Hip Hop's 50th Birthday and the Business Behind It
Last week, Mass Appeal announced Hip Hop 50, an upcoming documentary series on Showtime. Universal Hip Hop Museum also broke ground and hopes to open by 2023.
August 11, 2023. That's the date hip-hop will recognize its 50th anniversary. On that day in 1973, DJ Kool Herc hosted a back-to-school jam in the Bronx, and the rest is history.
When anniversaries are done right, everyone wins. Mass Appeal's promo video sets the stage for a three-year celebration full of content and events. The umbrella of 'Hip Hop 50' should attract more attention per event, which gets more brand partners involved. The celebration becomes greater than the sum of the individual events.
Content x commerce. Hip Hop 50 makes sense for Mass Appeal's business model. The company is a creative agency, content studio, and record label. The content (docuseries, music, podcasts) builds the base for the agency that works with Fortune 500 companies. Hip Hop 50 is a chance to extend the commerce into B2C products too. Each event is an opportunity to release associated memorabilia, merch, and more.
The perfect balance. Meanwhile, the Universal Hip Hop Museum finally started construction after pandemic delays. Unfortunately, museums have a complicated place in hip-hop. High-end museums become inaccessible to some. Low brow exhibits "dumb down the culture." There's a fine balance to strike, especially in the age of Instagram. It's hard to ignore popular IG-made spots like The Museum of Ice Cream and the Trap Music Museum in Atlanta.
Since this hip-hop museum in New York, it will celebrate the city's influence and honor the impact from all regions across the world. But that's an ambitious task. It's hard for museums to cover a wide range of subjects, even in the same niche. Soon enough other regions will open their own hip-hop museums to reflect the local culture.
Learn more about Mass Appeal's strategy in my Trapital Podcast interview with CEO Peter Bittenbender. Read more about the Universal Hip Hop Museum here.
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