formless music of the younger musicians today. And for the last 12 years, the most successful and influential artist has been Drake. But the music industry of 2021 is much different than it was in 2009. CLB arrives at a new intersection of culture, commerce and commercial appeal.
V. The Charts
For the last 12 years, the gulf between Drake and all but a handful of artists is hard to compare. Drake was name billboards artist of the decade for good reason, his ability to pivot from free websites and iTunes, to physical disks to streaming is the best transition of artist to mediums we’ve since Michael Jackson or Madonna from records-to-cassette tapes-to-cds. Drake’s worst numbers are better than the best of numbers of almost artists across any genres not named Taylor Swift, Post Malone, or Adele.
Drake’s rise and dominance on the Billboard charts for the last twelve years is an-all time run. During this dominance the ability lead in to varying access points for music trends and consumption patterns is why he’s dominated. music.
The Charts - Streaming and first mover advantage
First Mover Advantage
First mover advantage is a concept where an individual, company, religion, ideology, team, art work, or organization moves into an unproven or developing new market/platform/region. First mover advantage comes from reaching critical mass and becoming top of mind as the default (or one of) the default leaders in the space.
Drake has been in the top-5 of streaming musicians every year since 2015, even in years where he doesn’t release albums. Drake unlike Taylor Swift, Adele, and Beyoncé, moved heavily into streaming versus album sales when there was still money on the table. As a result, Drake has gained what is known as a first mover advantage over his rivals, which hasn’t been replicated since. Beginning in 2015, Drake and his team correctly assessed that music services would have a larger influence on the long-term growth of the industry. Drake wasn’t the first to embrace streaming, his label mate Nicki Minaj’s run on Spotify from 2010-14 and her sales vs streams debate regarding her album The Pink Print in 2014 is a case study on being an actual first mover. But Nicki wouldn’t release another album for fours years, allowing for Drake to become the top of mind for streaming, while other top-tiered artists were looking still for sales + touring.
Since then, Drake has made it a priority to be ubiquitous across any streaming music platform. This includes a key partnership with the launch of Apple Music in 2015, including a radio station, OVO Sound Radio, in addition to another radio program, Sound 42 for Sirius XM Radio and maintaining an active SoundCloud account. Due to this movement in the marketplace + a focus on releasing music that will perform better on streaming services, Drake has become the biggest artist in the history of streaming music. Drake is the first artist to hit 10 billion streams on Spotify in 2017, the first to hit 10 billion streams on Apple Music in 2018, then the first to hit 50 billion global streams in 2018 across all platforms. Within three years of that threshold, Drake had become the first to hit 50 billion streams on Spotify alone in January of this year.
First mover advantage makes it easier to navigate when the market gets saturated
Unlike other artists at the levels of peak saturation (for ex: Beyonce, Bruno Mars), Drake for 4 years actually increased in overall streams and rate of songs per stream. A lot of that has to do with being so early on the platforms that Drake has managed to develop large enough bases in-platform to produce self contained mini-fandoms. Drake ended 2020 as the third most followed musician on the platform at 51 million followers, behind pop stars Ariana Grande at #2 with 54 million, and UK pop singer Ed Sheeran at #1 with 73 million—Drake is now at 65 million as of 9/21/21, surpassing Grande.
VI. The Drake Effect: co-signs, collabs, and conquest
For the last 12 years the biggest strength of Drake has been his ability to pivot or promote.
The Drakes effect on music
For Drake, whose career is defined by constantly shifting styles, genres, and collaborators. Drake’s biggest strength is recognizing his what’s next, not what’s now, then amplifying. This is known as ‘the Drake effect’, an actual studied phenomenon, where an unknown artist or an up-and-coming artist who’s recently collaborated with Drake gets a career defining boost. The niche becomes mainstream and the mainstream regains/retains access to niche audiences.
The biggest boosts of ‘the Drake effect’ has been the impact it has had on music stats Kendrick Lamar, ASAP Rocky, The Weeknd, as well as Atlanta’s 2Chainz, or the Migos. All artists who because of a Drake expand their notoriety during crucial moments in their careers, taking them to the next level.
The Drake Effect is beyond music
The Canadian Broadcast Company produced Drake’s Plan, an 8-part series on the rise of Drake. In the series it includes the economic impact of Drake’s breakthrough on the broader Toronto music scene, which eventually see the breakthrough of international music star The Weeknd, plus other artists who’ve managed to stake out broader appeal outside the Canadian borders.
The Drake effect on tourism
Surprising to some, is the Drake effect has a real economic impact as well. It’s been estimated that through Drake’s direct relationships with the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Board of Tourism, his annual music festival OVO Fest, clothing store, and growth of the Toronto music industry, his economic impact was about 5% on tourism. This translates to about $440 million per year to the city in direct spend in 2018.