Monday, March 5, 2007

Gettin' rich off this music shyt...Indirectly

"I wish it wasn't too late to sensibly purchase Google stock"
I don't know why it took me so long (or why it took this video to give me the thought), but the video below made me realize that YouTube is changing the way we are exposed to new music. It's also changing the video "game" (no pun intended) in general. Instead of seeing a new video on 106 & South Park, I see a link to the video on YouTube via someone's blog. Instead of hearing that new diss record from Fiddy Cent on the radio or on a mixtape, I get a YouTube link to the video for the diss record.

YouTube is becoming a cheap way to market yourself musically. You don't need high-quality cameras, you just have to have A CAMERA and an internet connection and you can reach millions. No need for your record company to dish out those payola checks to BET and MTV to get video spins, just YouTube it "on the cheap" and get some bloggers to start posting about it in their blogs or linking directly to the video. That's cheap promotion.

The mixtape/underground scene used to be where some artists would test out new tracks to see the buzz they got in the streets. Now you almost have to combine your buzz in the streets with a buzz on the net. You reach the street corner, around-the-way folks, but you also gotta hit the techies, the new school hip-hoppers who embrace the internet and it's power. And I won't even get into how the mixtape scene has transformed in the last few years. Considering that we went from tapes to CDs and from a couple DJs putting out quality work to a littany of mediocre-to-average DJs putting out gah-bage...[saving for another post]

Seeing YouTube and the music marketing come together is like watching Justin Blaze put together a beat on JustBlazeTV, which is also available to us because of the power of YouTube. And because Google owns YouTube, you can expect Google's stock to rise (literally, not figuratively) even more as this whole insurgence of hip-hop marketing turns into a cross between DJ Clue and your-favorite-internet-celebrity.

With Google's stock currently hovering around $450, I'm thinking it's not a really good idea to buy because you'll have to buy a crapload of shares to make any significant future profit. And that's if the stock doesn't plummet sometime in the next year or so. But at $450/share, you'd have to buy about 100 shares just to make a $1000 profit if the stock goes up to $460 tomorrow and you decide to sell tomorrow. But, considering that you have to spend $45000 just to make $1000 dollars, does that seem like it's worth it to you? I know most of us could cash in our tennis shoe collections (men) or purse collection (women) for about $40K, but those are priceless, right? Not to mention the $1000 we'd make off getting rid of our shoes would only get us 5 pair of those new Jordans (men) that they'll re-release in 2010 for $300 each. And that $1000 will only get 1/7 of that Hermes Birkin bag (women)..."What type of purse is THAT"

Whereas, if you'd bought 10 shares of Google Stock 2 years ago when the stock was at $200, that would have been a $2000 investment that's now worth $4500. That is, if you decided to sell today. I added this bit of financial information in there just to make my title relevant to the post (LOL) as I assume that a lot of you will either already know this or completely ignore it and skip to...

5 comments:

Daneger said...

That Kanye joint is hilarious...LMAO!

jendayi said...

'1/7 of a Birkin bag. what kind of bag is that?' that was funny. i really laughed out loud.

Anonymous said...

Dane: That Kanye video had me dying. Dude is silly.

JAC: You know when I hear these rappers drop all these designer names I have to check them out from time-to-time just to see how grandiose these things are. The Birkin bag...Whew! That's an expensive bag.

jendayi said...

Glad you're up on your designer bags. lol.

Anonymous said...

Gotta know what I'm getting myself into when my wife starts asking me for these things.

I am about to setup an ING account right now called the "wifey emergency gift fund".