Cash App Studios, The Rock's Hip-Hop debut & Coinbase to pay artists in Crypto
Cash App launches 'Studios' to fund artists, Dwayne Johnson drops a hot hip-hop single & Coinbase will enable artists to get paid in Crypto
What’s good everyone?
Business was booming this week in Tinsel Town as a bunch of companies announced a bunch of shit around building in the Music space, and even Dwayne Johnson- a $400 million Company in his own right, dropped a hot new hip-hop single 🔥
Without further ado, let’s get into it 👇🏻
Cash App Studios💲
Earlier this week, Cash App- the leading consumer payments app in the United States, with over 30 million monthly active users, announced the launch of its ‘Studios’ program for funding independent artists 👨🏻🎤
How does it work?
While Cash App declined to disclose details of their payments, including whether there are limits on how much they’ll invest, but through the deals, the company says, any artist working with Cash App will retain ownership of their work and won’t have to pay back the cash, which makes the partnerships seem more like grants than advances 💰
The program will bring in artists on a rolling basis, and Cash App Studios will remain invite-only 📨
A part of the Fintech behemoth built by Jack Dorsey: CEO of Square Inc. and Twitter, Cash App has become a cultural phenomena over the years, with the brand regularly name-checked in hip-hop verses, and partnering with the likes of Megan Thee Stallion on marketing and content campaigns 📣
Cash App’s parent company, Square, also bought a majority stake in the Jay-Z-founded streaming service Tidal earlier this year, with Square CEO Jack Dorsey touting the purchase as another means of supporting music artists.
You might re-collect it from when we covered the story a few months back 👇🏻
While Jack has been quite vocal in his support for independent artists, and has regularly put his money where his mouth is, it still remains to be seen as to how exactly Tidal and Cash App can co-exist, in a complicated Music ecosystem.
Considering his track record of disrupting industries- social networking with Twitter, and FinTech with Square, my bet is he’ll figure it out soon enough ⚡️
Coinbase partners with UnitedMasters 🤝
Coinbase- the $100 Billion worth world’s leading Crypto exchange recently launched its Payroll product- which enables working professionals to get paid a part of their salary in Crypto 🤑
New York based Music Distribution company UnitedMasters plans to leverage that for the 1 Million artists on its roster, with CEO Steve Stout announcing their plans on CNBC, earlier this week:
“Working with Coinbase to give independent artists the ability to be paid in crypto is a natural next step for us, using technology to ensure that the economics of the music business favor the creators behind it.
“As the financial sector continues to evolve and innovate, we’re committed to putting our artists in the best position to benefit from these changes.”
In March, UnitedMasters announced the raise of a $50 million funding round, led by Apple and with additional financing from Google and Andreessen Horowitz 💸
With over 1 billion streams generated by artists on UnitedMasters per month, and 59% of artists on the platform under 25, Coinbase is getting access to exact demography that has contributed to their insane growth so far 📈
The Rock’s Face-Off 🔥
At this point, it seems like Dwayne Johnson is literally taking the piss at everyone else’s expense 🙄
The 49-year old who made his name in the WWE for over 2 decades, made one of the most smoothest career changes of all time 🎬
With over 60 movies ever since he retired from wrestling, and becoming the highest paid actor in that time, Dwayne Johnson has literally completed Hollywood ✅
Sitting on his $400 Million empire, The Rock decided that it wasn’t enough for him, and dropped a new Hip-Hop single in collaboration with rapper Joey Cool 🗣
The music video has been going viral on YouTube, and while I can’t really the same about the song, I must admit the video looks pretty sick 🤯
Is there anything this guy cannot do? 🤷♂️
I’ll leave you to brood over that for inspiration, have a good weekend guys 🤘🏻🍻
P.S- If this video left you wanting more of hip-hop, check out this playlist created by Pharrell Williams and Scott Vener, i’ve had it on loop the entire week 🎧