The 5-Step Formula For Rappers Who Want To Grow Like Tech Startups

Up-and-coming rappers and technology startups face the same main challenge: grow fast.

This post is my attempt to bridge two worlds that I know very well: the hip-hop industry and the tech startup community. Specifically, I propose a 5 step system that can be used by up-and-coming rappers to grow their fan-base like a tech startup grows their app user-base. 

The Startup Approach To Your Music Career

In the world of startups, growth is all that matters. In fact, high growth potential is what makes a startup a startup. VCs don’t invest in slow-growing startups. If VCs don’t invest, your company will most likely die and/or you will go broke trying to keep it alive. Simple as that.

The VC firms are to technology startups what major record labels are to rappers. I think of it like this: If a startup business is growing quickly, VCs will offer capital that can be used to increase the rate of growth. If a rapper has a video exploding on YouTube, major label executives will offer funding — in the form of record deals — to help the artist grow faster. VC’s do not want to invest in startups with slow growing user bases, and record labels do not want to invest in artists with slow growing fan-bases.

You need to validate your minimum viable product

How can you be certain it’s time to quit your day job and pursue your rap career full time? You need to validate your product.

Before Facebook was available to the masses, it was exclusive to users with harvard.edu email addresses. By requiring new users to be Harvard students, Mark Zuckerberg was able to see if there was an audience for what he was offering: a private social network for college students. Zuckerberg didn’t drop out of college until after determining if Facebook was a product worth pursuing. Before you quit your day job to pursue your rap career, you owe it to yourself to validate your MVP.

Validating your product is how you determine if you have product/market fit. Marc Andreessen defines product/market fit as being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. If you’re an aspiring rapper, the market fit is already handled. The demand of hip-hop music — and all music for that matter — is at an all time high. But how can you tell if your music is good enough? 

I developed a framework for up-and-coming rappers to use to quickly determine if your product (music) can satisfy the market. If/when you see that there is a real audience who likes your product, I have also provided a metric-driven approach for you to find the most efficient path to success. In other words, you can scale like a successful startup.

The 5-Step Approach For Rappers Who Want to Grow Like Startups

1. Upload all your songs to YouTube. The first step is to upload a minimum of ten songs to YouTube. Hopefully this is something you already do. After all, YouTube is the most popular source for streaming music. The modern music consumer wants immediate access, and that’s what YouTube provides. Soundcloud is cool, too, but remember that 83% of 16-24 year olds use YouTube to listen to music.

2. Measure how many views your songs get each week. Streams, not sales, are the true measure relevancy in today’s music industry. The best way for you gauge if your music is relevant is by monitoring number of streams per week on YouTube. Music sales have hit historic lows. And as the chart above from Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends report indicates, digital track sales went down for the first time this year.

3. Worry about the weekly growth rate, not volume. Plenty of albums debut at the top of the charts, but then sales decrease 73% in week two. If you have a song that is listened to 10,000 times in week one, but only 100 times in week two, something’s wrong. Rather than worry about getting 1,000,000 new streams in a given week, set a goal to increase weekly streams 5-7%. Paul Graham says it best:

A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you’re doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it’s a sign you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing. [Startup = Growth]

4. Determine the one metric that matters most. There is one metric that indicates if people are using your product as intended. This metric is often referred to as the Only Metric That Matters (OMTM). For up-and-coming rappers, the most important metric is not the volume of streams. I would argue that it’s either the weekly growth rate (as cited above) or the Average View Duration (AVD) of your most viewed songs. The reason I bring up the AVD is because if you’re a savvy marketer, you can find organic ways to increase your weekly YouTube views. But just because lots of people listen to your music each week does not mean you are any good. AVD is a great metric to be certain that your growth is reflective of the quality of your product.

5. Know what you will do based on the information. Focusing on the right information is half the battle. Next, you need to figure out what you will do different with the new information. For example, if you see that your most popular songs are actually more melody-driven, then you may want to make more songs like that. That’s what a startup would do.

Whenever you look at a metric, ask yourself, “What will I do differently based on this information?” If you can’t answer that question, you probably shouldn’t worry about the metric too much. And if you don’t know which metrics would change your organization’s behavior, you aren’t being data- driven. You’re floundering in data quicksand.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email.