august 4, 2017 forbes india | 63steve jobs would have been
the logical choice to headline the
launch of Apple’s eponymous streaming
service, but by the time the tech giant rolled
out Apple Music two years ago, he was busy
putting dents into faraway universes. In his
place was a pair of young musicians who
walk the line between hip-hop, pop and R&B:
Drake and the Weeknd. The latter stunned
the crowd with the first-ever live
performance of his new single ‘Can’t Feel My
Face’, which premiered on Apple Music and
has generated more than 1.5 billion spins
across all streaming platforms.
The Weeknd knows as well as anyone that
streaming isn’t the future of music—it’s the
present. As digital downloads and physical
sales plummet, streaming is increasing
overall music consumption—since their
Apple appearances, Drake (No 4 on our list
at $94 million) and The Weeknd (No 6, $92
million) have clocked a combined 17.5 billion
streams—and that creates other kinds of
monetisation, including touring revenue.
“We live in a world where artists
don’t really make the money off the
music like we did in the Golden Age,”
says the Weeknd, 27. “It’s not really
coming in until you hit the stage.”
“The reason the Weeknds and Drakes of
the world are exploding is a combination
of a global audience that’s consuming them
freely at a young age [and that] they just keep
dropping music,” Live Nation chief Michael
Rapino says. “They’re delivering an ongoing,
engaged dialogue with their fan base.”
The model of making music available
cheaply in order to cash in on touring
and endorsements has been taken to its
logical conclusion by Chance the Rapper
(No 95, $33 million). The 24-year-old has
never sold a physical album or signed a
record deal in his life; he has only freely
distributed his work via streaming services.
He generates enough spins to make several
million dollars that way. And he’s cashing
in big-time on lucrative festival gigs and
arena dates, as well as deals with brands
like Apple and Kit Kat. It’s akin to the
freemium model that’s worked so well
for apps ranging from Tinder to Candy
Crush—give your stuff away to the many
and then soak a smaller group of devotees.
It’s the model the Weeknd has pursued
from the beginning of his career. The
son of Ethiopian immigrants who fled
during the east African famine of the
1980s, he was born in Toronto and raised
by his mother and grandmother. At 17,
he dropped out of school and ran away
from home. A decade earlier, that might
have been the end of the road for him.
But in 2010, he started recording
music—a genre-bending party blend—and
distributed it free on YouTube in a series
of mixtapes, picking the Weeknd as his
mysterious nom de plume. “I didn’t want
to put a face to it,” he says. “I wanted to
create a fan base that loved me for my art.”
In the old entertainment economy, he
would have waited to be discovered by a
record label. Instead, that fan base found
him, and all those free streams enabled
him to force record labels to bid on him.
As far as the future is concerned, the
Weeknd is smartly eyeing other parts of
the entertainment economy that have been
touched by the streaming revolution.
“I kind of treat my albums like films
when I write them, telling one big story,”
he says, before revealing his next step:
“More visual candy and hopefully a
venture into my first true love, cinema.”
Netflix, you’re on notice. MARIO ANzUONI / REUTERS- Dr Phil McGraw
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Music goes Freemium
Physical album sales and digital downloads are down.
But more people are listening to more music than ever,
which presents staggering opportunities to artists like
The Weeknd who connect with an audienceBy Zack O’Malley GreenBurG