Trapital founder Dan Runcie talks hip-hop business strategy
In this edition of the podcast How Music Charts, Trapital founder Dan Runcie breaks down the ins and outs of the Hip-Hop business
Guest post by
Dan Runcie, founder of the Hip-Hop business media company
Trapital. Launched in early 2018, Trapital began as a subscription-based newsletter but now features a podcast and free weekly memo focusing on Hip-Hop business strategy. Runcie covers topics from Beyoncé’s streaming strategy to how Hip-Hop’s indie community has taken off and how Tyler, The Creator built a cult-like following. Trapital’s readers are music executives, media moguls, and venture capitalists, with clientele like Translation CEO Steve Stoute and SoundCloud CEO Mike Weissman. Trapital also offers advisory and speaking services.
In May 2020, confronting a raging pandemic, fierce competition from a slew of new entrants in the alternative-beverage category, and a limited marketing budget to support the launch of three new drink flavors, Ben Witte, CEO and founder of Recess, a maker of CBD-infused sparkling water, did what the head of any up-and-coming direct-to-consumer brand might: He dropped a merch line.
Featuring a “last two brain cells” hoodie ($65), a “cool your horses” T-shirt ($35), an orange “on recess” beanie, and a pair of $18 “around the block” socks (“for going nowhere in particular”), the line was designed, says Witte, with Instagram and Gen Z “creatives” in mind, a way to diffuse the brand’s pastel-minimalist aesthetic and the “tongue-in-cheek social commentary on millennial existence” on social media and beyond. Generating hundreds of tagged stories and posts a month, the merch did exactly what the brand had intended: For a CBD company operating in an advertising
The streaming era has abridged everything in the music business. It hasn’t just affected production and distribution, it’s also affected strategy from the point of an artist.
In 2020, Pulse Nigeria interviewed veteran rapper Reminisce and he said that he took nearly a year off releasing music to study streaming, strategy and roll-out. The same year, Pulse Nigeria also did an article about the rise of strategy over the fundamentals of good music.
Everything has to be well-thought out because there is usually an oversaturation of content released weekly to a microwave generation with the attention span of a Nigerian electricity. Artists want to stand out, grab attention and retain it through good music that appeals to an audience.