🪄 Soulja Boy, A HipHop Marketing Genius

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The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 125th issue.

Today's topics:

1. Soulja Boy, A HipHop Marketing Genius

2. A tool to Turn Youtube Videos into Transcript

3. One recommended video on Price Psychology Tricks of Online Courses

Soulja Boy, A HipHop Marketing Genius

It's 2007 and a 16-year-old HipHop rapper Soulja Boy from Atlanta turned the music industry on its head.

Earlier, rappers were discovered by record labels after gaining street cred but not Soulja Boy.

He took matter into his own hands, leveraging the power of the internet to build his brand from the ground up.

He basically pioneered the use of social media for self-promotion in the music industry.

1. Humble Beginnings

Soulja Boy's story is unconventional because he wasn't discovered by a record label.

The rapper had already established a solid online presence and following before his breakout single.

Soulja Boy began recording and mixing his music using a bootleg version of Fruity Loops. He recorded a number of songs in a home studio with a $200 mic and an old computer.

He uploaded his songs to a website called SoundClick and sold the songs for 99 cents each.

SoundClick had a 50-50 revenue split. At his peak, he was earning around $10,000 a day by selling 20,000 songs per day.

2. YouTube Strategy

Soulja Boy recognized YouTube's potential early on so he started uploading his music videos to YouTube.

His first video upload is on 15th March 2006. YouTube was launched just 3 months before on 15th December 2005.

YouTube was getting around 8 million visits per day back then.

In fact, he was the 1st rapper on YouTube.

His song "Crank That" became a massive hit.

"Crank That" achieved unprecedented success. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 7 non-consecutive weeks.

Today, Crank That has over 586 million views on YouTube.

His debut album "souljaboytellem.com" featured the hit single "Yahhh!" that peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 chart. He sold 117k copies first week. He was selling merch, vinyls, concert tickets on his website so it must have gotten huge brand awareness.

He created the first viral internet dance. He opened the door for every viral internet dance since. You can say invented TikTok.

3. MySpace Revolution

In 2007, MySpace was the #1 King of Social Media. Facebook wouldn't takeover MySpace for another 2 years.

Soulja Boy saw an opportunity to build a following on MySpace that many established artists missed.

He didn't just use MySpace to share his music; he turned it into his personal marketing machine.

He regularly updated his profile with new songs, engaged directly with fans through comments/messages, and used eye-catching graphics to stand out.

After he created "Crank That," he uploaded it to MySpace for downloads under the name of different popular artists such as 50 Cent, Britney Spears, etc.

People would download the song assuming that it was by those popular artists but would instead get his song.

In a video interview he said, "Youuuuu … They'd be like, 'what's this shit? This ain't 50, this ain't Britney.' Then, would start feeling the song."

4. SoundClick Monetization Strategy

Before he hit the mainstream, Soulja Boy was selling his songs on SoundClick for 99 cents each.

This might not sound revolutionary now, but in the mid-2000s, it was a game-changer.

By charging for downloads directly, Soulja Boy was able to generate significant revenue without the need for a record label.

He was charging $1 per song and getting about 20,000 downloads everyday. So at 16 years old, he was making $10,000/day after soundclick took their 50% cut.

5. Deceptive Marketing Strategies

He uploaded his music to file-sharing sites like Limewire often by mislabeling his songs to match whichever artist was popular. On Limewire, he would upload "Crank That" and title it with names of the top 10 most downloaded songs as well as top 10 songs on billboard.

This meant that almost anything downloaded at the time could end up being a Soulja Boy track. This was absolutely genius yet deceptive marketing that worked in his favor.

It became the 1st song to sell 3 million digital copies.

Many people selling CDs had to double check if their downloads were correct.

He used his website domain "souljaboytellem.com" as album title to drive traffic to the website.

He used phone marketing with "Kiss Me Thru The Phone". He incorporated the phone number 678-999-8212 into the song. This number was a fan line that earned him money. Fans could call through the company SayNow. The company later sold to Google.

He was getting paid like a subscription business. He made like $100,000 per month off of it just by people calling that number. The service lasted for about 2-3 years.

In 2008, ringtone money came in from "Kiss Me Thru The Phone" was the perfect song for that era.

He started getting called a Ringtone Rapper but it didn't bother him as he sold more than 2.6 million ringtones.

6. Transcending Generations

Soulja Boy became an internet sensation with Crank That in 2007.

In 2021, he trended with She Make It Clap on TikTok. He wrote the lyrics in a way that will go viral on TikTok.

It's rare for an artist to maintain relevance across 2 generations.

99% of artists from his time are simply irrelevant by now.

He knows how to capitalize on what goes viral. You can see Squid Game, Drake and Rick & Morty in there.

7. First At Many Things

Soulja Boy claims to be:

• First rapper to get an iPhone

• First rapper to get a million likes on a tweet

• First rapper to make millions of dollars on ringtones

• First rapper on YouTube and Justin TV (now Twitch)

• First rapper on YouTube to go viral

• First rapper to utilize phone marketing

• First rapper to launch his own gaming company

• First rapper to get a verified badge on Instagram

• First rapper to write and produce a #1 song at 16

While Soulja Boy had many actual firsts, he also had many claimed firsts.

Soulja Boy was a Blackhat Marketer who happened to do Hip Hop. He was smart enough to own his audience by funneling his fans to his own website.

He monetized every aspect of fan engagement (e.g., the phone number in "Kiss Me Thru The Phone").

He was an early adopter of new technologies and platforms while adapting to the changing landscapes in the music industry.

A tool to Turn Youtube Videos into Transcript

Youtube to Transcript is a NEW tool I found that turns a YouTube Video into a Transcript.

I use it to turn a video into a summary using AI.

This tool has AI Translate Feature and Basic Prompts for free so you can Extract Patterns, Create Clean Transcriptions, or even Create LinkedIn Posts with it.

One recommended video on Price Psychology Tricks of Online Courses

This video covers the pricing psychology tricks of online courses.

Top Tweets of the day

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Musicfy Blog has 400 blogs.

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When something gets easy to create, it becomes crowded quickly.

TikTok made it easy to be a short-form creator and billions of people jumped on that opportunity. Only few made it bigger from it.

Beehiiv made it easy to start a newsletter so it became saturated quickly.

Now, the only newsletters that will succeed are the ones selling their own products and have their economics figured out.

Rabbit Holes

1. Why You Should Build Your Company on APIs - APIs are shovels in a goldrush.

2. How to do niche market research with ChatGPT (PROMPTS INCLUDED) - If you want to research a market quickly, use this ChatGPT Prompt. Just fill in the blanks and you are good to go.

3. How to Launch on Product Hunt (Playbook to #1 of the Day) - Product Hunt has a Domain Rating of 96. But it is a phenomenal site to get tons of backlinks from if you rank #1.

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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