YouTube managed to become a major player in the music economy because it’s backed by Google, who could afford to pay what the labels demanded.Ĭhance is the baseball capped, raspy-voiced emblem of this power shift. SoundCloud’s future is uncertain, while Mixcloud has been forced to adopt arcane restrictions in the US to stay alive. And while that battle is ostensibly between Apple, Spotify and TIDAL, there are dozens of ancillary competitors affected by the clash. The straightforward world of radio has given way to an untameable hydra of listening options, culminating in today’s fight for streaming supremacy. But boiling down the dramatic changes in the music industry to artist empowerment is to oversimplify the situation. Today’s independent artists are reaching levels of success that were previously unthinkable. For the DIY artists, whether you were a hardcore band pressing up 7″ singles or a rapper selling tapes out of your trunk, any kind of indie success was an anti-establishment victory.Ī decade and a half of file sharing, social media and increasingly affordable technology later, the balance of power has shifted. Few artists had the opportunity to sign a major deal, and those that did often found themselves locked into decade-long struggles with their label over money and creative direction – Prince, Michael Jackson, Toni Braxton and N’Sync, for example. The major labels spent decades monopolizing the production and distribution of music, and had the power to decide what music would break out. The whole debate’s entrenched in a bigger question: what does it even mean to be independent in 2016? Our ideas about indie music appear to be frozen in the ‘90s, when the barrier to entry was much higher. But the truth remains: it is likely Chance has benefitted from backing by the biggest tech firm on the planet, while wrapped up in a narrative in which he represents a music industry milestone for independent artists. Given the current cutthroat competition for exclusive streaming rights, with each platform fighting for the best exclusives to tip the streaming platform wars in their favour, it’s fair to wonder if Apple needed Coloring Book more than Chance needed Apple. It shouldn’t reflect negatively on Chance, but anyone with the backing of a company worth $700 billion - several times more than all the major labels combined - can’t be considered independent, especially when that company is an indispensable part of the music economy through Apple Music, iTunes, Beats 1 and the rest. While there’s nothing to confirm Chance is in business with Apple, it would be consistent with the company’s reported $19 million deal with Drake. But both Coloring Book and last year’s Surf (with Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment) were released exclusively through Apple. Skip forward three years to the much-hyped Coloring Book and in the most literal sense, Chance is still independent. “There’s no reason to” sign to a label, he reasoned. “It’s a dead industry,” he told Rolling Stone. By September, his resolve was even firmer. “It’s dope people want to partner up, but I’m a very tunnel vision guy,” he shrugged to MTV, explaining he was “not interested.” That was June 2013. Chance though, didn’t want to compromise. When Acid Rap blew up, downloaded an estimated 1,000,000 times according to DatPiff, a bidding war between major labels ensued. The man born Chancelor Bennett’s rise to rap’s pinnacle since his 2013 breakout mixtape Acid Rap – with a starring role on Kanye’s Pablo, appearances on SNL and undoubted hip-hop A-lister status now to his name – has seen him hailed for his independence. But with a new tape also comes another round of praising Chance as an indie hero for eschewing label support. It’s another step forward for one of the most exciting rappers working. The Chicago rapper’s third mixtape is a more focused and fully realized expansion of the gospel excursions Kanye West took on The Life Of Pablo, crossed with the mix of joy and introspection that makes Chance so compelling. Without wading too far into the critical weeds, Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book is a triumph.
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