🎙️They Cloned Lil Baby?

PressPlay brings you the latest news covering the audio industry and music news all in one quick 5 minute read!

Quote Of The Day:

Charts Weekly: Hip Hop

Last week Post Malone finally knocked "First Class" off of the #1 spot only to be taken back over in less than a week. Clearly First Class is going to be one for the record books! Post keeps his 2nd and 3rd spot with his tracks "Cooped up" and "I Like you." Notice that some of the biggest names in the industry are featured in these top tracks! Looks like getting features is a power play!

Charts Weekly: R&B

Ok, can someone explain this? Looks like Spotify considers all of the following songs to be R&B. It looks like First Class is considered to be not only the #1 Hip-Hop but also the #2 R&B track. I'm a bit confused but that's pretty cool! Now that I think about it, none of these songs are R&B in any way... Do you agree?

Charts Weekly: Pop

If you were here last week, the week before, and the week before that, then you'll know that I'm extremely tired of Harry Styles and have some very personal beef with him. He's basically driving me to drink at this point with his consistency on the charts. I've pleaded several times for him to chill but I guess that's not happening, I'm over it.

If you haven't already heard the #2 song "Glimpse Of Us" By Joji you DEFINITELY need to right this instant. Not gonna lie, it's a bit sad but the melody was written to perfection, you won't be disappointed. If you feel like crying in your car alone this is definitely the one for you.

Kyle Beats Found The Next Lil Baby!

Ok, how do I put this in the nicest way possible...? This guy has an incredibly unique look for the music he makes. Not only that, he literally sounds just like Lil Baby! Usually I'm not one to enjoy an artist that sounds very similar to a big artist but he truly pulls it off. Starting his career at 13 Lil Man J recorded using earbuds and Garageband. As he progressed he found that his quality needed to increase as his skills sharpened over time.

Youtube producer Kyle Beats showcases Lil Man J's talent in one of his latest videos titled "I found the next Lil Baby." Kyle discovers Lil Man J through a TikTok and DM's him to collaborate. The two quickly make an absolute BANGER within just a few days which they plan to release on all platforms.

Though we don't know much about this artist yet, it appears that he might be living with a physical condition hence his artist name.

Watch the full video here.

Spotify Marquee | For Artists

Odds are if you're a Spotify user you've seen something like the image below popping up when opening the app. We finally got it, a paid advertisement feature directly through Spotify! This is likely one of the most effective paid marketing tools that we have ever seen!

What is a Marquee?

As defined by Spotify:

Marquee is a full-screen, sponsored recommendation of your new release to Spotify Free and Premium listeners who have shown interest in your music and have the potential to listen more. When a listener clicks on a Marquee, they are guided to your new release—and your release alone. This means they can focus solely on your music and discover more of you.

This feature is available to artists with 15,000 streams in a specific country. Think of this feature as a retargeting ad. Once your new release goes live, previous listeners of your music will see your album or single artwork pop up and have the option to be redirected to your Spotify page directly. This feature costs $0.50 per click and has shown to give some insane results. The minimum that you're able to spend is $250 which makes sense as it wouldn't be very useful to lowball your ad spend on the initial drop of your track.

Here are some stats provided by Andrew Southworth:

The most promising stat we should consider is the converted listeners to clicks. This means that out of the 1,549 clicks, 1,136 people actually listened to his music! This is an incredible conversion rate and definitely a feature that I will have on my radar for my future music.

Not on Spotify yet? Let us help you.

Here's a full video on Marquee and how it works.

What are your thoughts on this Spotify feature? Are you using Marquee? Let us know by replying to this email!

Artist of the week: Glaive

I never thought that hyper pop had the potential to go mainstream, well boy was I wrong. Glaive has the uncanny ability to mix an insane plethora of genres including alternative hip hop, metal, pop, and hyper pop.

In the last year, Glaive has made huge leaps catapulting himself out of the underground scene and closer to the main stage. Shooting videos with the likes of Overcast & Lyrical Lemonade, Glaive is sure to climb the ranks. I'm hoping to see him get some big features in the second half of 2022!

Glaive is currently on tour and looks like he will be on the move across the United States and Canada until the end of October 2022.

Who should be the featured artist next week? Submit your song here!

Let's face it, there are simply too many people making music, that's the bad news. The good news is most of them are lazy and you are not. This means you're most likely willing to do any and everything to set yourself apart from other artists, right? This is why you need a website! A website does a few simple things that go a long way such as building social proof, increasing SEO, allowing super fans a place to stay up to date, and more.

Well, I don't know how to build a website...

That's fine, use Tellie! Tellie is a super easy drag-and-drop website platform that allows creators of all sorts to make a website in literal minutes!

Simply add a background, add some small clickable image tiles, a video or two, some socials, and you're done!

You could have something that looks like this in minutes!

If you ask me, that looks pretty freaking professional. This image is a look inside the website builder console which looks quite intuitive and easy to use!

Tellie is free and invite-only at this time and is slowly being rolled out to users. If you're planning on getting an artist website up and running soon I'd suggest signing up now so that you're able to access the platform once you're ready!

I Thought Logic Quit Music?

When we thought it was all over, Logic decided to come back to the game! After announcing his retirement from music after dropping his album No Pressure in 2020, Logic completely disregarded his claim dropping more albums and singles bringing us to his third album after claiming retirement, Vinyl Days.

Truth be told, Logic isn't my favorite artist, but I love the Old-School Hip-Hop route that he holds throughout nearly the entire album. It feels like Logic has come back to his roots with this one! Logic has some big features such as Russ, Wiz Khalifa, The Game, and more!

I rate this album a 10/10 honestly!

What are your thoughts on the album? Do you prefer the old-school hip-hop side of Logic?

One of Philly's best, Meek Mill! Honestly, I've always thought that Meek Mill was slept on when it came to the freestyle game. Prior to the freestyle Meek Mill claims he does not concern himself with "microwave rap." Will someone please clarify what this means, I've been scouring Google and I'm at a loss...

I'm not even going to lie, I'm happy Meek Mill was able to recover after getting absolutely demolished by Drake. Meek was always in my top ten and it really hurt to see him get bodied, nearly stopped listening to him to be honest. LOL

Linked below is arguably one of the best freestyles on Funk Flex's channel, simple as that.

Notable Lyrics:

It's clear that Meek Mill is "about that life."

PressPlay Quick Links

• TheNeedleDrop loves the Logic album! He kind of looks like Logic, bias maybe?

• What is Spotify Marquee?

• Last week at PressPlay

• This desk is cool.

• Lil Tjay is not in good condition. :(

• Johnny Depp makes music?

Have You Ever Rapped To A Ball Of Foam?

Ok, sorry for my awful joke of a headline, but seriously, this thing is dope. Have you ever been recording and your computer fan seems to sound like a tropical thunderstorm is coming? Yeah, I deal with that all too much...

The Kaotica Eyeball is an alternative to a recording booth perfect for bedroom artists. This thing literally makes your vocal sound cleaner than anything I've ever heard. Kaotica makes a ton of different shapes and sizes to fit almost any microphone.

We see time and time again beginner recordings consisting of pops, background noise, hard consonance, etc. The Kaotica will completely remove all of those issues leaving no room for recording mistakes! The cleaner your vocals are recorded, the better they will sound with a mix! After discovering this I realized that recording studios are a scam.

Share PressPlay with your friends, acquire free PressPlay merch, and then acquire more friends as a result of your awesomeness. We’re saying we’ll give you free stuff and more friends if you share a link. Super easy, free stuff, let's get it! :)

Reply with a link with one of your best songs for a chance to be featured as artist of the week!

Signing off for now!

- PressPlay