cherie hu @cheriehu42 Twitter profile

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@tbird4u1

cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

BTS fanbase feels more coordinated than most DAOs

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

had to update my diagram. WHAT A WORLD

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

Spotify now displays this "About recommendations" section in the menu for all its official and algorithmic playlists The standout line: "In some cases, commercial considerations may influence our recommendations" Strange but really illuminating disclaimer

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

a simple but illuminating model from @createos : if you an artist in an 80/20 label/artist royalty deal with a $300,000 advance, $80,000 recording budget and $150,000 marketing budget, your music would need to generate over 500M streams before you make just $1 on the backend.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

👀👀👀 Spotify India is coming.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Travis Scott in 2020: - spiked seltzer with AB inBev - McDonald’s meal - PlayStation creative partnership - Fortnite shows - HBCU scholarships - 0 albums maybe not so ridiculous idea: Travis Scott is the brand and corporations are the artists who want exposure

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

~wipes off sweat~ I compiled a 16-page, living directory of - tools anyone can use to host virtual shows/meetups/panels - virtual events that artists and companies are organizing in place of SXSW - emergency-funding resources for artists please share!!!

VIRTUAL MUSIC EVENTS DIRECTORY

VIRTUAL MUSIC EVENTS DIRECTORY Updated May 28, 2020 tl;dr This living document contains three main sections: An introductory foreword discussing how the music-industry mindset around livestreaming is...

docs.google.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

something that also seems to be missing from the Kanye vs Drake convo is that both are signed to subsidiaries of Universal Music Group (Def Jam & Republic respectively). regardless of whatever beef is there, Donda and Certified Lover Boy are commercially beholden to the same Man

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

my attempt to make sense of this somewhat incestuous new music-industry landscape:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

anyone who hates pop music should just try to write a pop song, that is all I have to say

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

just met a CEO of a “big indie” label who said that his company has walked away from signing several otherwise amazing artists because they had incompetent managers. really hits home how managers can literally make or break an artist’s career

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

I made a 40-page slide deck about music NFTs because...... why not all based on my own research, including: - pricing/sales trends (~$70M in sales in the last 75 days) - top artists/genres/platforms/protocols - emerging use cases + more! please share :)

Music NFT market update, April 2021 || Water & Music

Music NFT market update Cherie Hu Water & Music April 25, 2021

docs.google.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

1 year

feel like music industry convos could get a lot more interesting if our main frame of reference for success was not "breaking artists" — an outdated relic of an era where mass media dominated — but rather "sustainability on artists' terms" — a much more open/flexible design space

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

The Sony Music / AWAL news strengthens my theory that any tech company that tries to “disrupt record labels” either dies trying or gets acquired by a label

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist placement isn't artist development. playlist p

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

this episode, especially 64:00 to 178:00, is a must-listen for anyone interested in the politics and decision-making behind Spotify's podcast deals (most important news is that The Joe Budden Podcast will no longer be a Spotify exclusive after Sep. 23)

Episode 375 | "Views From the SPOT"

Episode · The Joe Budden Podcast with Rory & Mal.. · Over the weekend, a new Verzuz matchup was announced and Joe shares his excitement for Brandy and Monica's upcoming battle (19:00). Big Sean...

open.spotify.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

crowd at @a3c just started stampeding away from the stage, a few min into Lil Wayne’s performance. no one knows what exactly happened—some say a brawl spiraled out of control—but security is now evacuating the entire venue. i am safe and will update as i learn more

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

a conversation the music industry maybe isn't ready to have: a lot of the fastest-growing revenue streams for artists from the last year monetize community, not copyrights crypto, Twitch, direct memberships, ecommerce — all fall under this category

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

ye get hip

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

very few musicians think of themselves as "content creators," but that is what a pandemic without tours has compelled many of them to become. not good or bad, just a fact and what seems to me like a fundamental shift in approaches to early artist development and audience-building

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

If you are, or work with, - A lo-fi hip-hop artist - A lo-fi hip-hop label - A lo-fi hip-hop curation brand I would love to chat with you for a piece about the economics of the scene :)

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

SUPER interesting chart from @rostr_cc about which talent agencies booked the 2020 Coachella lineup. - 1 in 3 acts are signed to Paradigm - WME got two of the headliners but only 16% of the total lineup - Four agencies (Paradigm, WME, CAA, UTA) represent nearly 75% of the lineup

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

I'm getting these emails now, so I guess it's official: I am SO excited to be teaching a course on music and gaming at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music next semester as an adjunct professor!! At last all my hours on the Switch will finally come into good use 🤓

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

if an artist faces $10K in tour losses to re-earn that from streaming they'd need ~2M–5M streams *on top* of their existing activity, and might not get paid for a few months to earn that from a $10 album on Bandcamp they'd need ~1,000 people to buy, and can get that $ tomorrow

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

so....... did this actually happen?

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

for some weekend reading, i present to you the absolutely chaotic mess of rights holders and music/tech companies all owning stakes in each other, 2023 edition — in 4 parts. pt. 1: the tencent music ouroboros, plus Sony adding Bandcamp (via Epic Games acquisition) to its arsenal

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

I looked up "Drake Certified Lover Boy" on Spotify and the TOP result is not the album "Certified Lover Boy" by a certain artist named Drake but rather an album called "Drake" by another artist named "Certified Lover Boy" wtf is going on and why has Drake's team allowed this

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

it is very interesting that when a rapper releases three "mixtapes" a year, we don't bat an eye, but when T Swift releases two albums in a year, it's a "paradigm shift" it's BEEN this way, is my two cents.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

one point that I often forget is a standard part of recording deals is that advances are recouped using only the *artist's* share of sales, not total sales i.e. if you get a $50K advance but only 20% rev share, your music actually has to earn $250K before the advance is recouped

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

I wrote for @billboard about what the music biz can learn from the streaming success of one of my fave artists, @TomMisch — especially the power of back catalog and artist-curated playlists in driving engagement and sustaining an independent music career:

How Tom Misch’s Streaming Growth Is A Blueprint For Indie-Artist Success

English singer-songwriter Tom Misch represents the quiet fame of many indie artists in the streaming era. He’s released only one full-length album so far, Geography (in April 2018). But the 24-year...

www.billboard.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

the future of the music industry:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

gm

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

In case it helps with perspective in the media salary conversation, I'm on pace to make ~$80,000/year from my Patreon page / newsletter. No health benefits, PTO, sick days or anything like that, but a business nonetheless. For anyone seeking guidance re: Patreon, my DMs are open

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

the Warner Music IPO happening the day after Blackout Tuesday is truly surreal. I don't think you can talk about anti-racism and black inequality in music without talking about how the money flows.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

has anyone made the point yet that the Spotify viral 50 chart is basically a TikTok chart

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

"where's midjourney/DALL-E/GPT3 for music????" it's coming, for sure (we're dedicating a whole season to it at @water_and_music ). but i think ppl are underestimating how much more of an uphill battle it's going to be for music to get its "midjourney moment." a short 🧵on why...

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

i'm 25 now 👵🏻 grateful to be alive, healthy + working on projects i'm passionate about. 2020 warrants celebrating with the simple things in life, like - good food + coffee - sleeping - analyzing the major technological + commercial forces shaping the future of the music business

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

wow the desi BTS ARMY doesn't kid

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

I have never wanted to open a marketing email less.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

26 today 🙂

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

crypto desperately needs more human-centered design

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 months

after working ~10 years in the music industry you realize that almost every conversation about "solutions" to its problems is a rehash of a convo that already happened 10 years ago i'm glad these convos are happening but i'm afraid they represent a failure to learn from the past

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

you 👏 can 👏 own 👏 your 👏 masters 👏 and 👏 still 👏 have 👏 a 👏 shitty 👏 record 👏 deal 👏

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

major labels are eating the blogosphere streaming services are poaching journalists to help run their music podcasts all the major trades are now owned by the same company and, of course, newsletters now is an ~ interesting ~ time for music media to say the least

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

i'm fully buying into shang chi hype, this is so dope!

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

mebe hot take. most music NFTs in their current form don't actually revalue music itself. they revalue the artist/superfan relationship, which is not the same as the music collectors seem to talk so little about the actual music, but talk a lot about getting access to the artist

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Spotify always centers the power of user-generated playlists in their ad campaigns and earnings calls — over 4 billion playlists made on the service so far! — but for years they have buried user-generated playlists on their homepage in favor of the ones they own themselves...

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

here is my FULL CHART — showing how music-industry power dynamics remain tightly intertwined among rights holders, big media/tech conglomerates, institutional finance firms, and even government funds. you can view the map here, with links to sources:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

self-promotion feels weird right now, but I wanted to share the exciting news that Water & Music now has 400 paying members on Patreon. this marks just the beginning of my plans for building out a full-time, indie editorial operation dedicated to innovation in the music business.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

I have been sitting on this for months, editing and re-editing, worrying it was too unwieldy or incoherent — but am finally sharing it w/ the world I wrote about the music industry's biggest messaging problem, a.k.a. the corporatization of "independence"

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

on my mind: the only people who have the bandwidth to experiment with new forms of money are people who already have money

sari azout

@sariazout

3 years

Imo, the biggest challenge in crypto is that the cards are stacked against people who don't have the time to learn. Staying alive is an all-consuming activity for people in developing countries.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

1 year

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

we at @water_and_music have been working hard on a new Web3 strategy that will serve as the rails for a new model of collaborative music-industry research, and are thrilled to share an early view of what this strategy looks like. introducing: $STREAM

Introducing $STREAM: A new tokenized research framework for the …

Hi there!

waterandmusic.mirror.xyz

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

one of the biggest mindset shifts for me over the last year as I have tried to grow an org… I used to think ideas were everything. now I strongly believe ideas come cheap, and the differentiation is at the execution layer. the best ideas die in bad systems for executing on them

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

7 months

one of the biggest surprises from my time so far teaching social media & music marketing at the college level: even though artists are some of the world's biggest brands, and even though 40–50% of the most-followed accounts on major social platforms belong to artists.... 1/

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

some personal and professional news: i'm officially writing my first book! it'll be published with @BloomsburyAcad ~2021, and will explore the parallels between musicians’ careers and tech entrepreneurship, a topic i’ve been thinking deeply about for years. i am SO EXCITED!!!!!!

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Out of all the tweets and photos on my timeline, I have yet to see any handcuffs.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

it's 2021 and the major labels (Universal, Sony, Warner) and "big indies" (e.g. Beggars, AWAL) suddenly disappear from Earth. you are tasked with building the next generation of profitable, sustainable labels from scratch. how would you do it? would you even call it a "label"?

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

not enough people working in music/crypto today know about the extended graveyard of shuttered music/blockchain startups of the 2015–2018 era and the technical/political trials and tribulations they had to face in trying to work with the music industry and it's genuinely worrying

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

everyone's talking about the metaverse but who's building the fetaverse

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

almost every incumbent music company (major labels, publishers, PROs) has launched a Web3 strategy in 2022. this is gonna make music/web3 REAL HAIRY — not even because of legal/copyright reasons, but because of clashes in underlying philosophies of what web3 even is. (mini 🧵)

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

me learning about all the licensing involved in livestreaming concerts

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

. @FWBtweets built their own token-gated ticketing app to handle RSVPs for their IRL events. now, several other DAOs will be using FWB's ticketing tech to power their own events at this week. SO dope to see open modular tooling built by + for communities

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

With the impact of IG livestreams and TikTok memes, it's clear to me that video, not audio, is now the leading indicator of mainstream digital music culture. For the most part, audio streaming services are no longer tastemakers. Instead, they reflect and catch up to taste.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

need to air out this extremely niche pet peeve that precisely 5 people will care about: Statista 👏 is 👏 not 👏 a 👏 source

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

a common trend in music-tech: 👉 startup claims to completely disintermediate/disrupt major labels and "free" artists' careers 👉 because they need the $$, startup ends up striking operational integration with major labels 👉 startup becomes a B2B product for incumbents

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Soul is so good and will hit you in the feels. if you work in music, it will REALLY hit you in the feels.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Meek Mill and Michelle Phan in the same CH room with 20+ founders and investors and thousands of listeners talking about crypto what a time to be alive

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

i am thinking of starting a new series just about analyzing cool academic papers that provide new ways of thinking about the future of the music business and artists' careers. an exercise in connecting bird's-eye-view theory to on-the-ground practice. would any of you read it???

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

The music industry is also one of the few industries where many people are chasing the instant gratification of going viral "overnight" but then won't get paid for it for 6 months, and when they do they get paid 16 cents on the dollar 🤷🏻‍♀️

Karl Fowlkes, Esq.

@esqfowlkes

4 years

The music industry is the only business where people celebrate getting 16 cents on the dollar.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

1 year

iykyk

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

digital music marketing campaigns everywhere in shambles

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

random thought: I wonder how many albums that major artists finished recording 5+ months ago will either never be released or will have to be rerecorded because their original versions would sound too positive or out-of-touch if released today. like time capsules no one asked for

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

the fastest, most direct way to support artists and industry workers is to buy their products or make a donation through channels 1) that they own, 2) that take little to no revenue share from them and 3) that can be deposited into their bank accounts more or less immediately

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Music is so behind the “creator economy” Snap pays $1M a DAY to creators of viral videos. Some smaller creators have made 5–6 figures in a few weeks. But if your song goes viral tonight, you prob won’t see any royalties from it for minimum 2–6 months 🤷🏻‍♀️

Snapchat Wants You to Post. It’s Willing to Pay Millions. (Published 2021)

Top performers are raking in cash as the company seeks to compete against TikTok and similar platforms.

www.nytimes.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

One thing I can’t stop thinking about is how we’d all probably agree that music is not a commodity — it is art, a means of self-expression — but mainstream trends often pressure artists to default to commoditization in how their music is created, packaged, distributed & monetized

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

yo, I've been getting a *ton* of requests from music/tech companies who are expanding their content marketing and are looking for blog writers. I can't take this on, but is there anyone in my network who'd be interested in these kinds of opportunities? if yes please reply below!!

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

big lesson of 2019 so far: horizontal networking ≥ vertical networking

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

i've had a bunch of interesting convos recently with people my age (early/mid-20s) working in music about the absolute worst feeling of being jaded about the music business, especially when you're in love with the art form. for anyone who's felt this before, how do you fight it?

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

quarantine day 78:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

if an NFT doesn’t sell out in 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 5 days, or 5 months, that doesn’t mean it’s a failure! it could still hold unexpected value in the long term excited to see more framings of NFTs beyond just the quick “drop” model — almost like back catalog for music 🤌

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

a chart that will make sense to exactly 5 people

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

OH SHIT

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

SO excited to share the latest @water_and_music deep-dive: a surgical breakdown from @AmiMadhu23 of how global pop fandoms mobilize around new music releases. fans are basically running industry-leading music marketing machines on their own and they should be recognized as such!

Water & Music

@water_and_music

3 years

Today's global pop fandoms are more sophisticated and influential than ever — from Twitter fan accounts that often have more followers than major labels, to coordination of 24-hour streaming goals around new releases. @AmiMadhu23 breaks down how it's done:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

food for thought: in the last 3 weeks, corporations / private equity bought Bob Dylan's publishing and Taylor Swift's masters, respectively, for a total of ~$600M by my calculations that's more than all the money invested in music/audio startups combined this entire YEAR

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

There are almost as many people concurrently watching the Teddy Riley / Babyface IG live (~500K) as were watching the YouTube stream of Global Citizen's Together at Home concert when Taylor Swift performed (~550K). Two vastly different snapshots of online music culture right now

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

please share: I'm now seeking guest articles for my newsletter about tech's impact on the music industry, and will be prioritizing underrepresented voices in music/media. pay starts at $500 for 1K words. you can read guidelines and submit your pitch here:

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

holy fuck dropping this on Mirror tmr

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

holy f**k moment: I now have 500 members on my Patreon page! That’s +100 members added within less than a month. I won't say too much other than this growth only inspires me to keep writing, learning and improving further. So, I’ll be doing more of that today. thank you ❤️❤️❤️

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

inspired by a recent post by @JuiceboxCA , I decided to take screenshots of the mobile homepages of all the major music-streaming services and compare them side-by-side. they literally all look the same.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

I said this on a media panel yesterday: I'm trying to stop asking, and am frankly tired of being asked, "What's the post-COVID future of X?" No one knows. Instead: "What has this experience taught you about the future you + others *want* to see, and how are you building for it?"

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

to music-industry job listings that still say "must live in or be willing to relocate to [insert city here]" ... why?

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

6 years

can we please get rid of the moniker “world music”? in an era when k-pop, Bollywood, urbano + other regional styles top global charts, world music is mainstream music and all music can be music “of the world” no matter where it comes from—making the “world” qualifier redundant.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

2 years

let's be clear: FN Meka was never an "AI" rapper. the persona's creative direction is still a manual process with clearly biased humans behind the scenes, and behind the cloak of "AI rapper" they probably thought they could get away with absolving responsibility to The Algorithm.

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

3 years

holy shit holy shit holy shit a DAO ( @PleasrDAO ) is the new owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. next step is DAOs beating out private equity firms to buy out artists' catalogs.

Meet the New Owners of the Wu-Tang Clan’s One-of-a-Kind Album (Published 2021)

The government sold “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” to satisfy a judgment against its first owner, Martin Shkreli. It ended up with a collective called PleasrDAO that paid an intermediary $4 million.

www.nytimes.com

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

4 years

Me:

Joe Coscarelli

@joecoscarelli

4 years

some brutal assessments of “The Big Day” and what it did to Chance the Rapper’s career in this lawsuit by his former manager 😬

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cherie hu

@cheriehu42

5 years

what i'm thinking about a lot lately for some reason: the business of being an artist manager is probably equally if not more brutal than the business of being an artist

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