The Weekndxo | The ‘Shipping’ Philosophy?
December 21, 2011 marked the third installment in a line of successful mixtape releases by the mysterious crooner, The Weeknd. The video above is from The Weeknd’s newest musical endeavor, Echoes of Silence, the third mixtape in a series of creative compilations that started with the House of Balloons in the first quarter of this year. Since that time, The Weeknd has undergone exponential growth in popularity with each successive musical work, generating tremendous buzz on various social media platforms and creating intensely creative work like the video for The Knowing, shot by director, Mikael Colombu, which sparked interest from the likes of industry titans such as Jay-z.
In today’s ‘noisy’ competitive music market we see that products and services that experience positive hyper growth, usually, are produced in frequent amounts, and within a short period of time. These ‘creative works’ must be produced in a timely fashion, and differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition to truly maximize their cultural and financial impact. And to stay competitive, these ‘creative works’ must also make use of ‘network effects’ by tapping into various distribution points like the Internet and its various social media platforms.
In the context of music, and with The Weeknd’s unique style of R&B and various uses of social media platforms, one could make the argument that he is well in-tune with the aforementioned components of hyper growth. But in addition to his high levels of creativity and his omnipresent distribution, I believe the frequency at which The Weeknd produces ‘creative works’ are also an essential factor to the hyper growth of his artistry. Seth Godin, in his book, Linchipin, describes this frequency in producing ‘creative works’ as ‘shipping.’ Mr. Godin believes this process is a vital part of a successful artist’s career. In other words, an artist needs ample amounts of ‘fuel’ to turn a small spark into a proverbial ‘conflagration’ within the market. With his third mixtape in under a year, it seems The Weeknd is proving to be a prime example of the effectiveness of this ‘shipping’ philosophy.
In addition to The Weeknd, other artist’s such as Lil’ Wayne, Rick Ross, and Rihanna have demonstrated the effectiveness of the ‘shipping’ philosophy in their rise to the top of the music industry. Lil’ Wayne, for instance, released a series of mixtapes and made numerous guest appearances on other artists’ records and albums before releasing his grand opus in 2008 — the Carter III —which garnered him a Grammy award for Best Hip Hop Album and a triple-platinum album status. Rick Ross, following a similar formula, guest appeared on numerous records for other artists, launched a plethora of albums, both collaborative and solo, and has been in association with hundreds of mixtapes featuring his creative work; all this, leading up to the 2010 release of Teflon Don, which appeared at number 2 on the Billboard 200, selling 176,000 copies in the first week of its release, and cementing Ross as one of the most popular hip hop artists of today. Likewise, Rihanna also likes to keep up the pace of ‘shipment,’ going so far as to develop a mobile studio to record and release new songs while she is on tour. Rihanna and her management understand that her 20 million albums sold worldwide, and overall mainstream success is due, in part, to the ability to continuously ‘ship’ new creative work. Rihanna and her manager, Jay Brown, know this concept very well; an ideal that was expressed by Mr. Brown in an article for the BBC (to read the article click here), where he states that, “The music industry routine of releasing a new album every three to four years is no longer viable […] Kids want new material all the time […] you become disposable when you put out an album every three years.”
While we can see that the ‘shipping’ philosophy can positively impact the growth and success of an artist today; specifically, what is it about the act of ‘shipping’ in today’s cultural environment that can help an artist, especially a musician, achieve hyper growth and success in today’s market?
Shipping to Gain & Maintain Mind Share:
In the last decade, the proliferation and growth of the Internet has proved to be a significantly disruptive phenomenon to the entertainment industry, especially in regards to music. Today, markets are cluttered and “noisy,” making it increasingly hard to make purchasing decisions; people are constantly bombarded with new choices in entertainment. As an artist, you must fight to occupy mindshare and maintain ‘top-of-mind’ presence within your target audience, or, in this case, existing and potential fan base. Again, as Rihanna’s manager stated, “you become disposable when you put out an album every three years.” Its seems in the case of the music industry, out of sight is really out of mind.
Shipping as Promotions:
Another disruptive effect of the Internet was the proliferation of ‘pirating’ entertainment content. This pirating of entertainment proved to be a crippling blow to the music industry and was largely responsible for the dramatic loss of the industry’s revenue. This drop in revenue resulted in the cutting of many budgets that were an integral part of the development and promotion of an artist. Budgets for album promotion and A&Rs began to shrink. And with these key elements to an album and artist’s success on the decline, it became essential for the post-pirating and Internet-age artist to ‘ship’ creative works as frequently as possible with the hopes of generating the kind of buzz that strong A&R and marketing support would have garnered them in the past.
Shipping as Development of Craft & Creativity:
The act of ‘shipping,’ in and of itself, can produce a favorable ‘externality’ which may have a positive cyclical effect on an artist achieving hyper growth in a short period of time. By continuously ‘shipping’ creative work, an artist is constantly engaged in their craft; which, through shear number of hours and time spent, could lead to an increase in the quality of the artist’s work. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his book, Outliers, in order to achieve mastery in a particular activity, one must exert at least 10,000 hours of work in that particular discipline.
In today’s culture I think we can agree that it is becoming increasingly hard for artists, as well as other products, services, and experiences to achieve mainstream exposure and success given today’s economic and market constraints. It is always interesting to see products, services, and experiences; or, in this case, artists, push through the ‘noise’ and ‘clutter’ to receive some semblance of mainstream attention. But while this is interesting to see, its even more important to note, that it takes more than just creativity and an Internet-sound distribution strategy to see hyper growth over a specific period time. From Lil Wayne to Rihanna, we see that it also takes continuous “fuel,” or rather, a continuous shipment of creative work to be released into the market.
posted by Kwasi Gyasi of MyUberLife xo
Notes