
Kanye West Vaults from Broke to Billions with Yeezy in Demand - bilifuduo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-24/kanye-west-vaults-from-broke-to-billions-with-yeezy-in-demand
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luhn
Kanye has long had quite extreme ambitions. A few years ago he Tweeted an org
chart for a company he called "Donda." It ranges from what you would
reasonably expect ("Music Production", "Merchandising," "Web Music Store") to
the absurd ("Cancer Research," "Hovercrafts", "Luxury Cloud Service")

[https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1/articles/2016/...](https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1/articles/2016/02/15/inside-
donda-kanye-west-s-plan-to-rule-the-world-and-save-his-bank-
account/161214-stern-kanye-donda-embed_f7dokr)

~~~
whatshisface
Hey, if he wants to fund cancer research and alternative energy, he can be my
guest...

On the other hand some of those are silly. "Emoticon Autocorrect"

Well, not every crazy billionaire can be as good as Musk.

~~~
derision
I mean it sounds crazy but honestly I would use it. There's been more than a
few times I've typed a message in haste and hit the wrong emoji. My keyboard
already ranks them by recently used and somehow does some context matching, so
current technology isn't even too far off from that idea.

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Ozzie_osman
> He calls it the “next frontier of living for humanity.”

Sounds like something Adam Neumann would say.

~~~
mardifoufs
Yeah but Kanye is actually generating billions in revenue and is one of the
biggest cultural icons right now which imo gives him more of a pass to be
weird.

Neumann was more of a conman that was only good at turning billions of dollars
into...billions of dollars of debt. And don't forget his weird cultish
entourage.

~~~
CamperBob2
How do artists actually collect this kind of cash these days, now that no one
buys CDs? Wouldn't he need a trillion or so streaming listeners to generate a
billion dollars?

Edit: never mind, looks like he's selling sneakers.

~~~
rvz
It's more than just 'CDs' or 'Downloads' for artists these days, which which
is pretty much not what they just do to get revenue. It's from their
merchandise, investments in other companies and also founding their own
companies which actually makes them their billions.

Think of Dr. Dre's Beats, Jay-Z's Tidal and investments in Uber. Now Kanye's
Yeezy brand too.

~~~
krapp
>Think of Dr. Dre's Beats, Jay-Z's Tidal and investments in Uber. Now Kanye's
Yeezy brand too.

Don't think of the time Soulja Boy tried selling bootleg game emulators[0],
though.

[0][https://www.geek.com/games/finally-soulja-boy-is-selling-
boo...](https://www.geek.com/games/finally-soulja-boy-is-selling-bootleg-
video-game-consoles-1764392/)

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WheelsAtLarge
Kanye was broke when he married into the Kardashians. I suspect he gained a
lot of marketing knowledge from them. Good for him.

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aazaa
> Alexandra Fletcher, a Bank of America spokeswoman, confirmed the
> authenticity of the document reviewed by Bloomberg. Prepared in September,
> it hasn’t been updated since the coronavirus pandemic began. The valuation
> of “future royalties generated in the footwear category is estimated from
> $1.75 billion to $3 billion,” according to the bank’s preliminary analysis.

It sounds like that preliminary analysis will be revised... downward.

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sfblah
I can’t even begin to understand what would cause someone to buy a pair of
“Yeezy” shoes.

~~~
kgraves
Other rich people, (Million|Billion)aires, it's a status thing.

~~~
loeg
Vast majority of "sneaker culture" participants are not even close to
millionaire/billionaire wealth.

