- Youtube Partnership -
Case Study: THEJUICEMEDIA Channel and the Rap News
The Rap News is exactly that: world news delivered in rhyme over a hip-hop beat. Written by historian Giordano Nanni and performed by Hugo Farrant. The Rap News presents contemporary world events in light of alternative world-views. Their “Wikileaks Cablegate” episode has had 1,175,820 views in the five months since it was released, with their other episodes ranging from between 655,000 and 77,000 views. It’s comedic value and endorsement from the likes of John Safran and Julian Assange no doubt has appeal for an advertising market, but no ads appear anywhere on the site.
When asked about whether they havebeen offered a Partnership in a recent interview, Hugo stated emphatically: “No, no. We’ve been offered. Perpetually offered”. Hugo goes on to explain the “loathing of advertising” shared by him and his associate. “Rap news is not just some fun comedy show with rappingin it. This is serious. Ok we’re having a laugh but this is serious. This is some meticulously researched, documented content... We don’t want that to be tied up with confusing advertising messages.” As an alternative, “We set up a paypal account and attached the link to the website and to the YouTube channel and just encouraged people, like we gave away the MP3’s for free, and if people asked about it we just said ‘take the MP3, go for it, but we encourage people to donate’”. This has been quite successful and according to Hugo Thejuicemedia “get donations every single day.. and some of them are really generous”. In addition, “there’s openings there for merchandise, we really want to do that...obviously there’s other things we could sell like CD’s, DVD’s, whatever. We really want to get into all of that”.
Rap News is an example of utilising YouTube’s mass audience potential while strongly adhering to their truly independent philosophy, disregarding advertising as being detrimental to their content, rather than tailoring their content to suit the needs of potential advertisers.
When asked about whether they havebeen offered a Partnership in a recent interview, Hugo stated emphatically: “No, no. We’ve been offered. Perpetually offered”. Hugo goes on to explain the “loathing of advertising” shared by him and his associate. “Rap news is not just some fun comedy show with rappingin it. This is serious. Ok we’re having a laugh but this is serious. This is some meticulously researched, documented content... We don’t want that to be tied up with confusing advertising messages.” As an alternative, “We set up a paypal account and attached the link to the website and to the YouTube channel and just encouraged people, like we gave away the MP3’s for free, and if people asked about it we just said ‘take the MP3, go for it, but we encourage people to donate’”. This has been quite successful and according to Hugo Thejuicemedia “get donations every single day.. and some of them are really generous”. In addition, “there’s openings there for merchandise, we really want to do that...obviously there’s other things we could sell like CD’s, DVD’s, whatever. We really want to get into all of that”.
Rap News is an example of utilising YouTube’s mass audience potential while strongly adhering to their truly independent philosophy, disregarding advertising as being detrimental to their content, rather than tailoring their content to suit the needs of potential advertisers.