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Hey! This weekend I took a quick trip to Las Vegas for the Power of Love Gala. It was a beautiful event. A bunch of artists came through but it was especially great to see Smokey Robinson. Last year he almost died from COVID, so to see him bounce back and perform at 81 years old was remarkable. What a legend.

This week's Trapital memo covers my interview with Mary Rahmani, Cash App's launch of Cash App Studios and why Adele's upcoming album raises an ongoing issues about how the music industry measures success.

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new podcast: Mary Rahmani, Moon Projects

Mary Rahmani is the founder and CEO of Moon Projects, an agency, consultancy, and record label focused on short-form video content and helping artists and brands elevate their work. Mary was TikTok's first music hire, so we talked about the platform's influence in music and how it has changed over time.

In my January essay, How More TikTok Stars Can Succeed in the Music Industry, I wrote,

The chart I drew above is from that same essay. That green box is what Moon Projects' record label is focused on, so it was great to see it all tie together. We talked about that, her company's vision, future trends in entertainment, and more.

Tap into the Trapital Podcast here.

What to Expect from Cash App Studios

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Last week, Cash App announced Cash App Studios, a new program to bankroll artists and other creatives. It's an invite-only initiative where artists maintain ownership and don't have to pay back any funds.

Cash App's advantage. The rumors of Cash App's record label have been floating since last year. Back then, Cash App was winning with its hip-hop influencer strategy but its additional value-add to creators was less defined.

But now that Cash App creates hip-hop-related content and Twitter—which Square CEO Jack Dorsey also runs—has added more creator-centric tools, it makes more sense.

Cash App Studios would bring more artists in-house. The artists accepted in its program can use Cash App to facilitate payments from fans, use Square's banking tools, Twitter's new features, and release music on Tidal (more on this later).

It's the creator-centric vision that Jack Dorsey has envisioned.

Cash App Studios' grant-style funding implies that its terms would be artist-friendly. I strongly doubt that Cash App wants to get rich off of music asset ownership. In fact, Cash App Studios may run at a loss. This program is a customer acquisition strategy to attract users to more lucrative parts of its business. These artists would become Square business customers, and their fans would become Cash App users.

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Cash App Studios (continued)

Integrating Tidal. Tidal is there for the Cash App Studios artists to use, but the massive reach of Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and Amazon is too big to expect anymore Tidal exclusives. Look at the superstar artists who once proudly had their music off Spotify. Most have since added it on.

But what if Tidal evolves? Both Jack Dorsey and Jay Z want an artist-centric platform. I could see Tidal pivoting to enable fans to subscribe directly to an artist, instead of the platform. Paid fans could get exclusive previews of music (e.g. Twitch, but with on-demand streaming built-in). Down the road, it can expand to NFTs, tokens, and other Web 3.0 related opportunities.

Compare the alternatives. Cash App's offering is less like a traditional record label and more like the creator funds launched TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and others. Those companies have invested in attention. If talented creators build on their platforms, then the creator's fans will use the platforms as well.

Most creator funds also coach creators on how to best use their platform. But Cash App Studios artists don't need coaching on how to use Cash App (at least I hope not) These artists likely want coaching and guidance on how best to level up their artistic careers.

Will Cash App Studios offer its artists those resources? Does the company have the staff or expertise for this? If they do, will those staff members be empowered?

Apple Music's tensions with Beats By Dre and Interscope Records founder Jimmy Iovine are a reminder of the culture clash that can exist when music execs are hired to run music units in tech companies. It can be an uphill battle for music execs, especially if their business unit is essentially content marketing for the company's core product.

Will it work? Here's what I wrote in July about Cash App's future with artists:

If the money offered is higher than the alternative options, it may attract some artists who would have otherwise stayed independent, signed with an indie or distributor, or only signed for a record label for the money.

Cash App Studios probably won't lure in the artists who had their hearts set on becoming a major record label superstar. But in fairness, most alternative options aren't luring those creators away (at least not yet).

Read more about Cash App Studios' launch in Rolling Stone.

Adele, streaming, and measuring success

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Last week, I was interviewed by Wall Street Journal's Neil Shah for his latest article on Adele's upcoming album and how the streaming has evolved since her last album. Adele's not hip-hop, but her upcoming release highlights an issue with how the music industry measures success.

The industry changed since 25. When Adele released 25 in 2015, she broke all sorts of sales records. In its first week, she sold 3.4 million albums in the U.S. and 5.7 million worldwide. She chose not to release her album on streaming and her fans rewarded her for it. All those copies sold were physical purchases or digital downloads.

But today, many of those fans pay for music streaming and will gladly stream her music since she plans to debut her next album, 30, on streaming as well as other mediums.

30 won't match the record-breaking success of 25. But as I said in the WSJ article, that says more about the industry than it does about Adele.

Music industry analyst and MIDiA managing director Mark Mulligan wrote that Adele's success should be measured in cultural impact, not sales:

It's a fair point that highlights the underlying challenge: The music industry is stuck on album sales as its key performance indicator. From digital downloads to streaming, each tech evolution moves us farther away from physical sales. But the industry creates formulas to back new tech formats into album sales.

Comparing apples and oranges. Imagine if the film industry created a metric called "ticket equivalent sales" that totaled box office ticket sales, streams, plus DVD and VHS sales in one metric? It's impossible to do in a way that makes sense, and honestly, I felt ridiculous even typing that sentence.

It's OK for the music industry to have multiple performance stats across mediums, even if they don't line up. It highlights the many ways that artists can monetize music via streams, vinyls, digital downloads, NFTs, tokens, and more. But we don't need a single metric to transform them into one unit.

For what it's worth, I shared with the Wall Street Journal that I expect Adele's 30 to sell 800,000+ album-equivalent units in its first week in the U.S. My prediction somewhat validates the methodology itself, but it still offers us a snapshot in time. It can tell us how Adele's 30 compares to other superstar releases of 2021 like Drake's Certified Lover Boy and Ed Sheeran's "=." But beyond that time frame, it gets tougher and tougher to compare.

Read more about Adele in the Wall Street Journal and Mark Mulligan's analysis.

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Coming soon

Podcast: Zack O'Malley Greenburg, former Forbes senior editor, who came back on the pod to talk about his transition to independent journalism Substack, his new book We Are All Musicians Now, and more.