Whop Will Change Music Marketing Forever

The $1B music marketing platform you've never heard of

We're witnessing the great disruption of music marketing. Like radio got disrupted by streaming, influencers are being disrupted by the micro-creator economy.

My friend Buster Scher, founder of The Hobby Letter, has run multi-million dollar marketing campaigns for some of the biggest record labels in the world, and he tells me he’s never seen an opportunity quite like Whop.

If you're like me, you probably had no idea what Whop was until very recently.

Launched in 2020 as a Discord/Patreon competitor allowing creators to host communities, Whop has quietly become one of the most important marketing platforms for the music industry, paying out over $1 billion to creators and clippers despite being relatively unknown.

To help The Black Hoody’s 3,000+ entertainment industry executives, managers and agents get across Whop as quickly, we teamed up with The Hobby Letter to co-write this article.

What is Whop?

At its core, Whop is a platform where artists can pay people to create and share content featuring their music. Simple as that. But the execution is what makes it revolutionary.

Here's how it works:

You create a campaign with a total budget and set specific parameters, namely;

• Which platforms you want content on

• Who can apply (follower count, location, niche)

• What percentage of the video needs to feature your artist

• How much you'll pay per thousand views (CPM)

CPMs on Whop range from $0.60-$2.00, which is absurdly cheap compared to any other digital marketing channel.

For context, the average CPM for Instagram ads is $7.91, while Facebook sits around $8.60, and YouTube ranges between $7-$10 for skippable ads if you’re targeting western countries. TikTok CPMs typically start at $10, and music-specific influencer campaigns often command $15-25 CPMs. Even programmatic audio ads on Spotify average $15-25 CPMs.

As you can see, attention is the currency, and right now Whop is giving away Lamborghinis for the price of a bus ticket.

Who makes content for you?

Once you start your campaign on Whop, two types of people apply:

• Creators: People making original content featuring your song

• Clippers: People reposting or repurposing existing content featuring your song

You approve or deny each submission, and the platform handles all payments automatically.

Music marketing at scale

For years, the labels and managers have been manually engaging influencers to try and get as many accounts to post videos with their songs as possible. Whop now automates this marketing strategy to allow anyone to do it at scale.

With Whop, you can flood social media with hundreds or thousands of videos featuring your artist's song, making it feel like it's everywhere.

Here’s how The Hobby Letter explains it;

Whop makes it cheaper, easier to get high quality UGC (user generated content), with greater reach, and more authenticity. It offers;

• $2 or less CPM (unbeatable price)

• You only pay based on content performance, which means you pay more for the content that gets results and less for the content that doesn’t.

• Because there are plenty of different campaigns to choose from, clippers and creators will self-select campaigns that their audience would be most interested in, making it easy to reach your target market.

Consider This: Once your Whop campaign is running and videos of your song are all over social, other creators are going to start using that song outside of your campaign.

If it looks like everyone is making content using your song… then everyone else will start making content using your song.

Rule of Thumb: Good content compounds and bad content goes nowhere.

• While Whop can be the spark, it’s much better to be used to fan the flame

• The success of your campaign is dictated by how good the song is

• If a song starts to work organically, creators and clippers can amplify that success… but they can’t pour gasoline on a fire that isn’t there

CASE STUDY: One artist who has already jumped onto Whop is Russ

• Russ has paid out a little over $20,000 USD in the last 30 days to fans to clip and promote his music.

• This $20K was spread out across 13 separate campaigns, each with a slight twist.

• Across these 13 campaigns there were over 1,000 submissions from creators and clippers all over the world.

• The results? More than 50 million views on content featuring his new song MOVIN.

• That’s a CPM rate of $0.40*

The marketer who wins isn't the one with the biggest budget, it's the one who understands where consumer attention is underpriced. Russ knows where.

Zoom In: Russ set the parameters for his campaigns to only be eligible to creators and clippers in specific niches that he knows love his music.

^{*Calculated at 50M views and $20K spend}

Other Brands: In addition to participating in Russ’ campaigns, The Hobby Letter has also worked on campaigns for brands and celebrities like:

• The Kid Laroi

• Michael Jackson

• Murda Beatz

• Rich the Kid

• Shaq

• HBO

• GaryVee

• Logan Paul

• Jake Paul

• Druski

• Fanatics

• Autopilot

• + Dozens more

ZOOM OUT: This is still an incredibly early opportunity for artists and clippers alike.

• Despite being a relatively niche platform, Whop has already paid out over $1 Billion to clippers and creators

• The people on Whop so far are primarily professional (or aspiring) clippers. What happens when an artist’s fans become aware of the opportunity?

• Imagine what will happen if someone like Taylor Swift or BTS throws down a $100,000 campaign to promote a new single and links to it on an Instagram Story? That song will be EVERYWHERE

Russ has figured it out

Russ spent just $20,000 across 13 different campaigns in a single month. The result? Over 1,000 submissions generating more than 50 million views on content featuring his new song "MOVIN." That's a CPM of $0.40 - literally unheard of in digital marketing.

The best part? Because Russ targeted specific niches that already loved his music, the content felt authentic rather than paid.

Advice from The Hobby Letter when using Whop;

1. Set different CPM rates: Pay more ($1.50-$2.00) for content showing faces and less ($0.60-$1.00) for faceless content. Authenticity sells.

2. Set reasonable thresholds: Establish minimum view counts for payment, but keep them realistic. Set maximum payout caps to prevent one viral video from eating your entire budget.

3. Include usage rights: Make sure your campaign terms allow you to reuse the best content on your own channels.

4. Don't manage it yourself: Just like most aspects of management, outsource this. There are professionals who specialize in Whop campaign management.

5. Use it to amplify, not create momentum: Whop works best when the song already has some organic traction. As one of my artists used to say, "You can't pour gasoline on a fire that isn't there."

The opportunity is massive

Despite having already paid out $1 billion to creators, Whop is still in its infancy. Most major labels haven't caught on yet, but they will soon.

The Hobby Letter predicts we'll see a $100K campaign from a major label by the end of 2025, a $1M campaign by 2026, and a Billboard #1 hit powered primarily by Whop clipping by next year.

But the real question is: what happens when an artist like Taylor Swift throws down a $100K campaign and announces it to her fans on Instagram?

Whop would explode overnight.

P.S. I’ll be in New York this month

I'm in New York this month on Simone Giertz business. If any subscribers want to meet up while I'm in town, please reach out.

Also, I'll be attending The OOO Summit - For Owners, Operators, and Outliers. Highly recommend getting a ticket if you're in the city on May 15 and 16.