Snoop Dogg is launching his own streaming service

Future. Snoop Dogg is creating a streaming platform exclusively for his label, Death Row Records. The hope is that by controlling the economics of streaming revenue, coupled with the exclusivity of NFTs, Snoop and the artists he backs will be able to make a lot more money from far fewer listeners. But, for artists not as popular as Snoop, will the idea that their music be accessible to a very small number of fans in exchange for bigger payouts hurt them in the long run?

Death Row+
According to Billboard, Snoop Dogg is becoming a streaming mogul.

• After taking control of Death Row Records in February, Snoop has taken all of the label’s music off traditional streaming services (except Tidal).
• That’s because he plans to launch a standalone “Death Row app” where all the music will exclusively live.
• When the app will drop is still TBD.

Also, Snoop doubled down on the plan for Death Row to be a metaverse-first company, with it existing as “an NFT label.”

Trade up
Snoop didn’t mince words when he explained why he’s starting his own streaming service in an interview on REVOLT’s Drink Champs: “Those platforms get millions and millions and millions of streams and nobody gets paid other than the record labels. [As an artist] you get 100 million streams and you don’t make a million dollars. So what the f— is that?”

Instead, Snoop said he wants Death Row to “create our own trade where we engaging with our own fans, that’s my own music that’s making money off of the music and then making us money off of the music by being traded and sold.”

And here’s the thing: he already proved that it could work. Snoop’s latest album, BODR (Bacc on Death Row), was released as a collection of limited-edition NFTs and was able to pull in $21 million in sales… despite only amassing 16 million streams and 34,000 downloads (the NFTs cost thousands of dollars each).