The Most Powerful Person In Rap Music Is French
SOUND GENERATION
Hip Hop has had a lasting influence on, fashion, language, and pop culture in general. At last, we had arrived or so we thought! The most powerful people in rap music reside primarily in New York, the South, and the West coast. These familiar names Def Jam, Aftermath, Cash Money, are all American companies, or are they?
The most powerful person in rap music is actually employed by parent company Vivendi, which is owned by a larger conglomerate. Vivendi is a 163-year-old French company that started life as a water utility by Napoleon III and now exists as a media conglomerate that happens to own Universal Music Group and a HUGE portfolio of other corporations in various industries. In case you forgot music is a business, and labels are companies often owned by other companies. These companies are subsidiaries, meaning that they are owned by larger companies or conglomerates. Understanding that music is a business and songs, as well as the artists themselves, are the product. Artists, in essence, are comparable to stock in a company, and Universal Music Group has the most valuable portfolio of artists in the music industry. The company itself often owns the publishing and the intellectual property of the artists most of the time. Essentially everything is for sale even the companies themselves.
“Vivendi has been looking for ways to make some profit off of UMG for some time – it previously considered an IPO, I see this sale of 50% as the first step. The second will probably be the sale of the other half UMG.”
Vincent Bollore runs his family's conglomerate the Bollore Group. Which is active in media, advertising, shipping, construction and logistics,and owns a 25 percent stake in Vivendi. Bollore is essentially the a modern day Cecil Rhodes and is often referred to as “The King of Africa”. However after being detained in Africa for allegedly bribing officials. Bollore has passed down control of Vivendi to his son Yannik Bollore. Universal Music Group is possibly the largest music company it also represents more than 45% of Vivendi’s revenues. Currently valued st 54.3 billion dollars, and reported revenues of 9.4 billion dollars, additionally UMG launched its own IPO in 2021. The person responsible for this is Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, given that rap music accounts for the majority of those number it effectively makes him the most powerful person in rap music. Essentially, he is the most powerful man in the American and global music industry period.
Chances are if we look at Hip Hop's top earners and chart climbers the fact of the matter is that they are all employed or signed to the media conglomerate. With the exception of Jay Z who has built his own empire with ROC NATION and TIDAL, essentially creating a platform for that signs artists and provides a number of services like management, booking, and merchandising deals. However, ROC NATION itself is a smaller company that is under the umbrella of LIVE NATION, a company created when it merged with Ticket Master. Tidal is a music streaming company that is essentially a digital distribution platform that provides music lovers with exclusive content. That's right, the supposed masters of their destiny and rulers of their domain are at best paupers. Call it what you want the money made off masters and publishing outshines any record sales or touring proceeds that an artist may recoup.
The future of traditional record labels seems to be uknown as music streaming companies seem to be the new gatekeepers of the music industry. Spotify has the largest overall subscriber base of all the streaming companies. Spotify typically pays a record label around 52 percent of the revenue generated by each stream, or play, of a given song. The label, in turn, pays the artist a royalty of anywhere from 15 percent to, in some cases, 50 percent of its cut. By agreeing to a direct licensing deal with Spotify, artists and their representatives are able to keep the whole payout. The business models are evolving and the streams of income are varied and progressing at the speed of technology. With the ability to connect with audiences via social media and putting more creative control in the hands of the artist, it's essential for musicians to understand how to navigate the current digital medium and emerging business practices.
Success in the music industry arguably may have little to do with actual musical talent so much as the ability to connect with your consumers and navigating the industry politics as long as you have a product the people will buy. I'm not saying you can make it in the music business with no talent, but it seems that some of the most talented artist's lyrics fall on deaf ears, some people will argue it's a debate of style over substance. Today, some of the most popular lyrics have vocals that are incoherent, but the beat goes on. Sometimes you have to ask yourself is it the man or the machine, the face you see on stage or someone pulling strings behind the scenes when it comes to success and visibility. Who is hot and who is not may be determined to some degree by unseen forces.