Universal Artist - Kanye West

Case Study – Research into a Universal music artist / band

Kanye West

Copyright:

Kanye has written some of his writes own songs like: Mercy, American Boy, Gold Digger, Waves and so much more but he doesn’t write all of his songs he works alongside many different artists to produce his songs.  Nick Jonas who is well known from the Jonas Brothers   has covered Kanye’s track, Only One. Katy Perry has covered N******  in Paris not the whole song just a verse. Conor Maynard has also covered Only One and Chase and Status have covered Fade. Black Skinhead from Kanye’s album Yeezus was leaked. Kanye originally uploaded the visuals to the video onto his website which later got taken down. A clip got uploaded onto Youtube which was rumoured to be the early edit of the video. Kanye then took to his twitter account to say how the video was not the official version and that the video would be released the following week. Famous is another song that has been leaked. Famous is from Kanye’s latest album The Life Of Pablo. The track got leaked through Twitter and what made this story huge was his lyrics in the song, it caused a big argument between Kanye and Taylor Swift which carried on even when the song got released officially.

Kanye was being sued over his 2013 single “New Slaves”. A complaint was filed by Hungarian composer Gabor Presser against Kanye with his song New Slaves, Kanye has “knowingly and intentionally misappropriated” one of his songs from his Yeezus’ song without a signed license agreement. Gabor Presser is stating that “New Slaves” samples “Gyongyhaju Lany” heavily. He wasn’t aware until the promotion of New Slaves came out. The suit is claming that Gabor still hasn’t been paid for over 2 years alongside $10,000 advance. This would be the main copyright infringement that Kanye has been involved in. Kanye’s music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and Amazon even though he is signed exclusively to Tidal he’s music is still available on Spotify.

Ownership:

Kanye has his own record label “Good Music” which stands for Getting Our Dreams Out which he is currently signed to. Good Music is signed to the worldwide label agreement Island Def Jam Music Group. Some artists that are signed to Good Music are: Big Sean, Tyga, Desiigner, Travis Scott, John Legend and many more. Some artists that were previously signed to Good Music were: Mr Hudson, Tony Williams and GLC. The genre within Good Music varies as there is a wide range of artists with different sounds signed to the label, so there wouldn’t be a specific genre that is tied to the label. Some people could argue and say they have more Hip-Hop/Rap artists on the label but officially from Good Music they don’t have genre. Kanye has collaborated with Big Sean with 14 songs, Pusha T with 12 songs, Kid Cudi with 11 songs, John Legend 11 songs and Common with 13 songs. Kanye has done a remix to a song with one of his artists “Desiigner” on his song Panda. These would be the main artists that he has worked close with within his label, but he hasn’t done any tours with his artists. Def Jam Recordings distributes the artists records. Good Music were signed to Def Jam Recording on June 27^th 2011. Kanye has had a huge success with his VEVO channel. KanyeWestVEVO has been active for 8 years, it was created May 11^th 2009 with over 2 million subscribers and 1 billion views across his VEVO channel. 

Convergence and synergy:

Kanye has collaborated with Adidas to create his own fashion line. He has achieved: Yeezy Season 1, 2, 3 and 4 as well as creating his own trainers, boots and heels. His Yeezy’s 350’s, 750’s and 950’s. He's also worked with the designer label Balmain to help with one of his songs "Wolves". In 2009 he worked with Lousi Vuitton to created a pair of trainers. Rockstar Games have featured Kanye’s song in GTA. Kanye has signed to Tidal which is a subscription-based music streaming service that allows you to watch exclusive fashion events and music videos.

Promotion and Targeting audiences:

I would say that Kanye's target audience is males aged 16-35, but I believe that his music is open to anyone who would love "real music" as Kanye said himself.



Kanye signing himself over to Tidal.

Above the line promotion

The Life Of Pablo: Kanye performed “Highlights” and “Ultralight Beam” on Saturday Night Live. Later on that day he released the album exclusively through Tidal. He also said a week after the album launched that he would release the album outside of Tidal even though he wanted people to sign up to the streaming service.

Yeezus: On May 17, he visually started to promote the album by displaying one of his unreleased song from his new album "New Slaves" through video projections in 66 different locations globally. He had them in locations like: New York, Toronto, Oslo, London, Paris and many more. Some of the buildings he had them projected on were the Universal Music building and the Arc de Triomphe. Kanye also appeared on the American TV show Saturday Night Live where he performed “New Slaves” and another unreleased track “Black Skinhead”. He officially released the name and cover of Yeezus on his website. In an interview he had a conversation about the album’s minimal promotion. He said "With this album, we ain't drop no single to radio. We ain't got no NBA campaign, nothing like that. Shit, we ain't even got no cover. We just made some real music.”

Below the line promotion

The Life Of Pablo: Kim Kardashian West, Kanye’s wife announced the return of “GOOD Fridays” leading up to the release of The Life Of Pablo. GOOD Fridays was a weekly free music giveaway that Kanye did to promote his fifth album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, free songs would come out every Friday to help promote the album. It also featured music from different artists from his label GOOD Music. The first song that was released on the first Friday was “Real Friends” which Kim posted on her Twitter account. GOOD Fridays was via Soundcloud. He premiered The Life Of Pablo at his Adidas Yeezy Season 3 fashion show at Madison Square garden. 

Yeezus: Kanye used social media to start promoting Yeezus. Kanye doesn’t usually use social media but when he does it because he’s making an announcement or he is stating his opinion. As Kanye had a new album coming out he used his Twitter account to start spreading the word. Kanye deleted all of his previous tweets and tweeted "June Eighteen", which lead his fans and the media to suspect that he’s tweet hinted to the release of his upcoming album.

Hardware and Content

Kanye with his daughter North West in his home studio.
His wife Kim Kardashian West posted this photo on Instagram with the caption
'Bring your daughter to work day!' 

Kanye in "Wolves" advertising Balmain's Fall 2016 Line.

It took Kanye, his team and other artists around three years (2013-2016) to record and finalize The Life Of Pablo. Many different songs on his album were recorded in different places around the globe e.g: Italy, Mexico, Canada and the US. As Kanye travelled a lot, this meant that he was recording his album on the go, majority of the album was recorded in recording studios in the city that he was visiting. He did also record some songs at his house in LA. He built a temporary studio in his mother-in-law’s house as he was living there with his wife and daughter at that time. One of studios he visited was Jungle City Studios, NY. Artists such as Beyoncé and Jay-Z have recorded there before. On his album Yeezus, he released 10 tracks, originally he was supposed to have 14 tracks on the album as advertised but it ended up having only 10 tracks. He released a digital and a physical copy. The Life Of Pablo had 20 tracks on it. It was rumored that he was going to release a deluxe physical copy with extra tracks on it which didn’t end up happening and it was only the digital copy available. Kanye only had two singles from Yeezus, Black Skinhead and Bound 2. Black Skinhead was the first single, released June 19, 2013 and Bound 2 was the second released August 28, 2013. Compared to The Life Of Pablo, he had three singles released: Famous, Father Stretch My Hands and Fade. Famous was the first released April 1, 2016, Father Stretch My Hands released June 7, 2016 and Fade released September 9, 2016. As Kanye produces his new music or any music he makes I wouldn’t say he has changed the hardware he uses as he has been making music since they came out. Kanye had no pre-release or exclusive releases from Yeezus. On the other hand, as G.O.O.D Fridays came back, Kanye pre-released a song every Friday on Soundcloud from The Life Of Pablo to the upcoming release of the album. One video that did have a 
promotional material featured was Wolves from The Life Of Pablo. It featured the Balmain Fall 2016 line which Kanye and Kim Kardashian West wore in the video.



Audience behaviour and consumption

Yeezus sold 327,000 copies in the first week of its release. The total album sale for Yeezus was 750,000 US Sales and 1,350,000 for the global sales, this was back in 2013. The total revenue from Kanye’s Yeezus Tour was $25,000,000. For The Life Of Pablo it has sold 28,000, as it was streamed on Tidal it was a limited buy. It had 250 million streams in the first ten days its release. This was due to the initial release of the album on Tidal leading to an increase in subscribers “Kanye supporters”, his supporters would then stream the album. The difference between the albums are significant as, Yeezus could be available to purchase at a store but The Life Of Pablo was only available online for supporters and other followers to stream. The figures are both high but you can see how streaming gave him a wider audience which got his album more out there compared to Yeezus. Yeezus came first in the UK and US Album charts. The Life Of Pablo had the same, UK and US album chart. The album had over 500,000 illegal downloads within the first three days of its release. Yeezus has no estimation of how many illegal downloads.