
The Real Story Of How Macklemore Got 'Thrift Shop' To No. 1 - kumarski
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/08/171476473/the-real-story-of-how-macklemore-got-thrift-shop-to-number-one
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notatoad
"The story they've been telling is not entirely true"

On Colbert last Thursday they pretty clearly said they hired Warner to do
promotion. I don't know if earlier they were saying something else, but it
sure didn't seem like they were letting out a big secret.

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eli
The NPR story is from a few months ago. Were they so open about it before it
was widely known? Perhaps they were, but when the NPR story came out in
February there was a lot of (perhaps not totally accurate) other reporting
about how groundbreaking it was for them to have a hit album "with no help
from a label."

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mlla
Music promotion is quite funny business. On the same note, The Quartz's
article on Harlem Shake and how it went viral is a pretty interesting article
to read: [http://qz.com/67991/you-didnt-make-the-harlem-shake-go-
viral...](http://qz.com/67991/you-didnt-make-the-harlem-shake-go-viral-
corporations-did/)

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kylelibra
They are pretty open about this and say that they were more concerned with
retaining creative control.

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DigitalSea
I thought most people familiar with Ryan and Macklemore's story knew about
this already. It's not entirely a secret they hired help from Warner (through
ADA) to do promotion, they've been pretty open about it. The interesting and
impressive aspect about the story of Ryan Lewis and Macklemore is that they
were the ones hiring the label, not the label hiring and exploiting the artist
like is usually the case.

What these two guys did was get a song to number one all without losing one
single bit of creative control. The labels didn't tell them what their album
should sound like, who it should be marketed too or what the first single
should be, the label merely used their resources to get the song on the radio
and the rest happened organically.

Thrift Shop was one hell of a catchy song, they deserve every bit of success
they have. It was in the best interests of the label and Ryan and Macklemore
to get the song out there. The song was rising up the iTunes charts and
Youtube so fast before it hit the radio that the radio had no choice but to
play it anyway.

The reality of music is you can't rely solely on digital music sales, physical
mediums are still well and truly alive (on the decline but still alive and
kicking). If you want to physically distribute music, labels which have been
in the business for a long time like Warner Bro's have established supply
chains that can get music manufactured and distributed faster than an
independent artist manually burning CD's, printing, putting them in jewel
cases and mailing them out ever could.

What do people expect? Did you expect Ryan Lewis and Macklemore to build their
own manufacturing plant, purchase expensive printing and duplication
equipment, hire employees to package their music up and then establish trade
distribution agreements to get their music out there?

I hate to sound cynical, but this is shoddy journalism. It's like saying a
company producing ground breaking medical equipment couldn't have succeeded
without the help of Microsoft or Intel because the computers they used to
document their research notes and build their CAD drawings on were Intel
computers running Windows 7...

The journalistic standard of NPR is usually pretty good, but this article
definitely subtracts a couple of points of respect that I had for them. Don't
get me started on that link-bait title, "The Real Story Of How Macklemore Got
'Thrift Shop' To No. 1" — you can't say that's not a completely misleading
title that insinuates that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have been lying about
some all aspects of their career.

The general gist of this comment is: they outsourced the promotion of their
music to a label rather than being owned by the label. No secret, just
intelligent. Definitely not a secret, read around, they've made this known.
Recently on Colbert they essentially said just that as well. What's the issue
here?

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n0rb3rt
This comment is more informative than the original story. Thanks.

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askimto
Absurdly lazy reporting.

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potatolicious
I know next to nothing about the music industry - as do most people here I
suspect. Your comment is unhelpful here without expanding on what about it was
lazy reporting.

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clicks
The first comment on that article brings up a good point, that it was
_because_ the song was becoming so famous and popular on Youtube/iTunes that
radio stations were forced to play it, it wasn't that this reality was
arranged by some key players who're the ultimate deciders on what ends up
getting radio airplay and what not:

 _For those of us deeply established in Seattle hiphop music; we know this
post is not "the real story". In fact, it is completely unfactual and more
than misleading. Macklemore is an independent artist who, along with Ryan
Lewis, earned the Number 1 spot, first on iTunes and then confirmed on
Billboard. Radio had no choice but to add the Thrift Shop single - or face
being confirmed as an out dated form of music discovery. Major music Industry
is no longer the sole means of entry into the fold. I find it amazing how
large format Media tries to explain away how an upstart dared to do this while
turning down Diddy, Jay Z and Interscope offers along the way.

Macklemore has worked very hard for years to achieve this feat, and he should
be celebrated. Any analysis at this point should be from a place of admiration
and not denegration, as the title of this post attempts to do._

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a3n
Rather than be contractors to a record label (the traditional relationship as
I understand it), they outsourced promotion to a record label.

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ck2
Astroturfing music.

