500K in one day? A whole entire day? With Drake, that could be possible and we maybe shouldn’t be so surprised.
Drake’s career trajectory has been nothing short of amazing. It has been so amazing, in fact, that for a while it was entirely unbelievable. There are a lot of people who saw it impossible for Drake to become the man he is today — chart-topping, award-winning rap superstar, bearded, dating Serena Williams, etc. This is simply because Drake was not a rapper. He was the former child actor from Degrassi, a CANADIAN with an immense obsession with rap from the Southern United States, a poser with questionable fashion sense, Jewish, and very upper-middle class. Drake, the rapper, wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be something we laughed at because he did not have the aesthetics of a rap superstar. Rappers don’t come from such backgrounds and any “real hip-hop” truther will tell you that. This is probably what made him so relatable.
There was also the whole sensitivity thing. Drake rapped about his feelings more than his possessions. He divulged the emotional details of his relationships with the women in his life in ways most men wouldn’t even admit to a diary let alone on a track — no matter how much it would be perceived as keeping it real. And he smiled. A lot. Drake was a genuinely happy guy. I write the above in past tense because, back in 2009, these were the most plausible reasons someone would give you for not liking Drake. Back in 2009, Drake was still escapable. Today in 2015, Drake is one of the most prominent voices in rap/hip-hop/R&B. If you are one of the few not buying Drake’s albums you are probably buying albums (or iTunes singles) he is featured on. Whether we rap fans like to admit it or not, Drake ushered in a new era of rap. But more important than that, Drake also reinvigorated rap album sales.
If Drake can’t do anything else, he can sell a rap album. Every single one of his albums has gone platinum (including the album released in February of this year that people mistake for a mixtape), each of his singles have debuted in the top 20 on the rap charts, and every single he has appeared on as a guest has peaked within the top 100. Oh, and that duet album he just released with Future on Sunday night? That’s already projected to sell 500,000 units. That’s digital only. At the time that I’m writing this, it has technically only been 23 hours since the project’s initial release.
If this projection turns out to be true, What A Time To Be Alive is the greatest proof for using Apple Music as a distribution platform that I’ve ever seen. This is the long game of Apple Music.
Let’s take it back for a moment. Back in June at WWDC, Apple’s annual event for their most esteemed enthusiasts, we were a bit surprised to learn that Drake was there. Drake was not only at WWDC despite not having built an amazing iOS app but he was also a keynote speaker. Here is where we first learned of the partnership between Drake and Apple. At first, it seemed that Drake had more of a “creative director” role in this partnership as he used it to successfully push The Weeknd. Then came OVO Sound Radio on Beats1, Apple Music’s signature radio station that is only available in-app and broadcast worldwide. Hosted by Drake and friends, this radio hour is largely used as a vehicle for promoting artists on OVO Sound, Drake’s friends, and occasionally Drake himself though for the first few episodes, he didn’t seem too keen on playing his own music. This all changed on Sunday night.
For approximately 10 days prior to Sunday, the internet had been abuzz with rumors of a Drake and Future collaborative mixtape. Within a few hours of initial rumor circulation, the Photoshop wizards and top meme executioners had quickly gotten to work spreading images of purple owls along with Future and Drake’s faces transposed onto the bodies of Jesus and other important religious figures everywhere. The buzz was warranted for a few reasons:
- Drake and Future are two of the hottest rappers making rap music right now.
- Future has never not had a hot mixtape and he’s currently riding the wave of recent success that has, to date, put him at the height of his career.
- Drake and Future recently released the single and video for “Where Ya At”, which appeared on Future’s #1 album, DS2, and possibly created a want for more Future x Drake tracks.
- Rap does not get duet albums often. Anytime one comes about, fans get very hype.
- Cuffing season is approaching and Drake is so closely related to this phenomenon that his music is pretty much the official soundtrack to Fall. The idea of Drake x Future cuffing season music is just…
On Sunday night, Beats1 listeners were treated to FreebandzOVO radio which debuted What A Time To Be Alive. By the time the radio show was over, the album was available for sale on iTunes. I’m not really sure one can get any more direct to fan that that. The fans heard the music for the first time within the Apple Music app and were then able to purchase the album immediately in a few clicks. Apparently, this is the new way to sell 500,000 albums overnight.
This might have been glossed over in the memories of many but it was actually Drake who announced Connect as part of Apple Music. Connect, for those of you unfamiliar, is possibly the only selling point of Apple Music as a platform for social music discovery. It allows for artists to go direct-to-fan with their music and behind-the-scenes snapshots of their everyday life, kind of like Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat et. al. all in one. Sometimes you might get something exclusive but we’ve yet to really see that happen yet. Other times you might get an artist passing off an old track that leaked to the internet back in the Napster days as something new (hi Pharrell). Connect is kind of like Ping — a former Apple social discovery mechanism that lived inside of iTunes for maybe a year. It’s okay if you don’t remember Ping. Ping did not work. Ping did not have a partnership with Drake. But that is not the point.
The point is that, if the 500,000 number mentioned earlier is to be believed, Drake just demonstrated the value in Apple Music. I’m not sure even DatPiff, a preeminent mixtape site, has done those numbers. Not only is Apple Music now positioned as a great direct revenue stream for artists (something Spotify has yet to be positioned as) but it also proves to be a platform that fans are okay with. It has just the right amount of accessibility and exclusivity that drives demand which ultimately drive sales. Drake has now successfully commoditized the mixtape, something that has traditionally been used as a promotional tool and given away for free, twice. Both times, he used Apple as his platform. Both times, he’s sold a lot of records. Because Drake is really good at selling things.
So now we’ve seen how well Apple Music can work for rappers but how long until we’re seeing artists in other genres try this? After all, Drake and Future probably just sold other artists on upcoming Apple Music exclusives. More importantly, can this work for artists in other genres? Of course, Apple hasn’t released any numbers on Apple Music so for now we just have to watch their exclusives and SoundScan to really learn how Apple Music is/isn’t affecting the culture.
Special thanks to the Music Bureau of Complaints and Criticism for encouraging me to just write this damn post already.
