Hi,

This week’s newsletter is a deep dive into the career of Larry June - a rapper from San Francisco, CA who made a name for himself as an independent artist with a prolific output.

I recently went down a rabbit hole on Larry’s career and felt like there were a bunch of takeaways that could apply to artists, creators, and their teams everywhere.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

Let’s begin…this is Larry.

He’s been making music for a long time - his first official project on DSPs (steaming platforms) released in 2010, about 15 years ago.

His journey in the music industry has seen it all - being signed to a major record label, then getting dropped, going fully independent, signing a distribution deal, building his personal brand, and more.

One of Larry June’s claim to fames is his prolific output - since 2010, he has dropped over 30 full length albums (this doesn’t include singles EPs).

His output has such velocity that in some years he’s released upwards of 4 projects.

There’s a lot of takeaways and gems:

1) Own the operation

Despite having a level of financial and cultural success, Larry June still records music himself. At this stage in his career he still records his own music and then sends it off to an engineer for mixing and mastering.

While this may not sound that mind blowing or innovative, it’s important - owning the means of operation helps limit the variables and allows Larry to scale his output.

There’s a reason why he’s able to put out so much music and owning the operation is part of it.

2) Building a catalog

Larry June’s catalog is incredibly impressive - over 30 projects is almost sort of mind blowing considering how good they are musically (it’s not like he’s dropping duds or falling off).

The beautiful thing about building a catalog is that it can appreciate over time and becomes an asset as the streams across all of those songs compound. If let’s say at minimum each project had 8 songs (they have more, but for sake of example let’s say 8), he would have almost 250 songs in his catalog just on projects.

Each song becomes a “bet” - an opportunity to stream, reach new audiences, build his fanbase, and ultimately earn money. With that much music out, the pressure decreases of having to create a hit record and placing a massive bet on an individual song.

The less music an artist puts out, sometimes the more pressure there is on those specific songs to perform well.

From an economic standpoint, having that many songs is paying off in the streaming economy - he’s averaging over 10 million streams per week.

If every 1 million streams = $3,000 (approximately), on the low end he’s likely making over $30,000 per week from streaming and likely well over $100k/month or $1.5 million per year. That’s really good money (like…really really good money) for an independent artist.

That said, it’s not only lucrative in the short term, it can also be lucrative in the long term if Larry ever decides to sell his catalog. Music industry catalogs have recently been placed at 8-10x valuations of their annual income. With a $1.5 million annual income, that would put Larry’s catalog at a potential $15 million valuation.

The hip-hop artist Sauce Walka once gave a great analogy on the power of building a catalog that relates to Larry June -

Think of your catalog as a building that you own.

• Each floor is an album.

• Each song is an individual unit on that floor.

• Each unit (song) generates its own level of income.

• Some generate more than others.

If you have a song with a big feature, that unit might generate more income than the rest but it still contributes to the whole building. The more music you release, the more units + floors you own with the ability to generate revenue for each.

Larry June’s catalog is a massive complex with multiple floors and units that are earning him money every month.

3) Creating and reinvesting in his brand

In an interview with Wallo and Gillie, Larry talked about how early on during his come up, he invested in buying a Corvette and installed an orange interior to align with his brand and give people something to talk about.

Throughout his career, the theme of oranges has been recurring:

• Orange emojis in his social media captions

• Albums with the titles Orange Print, Orange Pineapple, Orange Season, etc

• Tied into his overall healthy lifestyle

4) Overcoming adversity

Larry’s career wasn’t just a straight upward trajectory - he actually got dropped by Warner Records at one point. He then started using Distrokid to upload his music independently and didn’t let the major record label woes stop him or derail his career.

A career in music, especially as an artist, is filled with ups and downs.

5) Health + wellness

As mentioned above with the oranges, health and wellness are a key part of Larry’s brand.

Larry raps about riding his bike, drinking smoothies, living a peaceful life, working out, and more. He’s even hosted bike rides with his fans to promote fan engagement and healthy living.

6) Collaborations

In addition to consistent output, a key part of Larry’s strategy has been collaborations, including joint albums with other artists and producers.

For example:

• “Until Night Comes” album with Cardo Got Wings

• “Life Is Beautiful” album with 2Chainz + Alchemist

• “The Great Escape” album with Alchemist

These collaborative projects help Larry reach new audiences (especially on streaming platforms since those other artists are listed as primary) and increase his consumption.

The projects aren’t just an attempt to game the numbers or steal new fans - they’re cohesive, thoughtful, and great bodies of work that add to his catalog and reach new people.

Final thoughts

As I write this, it really stands out how Larry June is the definition of consistency, from both a macro and micro perspective.

Macro - Larry has 30 albums over a 15 year career.

From a micro perspective, Larry approaches his days + weeks with consistency - in an older Rolling Stone interview from a few years ago, Larry shared how he only records for a maximum of 3 hours per day, from 6am - 9am.

He does it to avoid burnout and keep his energy up - he knows he’s going to be consistently recording every single day so he doesn’t feel the need to do long marathon sessions.

“3 hours per day, every day for 365 days - those are outstanding numbers. It’s not what you do but how you do it”.

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

1) The Artist Marketing Playbook - I teamed up with my good friend and fellow music marketing expert Drew De Leon to present The Artist Marketing Playbook. An in-depth look at what an artist can do to set themselves up for success in 2025. More info HERE.