Chance the Rapper is INDEPENDENT-ARTIST-GOALS

CHANCE THE RAPPER.

Chance has a net worth of $33million.

“The 24-year-old has never sold a physical album, choosing instead to distribute his music freely via streaming services. But Chance smartly uses his musical ubiquity to cash in on lucrative festival gigs and arena dates, as well as deals with brands like Apple and Kit Kat.”

Forbes, 2017

Let’s show how Chance the Rapper might be making his money!

Rights, licensing, catalog and commercial AirPlay

Chance has both writing and production credits on his most recent album from beginning to end. He has a lot of features on his music and he collaborates with a pretty big group of creatives with production and writing the music. Chance is registered with BMI.

His discography includes the following:

Studio album- The Big day
Collaborative album- Surf
Mixtapes- 10 day, Acid Rap, Coloring book
Collaborative mixtape- Free, Merry Christmas lil mama as well as various other collaborative projects.

Chance has a publishing deal with Easy song Listening. It may or may not still be existing.

He had a Doritos advert with The Backstreet Boys performing a remix to “I want it that way”. He also has songwriting credits on the movie, Steven Universe: The Movie. Notably the Coloring Book album comes to mind as having had a significant airplay. “No Problem” and “Ultralight beam” from Kanye’s Life of Pablo album make the list too. He has received three Grammy’s one that includes Best New Artist.

Sheet music, sharability (covers), discography, sales and visibility

Chance's sheet music is available in print and digitally. Some outlets follow:

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheet-music/artist/chance-the-rapper
https://musescore.com/sheetmusic/artists/chance_the_rapper

Few artists have recorded and performed Chance's songs. A short list follows in order of YouTube views:

Jessie Reyez (live) 208,074views
Matt Nathanson (studio) 19,446views
Kahik Gargia & Jeremy Carter 12,800views
Alec Dalelio (live home) 1,857views

Jessie Reyez has achieved double platinum in Canada but not on Chance's song. None of the above artists seem to have reached super fame or a high level of record sales.

According to Wikipedia and other sources Chance the rapper has 4 Studio Albums, 5 mixtapes, 12 singles as lead artist, 13 singles as featured artist, 1 promotional single and numerous guest appearances earning one BPI silver certification (200K) as lead artist and many RIAAs as featured artist.

His music is on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, Napster, Pandora and Tidal.

Touring, merchandise and the social component

Chance tours. In fact, he makes most of his money from touring and merchandise. Chance sits comfortably at a net worth over $33mil, making on average about $220,000/show. He started working on his ‘10 Day’ project during his school days. In 2013 he released ‘Acid Rap’ which had over 800,000 downloads and a nomination for best Mixtape at the BET Hip Hop Awards. Then his first official tour began.

2013 - 9 shows in the USA.

2014 - 6 shows in the USA.

2015 - 38 shows in USA and some in England.

2016 - 47 shows in the USA and 7 other countries.

2017 - 63 shows in USA and 5 other countries.

2018 - 10 shows in USA and 5 other countries.

2019 - 8 shows in the USA.

He also sells merchandise extensively. This is his other major source of revenue. He packages his merchandise so that when you buy a kind of merchandise, you get a digital album with it. For example; buy a ‘Big Day’ hat and get a digital album, or buy a ‘3’, Sox or Acid Rap branded Lighter and get a digital album. This is all hosted on his website store.

On the Etsy website, Chance the Rapper-branded merchandise is sold there. Birthday cards, stickers, posters, lyrical canvases and clocks are all sold there.

There are two main fan club websites for Chance fans- seatwish.com and fanpop.com. For both of them, fans can join through facebook or using their emails. That’s all it costs. I tried it. On seatwish.com, fans get the latest Chance news, music, exclusive photos, videos, dates a for events in your country and fantastic exclusive offers and products.

Fans can also join through facebook by liking the Chance The Rapper page.

I couldn’t seem to figure how he makes his money for recordings and how he pays for his shows but Andrew Friedman in an article form 20/05/20-16 assumed that Chance has backing from Apple, which would be better than all the Major Labels combined. This is not a fact.

There is no record that he works through crowd funding but there is definitely record that he is a social activist, donating $1mil to Chicago schools in 2017 and running a Arts and Literature fund worth $4,2mil.

Chance the Rapper has been endorsing and representing White Sox baseball hats for a while now. He featured on H&M/Kenzo marketing campaigns in 2016 and he endorses and represents the New Era brand presently.

Chance the Rapper has acted in the most recent Lion King movie as a bush baby. He has done commercials in the past. He did a movie called Slice in 2019 and mother movie called Mr Happy in 2015.

YouTube, gaming, endorsements and extra expenses

Chance has a YouTube account that is fairly popular, with 1.42 million subscribers. In the past 30 days he has gotten 4.35 million video views.

I do not believe that Chance has appeared in video games as a character. From what I was able to find he also does not have any placements for his music to be played in video games but he does have endorsements though.

As mentioned above, Chance has obtained quite a few endorsements throughout his career. He has had, or currently has deals with Nike, New Era, H&M, Kenzo, Kit-Kat, and Doritios.

I believe that we have covered just about every way that Chance is making money from his music and brand.

Chance’s largest expenses are likely to be the money that labels put into his studio projects. This money needs to be recuperated prior to receiving money on the back end from his music.

02/09/2020