Drake possesses one of the biggest fanbases in the Rap game and he has constructed this fanbase through his extraordinary use of social media. Twitter is one example of the ways Drake has captivated his fanbase and distributed his brand. The tweet above shows Drake releasing his new song with 21 Savage via twitter. Drake tends to release a lot of his songs via twitter due to the attention his song receives on the Twittersphere. By doing this, fans become more engaged with Drake’s brand and an excitement arises when one of his followers scrolls through Twitter and sees a post like this.
This tweet was retweeted about 9,000 times, which means that this song caught a lot of eyes. This tactic of releasing music is a lot more direct and it eliminates the lag that middle-men tend to have distributing content. By eliminating the middle-man, Drake owns all the rights to his music and releases his product the way he wants. It also allows his fans to view content immediately instead of waiting for record companies to advertise and distribute the music. Fans can listen to the music immediately without even having to pay for it. This distribution tactic reaches hundreds of thousands of participants of Twitter providing mass distribution.
In addition, when a person clicks on the link it directs them directly to the marketplace of his work. For instance, the link pictured above will direct people who view the link to Itunes Music. From there, viewers can purchase the song, listen to a sample of the song, or listen to other songs by Drake. This is a genius strategy for a rapper like Drake, who wants to distribute his media to as many people as he can in the shortest amount of time.
The final aspect of this example is gaining Twitter followers. When Drake releases songs in this fashion, people are more inclined to follow him on Twitter because they want to see tweets such as this one. The more followers; the bigger the fanbase.
The Use of Social Media in the Rap Game 