Tokyo Olympics ,TikTok & Kanye West's new album mystery
Check out our weekly round-up of the latest in the music industry, which includes video game scores at the Olympics, rising influence of TikTok and Kanye's new album
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Happy Weekend Everyone!
It has been an interesting week in the music industry, with Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s SPAC Pershing Square Tontine Holdings (PSTH) pulling out of the $4 Billion Deal to acquire 10% of Universal Music Group, something that looked like all but done a few weeks back, and was covered by us in a previous newsletter.
However, with there being plans to acquire a lesser share in UMG via a different entity, things are defintely getting complicated.
If you’re a nerd for finance and the capital markets, you should definitely read more about the latest on that deal right here.
Tokyo Olympics feature Video Game Music 🎮
Moving onto lighter stuff, the Tokyo Olympics finally got underway yesterday, after a delay of more than a year owing to the pandemic, with an unusual opening ceremony featuring less than 1000 spectators in the National Stadium in Tokyo, as a precaution against super-spreader events.
The interesting part?
The music playing in the background during parts of the opening ceremony was picked up from Japanese video games.
That’s right, the music playing during the entrance of the athletes was pulled from a wide gamut of Japan’s greatest role-playing games (RPG) series, including Monster Hunter, Kingdom Hearts, and even the niche action game Nier Replicant.
Japan is a nation that proudly showcases its contributions to video game history.
The entire cast of the Super Mario games greets everyone who enters the nation through the Tokyo airport, and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the Tokyo Olympics in 2016 by appearing out of a pipe, fully dressed as a Mario character 🤡
I bet it’s going to be a fun few weeks at the Tokyo Olympics 🇯🇵
TikTok’s rising influence over Music Discovery 📲
Elsewhere, TikTok released a report this week which claimed that it has a Monthly Active base of 800 Million users, and 75% of them discover new music via the platform.
Other key findings from the research: 63% of TikTok users say that they have heard new music (that they’ve never heard before) on TikTok.
TikTok’s Global Head of Music, Ole Obermann outlined TikTok’s vision for being a prominent music discovery and A&R platform, a few months back:
“The dream is that an artist is able to find their voice and find that first community on TikTok, and then they become famous enough where they are able to get a record deal or perhaps even a publishing deal off the back of that and go on to become a superstar musical artist and creator,”
With numbers like these, and despite the overlooming threat of government regulation in many large internet economies, they are certainly moving in the right direction.
If you’re interested in a much deeper dive into TikTok’s influence on new music discovery, check this article out now!
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Kanye West’s new album mystery 👀
The biggest story out of this week has been Kanye West, again.
The 44-Year old Billionaire artist shocked fans earlier this week, by randomly announcing the release of his latest album titled ‘Donda’, by posting his first images on Instagram in a long time.
Within 3 days of doing so, he sold more than 40,000 tickets to his exclusive album listening party at the Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta, Georgia; raking in a cool $1 Million in revenue from the gig.
It was live streamed to millions of fans across the world on Apple Music, with Kanye being alone on the entire field in a red suit and mask over his face, it was everything you’d expect from his concert.
I managed to catch a few minutes of it, and I’ve got to say, it looks like one of his best works to date.
The mysterious part? There is no sign of the album yet.
Given that the listening party just concluded, fans naturally expected the album to go live last night itself.
However, at the time of writing this, it’s been more than 24 hours since the event and the Internet has been going crazy.
Is it a troll or a marketing gimmick? No one really knows.
Kanye has been known to push back on release dates often in the past but this time he’s really given a taste of something and left fans wanting for more.
Donda? More like Donde? 🤷♂️
Have a good weekend everyone, and I’ll talk to you guys next week!
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