BPI Insight Session The House That Rap Built The Cultural Force of Rap

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What a tremendous honor to start a conference on such an important topic. Talking about data. How cool is that? If you could put the QR code up for a minute so everyone can zap this, get the link and ask thoughtful questions. Everybody here, as well as people, people online, we really want to hear the questions that you've got. Although we've got plenty ourselves and could definitely do with the time. Please ask some questions. We want to get your perspective included and as Leon says, if we don't get to them, we'd love to take a look at them afterwards and get back to you with our thoughts as well. So all questions, super valuable. So yeah, we called this panel the Cultural force of Hip Hop, even though this is the data panel. Why? Because from three really different perspectives on the data behind UK Rap, we've all come to the conclusion that this is such an incredible cultural force and we want to share with you our different perspectives on it from like an audience and strategic point of view, from a like artist development and A and R point of view and from someone who's scanning the market looking at artists and genres and all countries around the world. So three really different perspectives on the same theme. Why UK Rap is such a cultural force. Before we get started, I'm going to ask the panel to introduce themselves, get to know each other and then got a couple of slides and then we're going to dive into some conversation and excuse me for looking at my phone, that's me looking at your questions that you sent in, I promise and I'll try and weave those in throughout the conversation as well. Sound good? Excellent. All right, would you like to introduce yourselves then?

Okay, I'll start. Hi everyone and hey everyone. Watching from home. My name is Jeremiah Gogo. I am currently the head of data and A and R analytics at Atlantic Records here in the uk. I guess my background has always been in analytics, but I've worked across Warners and Universal Music Group. So across breadth of analytics experience coming into it, work a ton in the UKRAP space and yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Hi, I'm Michelle. I'm at chartmetric, which is a data analytics platform and I work on the business development side. So we're just like looking at the market like David said and trying to understand across the various different markets around the world and how different artists are doing as well. And so we work across the music industry with all of the different functions to provide as much information as we can to hopefully help people like Jeremiah make more well informed decisions.

So, yeah, you got two brilliant minds here on this panel. I'm going to give them as much time as possible, but you also have me. And so I'm David. My background is in understanding audiences, with the firm belief that if you can really understand your audience, then you can do everything better, quicker, in a more focused way. So let's take a look at some data to start off this conversation and then we'll dig in. First thing that comes to mind when I look at data in the world of UK hip hop is the scale of the economics here. So in recorded music alone, 192 million pounds in 2021. And also just look at the rapid growth over time. And also look in red at the rapid growth of UK rap within total rap music in the uk. So important economic force, important growth, rapid growth over time. This is a force to be reckoned with. But it's not just the economic powerhouse that really strikes you when you look at UK rap. Also, it's the scale of the engagement. If you take the top artists in rap, nine or ten times the levels of social engagement that you get for rock music or electronic music, which I've got to confess, is where my heart truly lies. Rap music and hip hop artists are just far more engaging and commercially minded than other genres. There's something incredibly powerful there. And engagement is critical because as Dan Runcy of the website Trapital says, millionaires sell music, but billionaires sell production products and artists. These days, money's not in streaming, money's in brand partnerships, film and tv, live investing or eventually merchandise and products. And so this levels of engagement and the economic powerhouse of the music is critical as a foundation for building that bigger economic power and cultural force. But also it's the change in engagement of audiences. And if you take a look at the share of that UK rap music has of total music, that's grown from just about 6% in 2015, 6% of the UK music market was hip hop through to 16.5% in 2020, which is incredible. Incredible rise. Think of that. Just a small share of listening in the UK in just 2015 and such a big share of listening in 2021. Take a look at the next link here. Fourth most popular genre Back in the day, just in 2015, the fourth most popular genre in the UK, and that rise up to be the third most popular, then the second most popular, then the second most Popular, then the second most Popular. Again, like that is a tremendous cultural force. But finally, if we look at 2021, we add that onto the Chart we see there are some reasons to expect a change that's happening. A dip in share of recorded music for hip hop in the uk, both for UK artists and international artists, and a dip, although very small dip, down to third place in the list of genres from second place that we'd conquered. So tremendous, tremendous cultural force economically and also in terms of engagement with a bit of a wobble in the last year over to you guys, like, what do you make of that? Does that resonate from your point of view in the world?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I joined the music industry at Universal, we got to see like we were at the time of the beginning stages of this graph that you see on this upward trajectory of UK rap.

And did you know that was going to happen?

Absolutely. I was very optimistic. So I'm from an estate in South London where actually we were quite. All the music that I knew growing up was a lot of UK rap. So it's kind of when I entered the industry that my horizons were opened into other genres and I kind of looked at how it intertwines. But for me, rap was all it really was. So I guess kind of seeing that come to fruition through the years has been really great to be a part of, but actually I think that there's still a lot of room for growth. I'd quite like to add a couple of points to the initial graph that shows the economic value to the UK of this music. I know that the UK historically has always been a proud nation to export tons of music from the Beatles and stones in the 60s to today. We add a lot of economic value to our country by making amazing music. But what I don't think we capture is a lot of the value that's created by our culture in this UK and rap world. So, I mean, I had a conversation very briefly beforehand with David about the value that UK rappers are adding to brands that's not necessarily being captured. I'd like to take a quick example, Jay Huss. I was growing up in school wearing North Face jackets was a geography teacher's thing. And you saw rappers like J Hus making things cool and brands interesting. It's difficult to capture this. It's difficult to attribute the kind of monetary or economic value that this adds to, say, brands. And it isn't necessarily kind of baked into these figures. But I'd argue that if we were, with the rise of social media and the way that these artists are kind of representing these brands in such a clean way, if we were to add it, the graph would be a lot steeper and we'd have seen a lot more there.

Yeah, no, I agree. I have to admit that I overheard their conversation so I took a quick look online as well. And the thing is that for a lot of UK rappers, fashion is really high on the branding side as well. And it doesn't have to be like luxury fashion. It can be just brands that appeal more to the mass, which I think also works with the community as well. And then you can work your way towards luxury brands as well, which are also a thing. But yeah, I did see that pop up a lot, like fashion and sports increasingly as well. And I think there are a lot of ways that branding can work out for artists, rap artists, and just all artists in general, just as a main revenue stream as well.

I mentioned the more my passion is electronic music, which I probably shouldn't mention in this room, but I came at this because I was looking at the electronic music market and I stumbled across hip hop as something to compare it to and I was just completely blown away by this. So I went back to the electronic music world and I said, hey, look, this seems like this is an incredible story. We need to learn about this, we need to understand it, we need to take lessons from it. I got a bunch of blank faces from a lot of people who, I didn't get the sense they understood what was happening in this world and I didn't get the sense that they respected or were curious about it as well. I'd be interested to know, like, is that your perspective? Like, does. Does the world outside of hip hop understand this trend? Or is this something we need to do more to shout about and celebrate?

I feel like it's a part of the culture for a lot of genres, but not recognized that way. Like it's been, it's been happening like the example Jeremiah gave, but it's, it's not necessarily always from like a brand first point of view. And so that's something that people are realizing a lot more now that you don't have. Have to just do streaming. And maybe you don't want to just do streaming because, like it'll earn you a certain amount of money, but you could be doing a lot more as well. So.

Yeah, yeah. And I'd say furthermore, the point you made at the end about the last year in the kind of slight decline in UK rap that's kind of been cannibalized sort of by the dance music rise that we're seeing over the last year or so. And I can only speak for Atlantic UK's data. But seeing a lot of the kind of fans that both consume dance and rap or stream a rap track and then also stream a dance track, there are a lot, there is a lot of crossover. We earlier this year released a Tion Wayne track which featured LaRue. And a lot of the fans that streamed that track on its week one weren't the usual T on Wayne listeners that come in on the week one. And actually we had a lot of the kind of drum and bass crowd there. The track called in for the Kill, but they traditionally listen to drum and bass track. You can see the listening history on these users and then they also listen to some Tion Wayne. So what I'd say about the kind of concern in the dip is actually there's a lot of opportunity, right? We kind of move into the blending of genres as we move forward and there's going to be, in my opinion, a lot more of these kind of tracks. And as we look at the way that users are consuming music from different genres and it isn't just, hey, I'm in this UK rap lane or I'm in this dance lane, actually there's a merging of the two and or a listening crossover that exists. So I'd say we can look at that slight dip more as an opportunity as opposed to a negative.

Just to add on real quick, I think people are really quick to learn now as well. So what you see happening in one genre will quite easily be in another genre as well. And then you can go into an entire other panel about what even is a genre as well. But yeah, so there is plenty of opportunity and I think there's just more realization now and then what will follow is action.

It's easy for us to get obsessed by genre labels, but consumers these days don't see genres. They mix and blend and there's no such thing as these silos that we cling to. You touched on export and travel of music and Michelle, I know that's something you've taken a look at. Does British rap travel around the world or is it stuck on the British islands?

Yes. So that was the slide that popped up just now and we went back to David's. Just circle a few numbers. The rank is like a global based on global data, but just then ranking British artists around the world. And so from that view, Ed Sheeran is the top British artist in the world. And then you go down from there. But what's also interesting about this is how long it has been since the they kind of first debuted since they had their first release, which this is not just for the uk, but since this panel's about UK rap, It's been a while since the UK has really broken an artist. A lot of these artists have been around for more than 10 years. Most of them you'll see have been around for more than five years. And so that's quite a long time. And then some of them you'll see go 40, 50 years back as well when they first kind of came out. And so. But what's interesting here though is like that the artists who have kind of made their debut recently, they are rap artists. If you go to the next slide, other than Louis Capaldi earlier, like Central Cee Diggity, like, these artists are the ones who are kind of the cultural force of the UK at the moment. Just in general, not even just in this genre, right? This genre is representing the uk and then you can start to see that surface even in the next slide. Stormzy is there and he wasn't previously until he just dropped his track like last week. And then now he's gone back into this. I put top 50 up here. He wasn't here earlier because he kind of like took a break, you know, was doing other things, whatever, for the past few years. And with one track, one video, he's back up already top 50. So I think it's not. This is not to like paint a negative picture or anything, but it's to show that the impact that artists from this genre are having both locally but also globally, because they are rising up worldwide as well.

How does the international opportunity look to you for UK artists?

I mean, Central Sea is a really interesting story there. Obviously I've had the pleasure of working fairly closely in the early days and seeing how local hip hop kind of travels through Europe. Now, historically, hip hop or localized hip hop has been a thing in. In many European countries, but it stays local. Right? Because hip hop in its origins is quite. It's quite specific to that language and to that upbringing. So German local. German hip hop, absolutely flying. Local French hip hop, absolutely flying. However, the ability to travel, there's always obviously the language barrier. Central Sea is a really interesting kind of case study here who has popped up and has done the European thing really amazingly. And he's this year on his way to kind of conquer the States as well, to show that actually UK rap and UK hip hop can travel. It can travel. Central CE has proved this. Cross language barriers. But also now with his freestyle kind of charting in the UK that he did in La recently, it's also crossing over the Atlantic too.

Let's talk about how that happens these days, because technology is change so quickly. How consumers like listen to and discover artists has changed so quickly. Like, what impact is that having on how artists travel?

I think Michelle touched on a very good point in that the UK perhaps hasn't broken an artist over the last couple of years. I say since the Pandemic, we've seen kind of this shift in technology or this shift to TikTok. Now, everyone who's in the music industry that's either here or listening from home knows that TikTok is a conversation that we've heard way too many times in the last few months or years. But actually, I believe that there's an opportunity here. At the beginning of the Pandemic, the US kind of showed us with. I believe it started with Megan Thee Stallion. So there was a savage dance that went off on TikTok, and that was kind of where I was thrown in from a work perspective to kind of look into the data here. What's happening? Who's using this sound? How many times are they using it through to, most recently, Atlantic having success with Tion Wayne's body. Billions of views, tens of millions of creations, and we kind of get to a point that actually the medium is changing. It's still nascent, we're still getting used to it. But I believe that the UK is growing in this. And actually we've shown, having got a number one single with Bodi, that we're well on our way to breaking artists using this platform.

Yeah. And the Pandemic, I think, also just forced everyone to realize maybe we were already kind of aware beforehand because we were in a digital world before. But the Pandemic made you realize that we can go on online and we are still very much connected. There was no real break there. People just moved to online and then you keep going. And so that's also reflected in numbers as well, in that usually what you'd see for rap artists from the UK is that the majority of their audience is squarely based in the UK. UK, and that's fixed there. Over 60% of their audience is just from England and thereabouts. But what you starting to see now with like, central Cee rd Tian Wayne, is that their audiences are expanding a lot wider as well. They'll have maybe like 15 or 20% of their audience in the UK and then the rest of it will be US, Kenya, Poland, Germany, parts of Europe, parts of Africa, Bangkok for someone as well. Just like they're all over the world, like they're really going out there. TikTok is definitely a force to get them out. But I think also just like people are interested in hearing other things. Music moves and the creativity is kind of what inspires people. And so that is also reflecting in the numbers and how diverse the audience is getting as well.

And just to kind of piggyback off of that from an A and R perspective, I think the way that we've looked at data or data informs a lot of A and R decision making these days. But the change that I've seen just from January to date this year on what kind of data points are useful now based on the fact that actually fans are not behaving in the same way as they. As they once did. That rapid change tells us it's going to keep changing. We're going to have to keep evolving. We're going to have to stay agile in the way that we kind of in what data points we're looking at and the way that we bring. Bring these decisions forward to A and R teams.

And does data change the. Or does data or TikTok, are they changing the kind of artists that are being picked up and finding success?

It's a difficult question because I think there's, in my opinion, there's two strands here. The first being singles. Now TikTok. Absolutely. A lot of the single deals we've seen over the last couple of years have been driven by TikTok. You'd have a sound that's kind of moving and people are reacting to it. It gives us the opportunity to test before we actually go. Right. So you've got a sound. 15 seconds. Are people reacting to it? Do people like it? And then you've got the opportunity to kind of go with it, sign it, make it a hit or not. And it gives us some testing data, which just allows us to mitigate risk a little bit. Previously, you may not have been able to test a single in the same way. Now you can kind of get your feedback from users in a live way before you spend or kind of dropped the single or executed said marketing plan.

Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned feedback because I look at data every day. It's a data analytics platform and sometimes I feel like I'm wearing like a tinfoil hat because everyone's like, oh my God, numbers. I don't want to look at it. But the thing is that it's just like additional information and it's more insight that you can get about the people that you're trying to appeal to which are the fans of your artist, the audience that you're trying to connect with for your artist. And so I think that with Data, it's more that it's a contribution on both sides. You can understand more about the fans and then figure out what you can do to kind of make that gel and then develop the artist as a whole. Because I think for the most part, the audience also really wants what's best for the artist, which is I think, the same as labels and the industry side. And so it's more of a like a marriage of both, I guess, because there are still arguments as well. So that's how I would see it. Yeah.

We got one question that's come in I want to put to both of you and then we'll go around, do closing comments. So get any last thoughts ready as well. The question is about data. And since we're swimming in data these days on the one hand, but also we never have all the data we really wish we had. What data do you wish you had or that you wish you had more often that you don't have access to right now? What's missing?

Good question. I think I'll kind of dodge the. Dodge the question a little bit. But I think there are loads of data points from many different companies and industries that are siloed. For example, you might be on your laptop, search something on Google, go and watch a YouTube video and watch a video for one of our artists. Now I'd love to know what else you're searching for as well. Building the profile of these people, building the profile of these fans. That person then listens to, loves the video we released and then saves the song on Spotify, then listens to it on Spotify. That's a great data point. And we can see that the person listening to Spotify, we could see someone else watching the YouTube video. But I'm going to dodge the question slightly by saying I'd love to see how we can give more attribution and connect the data that is siloed from different platforms, different companies. Rather than saying a brand new data source, I'm going to go with connecting the existing data sources.

What's your wish list?

Stole my answer, no. But I'm also kind of avoidant question in that sometimes it even feels like it would be helpful. There was less data just because there's so much to process. But I think that what I would like to see is just more of an understanding that it's like a big picture thing. Every data Point every number, every piece of information you get contributes to overall, and then you can make a decision or you can decide from there. I don't think there's any particular data point that it will be the. The magic box to the answer for everything. More about understanding different platforms, who their audiences are, what markets they operate in and appeal to most, and then combining all of that together. So I guess going back to connecting as well. But if I had to pick something, what I think would be a lot more interesting as well is just seeing regional platforms. We look at global platforms a lot, and a lot of the data is global, but anything that we're able to see that's a bit more like geographically targeted I think would be. Would be really interesting because I think there are whole audiences that are missed out there as well.

All right, I'm going to answer as well. I'm going to wrap my answer into my closing remarks and then come to you two as well. So if I step back, the biggest thing for me that stands out from this looking at UK rap is that quote earlier that millionaires sell music and billionaires sell products. And so if that's true, which it certainly is in the us then we've got a really good understanding of audiences for each artist. We've got a really good understanding of recorded music for each artist. But it'd be great to have a really good understanding of all the other aspects of an artist's career, live brand partnerships and product sales and that kind of thing. So what's outside of recorded music? I would love that. And maximizing that opportunity whilst being true to the music and the culture of the scene for me feels like the biggest opportunity coming out of this. Such a solid base of music and cultural power. Next, proper commercialization 360 beyond music. But respecting the music Closing thoughts slide.

In there real quick. Maybe for closing, thought that we actually have started looking at data that's kind of outside music. We get a lot of requests for it as well, like podcasts, audio books, and that kind of stuff. And there is some brand stuff starting to creep in there, so I'm just going to throw that out there. But yeah, I think that that's very true. And there is a whole world outside of music and there's more realization around that with gaming and stuff as well. We're also trying to pull in sync data and just paint the full picture as wide as possible. And it definitely reaches far and wide.

Thank you. And you've got the mic. Tell us your closing thoughts on the whole point of view cultural force of.

Hip hop super exciting. I think that it's probably kind of a long time coming. I feel like, for. For some people as well, but that there is so much to do and I think that's the greatest thing about it, that there's so much opportunity, there's so much that you can do with it. There are so many ways that you can be creative and find new things to do. And especially now when there's more realization that there are different revenue streams and all the things that we talked about and that you can look to other genres, learn from them and apply it in your own perspective. I'm just excited to see where it goes. And I definitely think that once the numbers will just follow.

Absolutely. And I say I'm excited to be a part of Atlantic Records in this as well, because I feel like being a part of a label that is kind of driving this kind of UK rap force is. Is a great thing and it's a thing to really be celebrated. I'd like to see hopefully in the future as we integrate or kind of build an exhaustive data kind of platform to actually accommodate all of the data points that the UK rap scene is getting involved in. As we do, find out a bit more about the value to brands that an artist, a rapper, has when he mentions them in a song or the value to said to train a company when he's wearing them in a video. As we quantify this, we hopefully see the value coming into UKRAP grow and it allows them to give back to the communities that have developed these brands and made these brands so popular and cool. And then hopefully in the future we see these communities. It's a cycle effect from right. The money comes back to the communities and it allows more artists to kind of flourish from there and then vice versa. And we keep going around.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, both of you. Big round of applause, please. And as I said earlier, please keep the questions coming. If you have them later in the day, we will get to them. We're going to publish some of the data and the stats and the cool graphs that we drew for this session, along with maybe answers to some of the questions. So keep it coming, keep the conversation going. Thank you so much.