The Rza Joins Boombotix as "Head Abbot"- (guide for content strategy)

[mson]

The RZA interview: Boombotix and the future of physical-format music
Jun 12, 2015
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Chris Burns
This week SlashGear caught up with the music producer and artist Robert Diggs, also known to you as the RZA of the Wu-Tang clan. This season RZA takes a new role as a guide for content strategy with portable audio equipment leader Boombotix. He's the new "Head Abbot", a take on his role as The Abbot with legendary hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. While other legends in the music industry turn to streaming services to claim a spot in the next wave, RZA turns to the fans. To you. "To put music back in your hands."




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Some time ago, Boombotix VP of marketing Mustafa Shaikh and Boombotix CEO Lief Storer first spoke with RZA about licensing the iconic "W" Wu-Tang logo for a speaker. After hearing and feeling the quality of the speaker, RZA presented a heavier idea.

That idea took flight as the first Wu-Tang Boombotix REX, a limited edition speaker with unreleased Wu-Tang tracks of music inside.

This speaker would come loaded with tracks from the Wu-Tang album A Better Tomorrowweeks before its official store date.

This model sold out quickly. This was in late 2014.



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In early 2015, RZA and the Boombotix team were in talks to sign a partnership, to bring RZA aboard as a signed team member, complete with title and equity in the company.

"For me, I wanted to find a way to cross pollinate the electronic world with the music world, instead of them being separate, and I think that’s what we’re doing here," said the RZA. "So we cross-pollinate, and you listen and stick it in your phone, no we have an all in one package."

"We are actually reinventing the delivery of music."

"You know when you used to buy a record or a CD, and you appreciate the physicality of it, you still needed something else to listen to it. But when Bluetooth speakers came out, with standalone units, you know, we are actually reinventing the delivery of music."

"That’s the main thing with me getting involved is to get the music back in the customer’s hands. I thought about this with headphones at first, but we never got that far, and with the Bluetooth speaker it’s more practical and shareable."

RZA's known for his creative roles in producing albums, acting, and directing films as well. The difference - the way one goes about being these many types of creative entity - is one of inspiration, something that's very exciting.

"Seeing some of these technical ideas come to light... is just as exciting as making a film or an album."

"The creative process is different because it’s not something that is just audio and visual, it’s also technical," said RZA. "As an idea, that sounds logical, but it may not be technically able to achieve it."

"But seeing some of these technical ideas come to light over time and knowing that others might come to light as we develop other products is just as exciting as making a film or an album, because you’re creating something that’s new to the world and very artistic at the same time."

Working with a new form of release, like music delivered on a speaker, is not so much a radical departure from release vehicles of the past. Instead, RZA said, the Boombotix delivery of tracks on a speaker is "just another medium to get music back in a physical product."

"It’s different than having an album playing in the headphones," said RZA, "but with this speaker, someone hits play and immediately them and they friends can enjoy the artist’s work."

"Physical, like anything physical, it’s there, it’s on your person."

"If we got to a situation where Spotify or something had trouble with transmission, you can’t get that music."

"If you’re hiking up in the mountains or something and you don’t have signal, you don’t have that music. But having a physical speaker, that’s always better."

Above you'll see a customized Boombotix REX. This is one of several ways music fans are able to acquire the speaker from the company - any way they like.

Right now the 2nd exclusive edition of the Wu-Tang Boombotix Rex is available from Boombotix online and in a number of speaker shops and skateboard shops around the world. Soon Boombotix will release a Greateful Dead-branded speaker with unreleased music in the same fashion as the Wu-Tang Boombotix REX.

Later this year, Boombotix and the RZA will release a speaker with the likeness and songs from RZA's real-life cousin and original member of the Wu-Tang Clan: the Ol' Dirty b*stard.

Stick around as RZA continues to collaborate with Boombotix and additional artist-driven products are pushed in the near future. We'll be following the story through our Boombotix portal and on down Slashgear interview tag way

 

[mson]

[URL='http://www.fastcompany.com/technology'][/URL]
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WHY DID WU-TANG'S RZA JUST JOIN THIS BLUETOOTH SPEAKER COMPANY?
MORE THAN A CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT, RZA'S NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH BOOMBOTIX GIVES HIM A HANDS-ON ROLE IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT.

BY JOHN PAUL TITLOW
It's 10:30 p.m. when Mustafa Shaikh's phone rings. It's RZA. It's not every night that the founding leader of the Wu Tang Clan calls his cell, so he picks up. Shaikh, the VP of marketing at portable speaker company Boombotix, is in for an earful. "I got some ideas," RZA says.

The timing isn't always so odd, but these types of calls are routine now that RZA has joined Boombotix. Earlier this month, RZA officially signed on with the San Francisco-based startup, giving him an equity stake in the company and a hand in developing its line of rugged wireless speakers. As "chief abbott"—a corporate title that borrows from one of his many Wu-Tang nicknames and mashes it up with the cavalier semantics of Silicon Valley org charts—RZA is involved in product development and content strategy, among other things.

the Rza (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs)
"I discovered their speaker through some mutual friends," says RZA. "It was a loud box. It had a great sound to it. Having an innovative mind myself, I thought it could be more pragmatic not just as a speaker to play other music, but maybe there's a way to put your music inside the speaker."

After originally reaching out to RZA to license the group's iconic "W" logo for a speaker, Shaikh and Boombotix CEO Lief Storer were surprised to learn that RZA had much bigger ideas. "I put the phone on mute and said, 'Holy shyt. Can we do that?'" Shaikh says. "After a couple of weeks, we figured out that we could do it and still release the product in Q4."

The result was the Wu Tang Boombot REX, a Wu-branded Bluetooth speaker released by Boombotix last November. In addition to serving as a wireless, wearable speaker that connects with smart devices, this limited-edition speaker would come preloaded with tracks from the Wu-Tang Clan's newest album, A Better Tomorrow, a few weeks before its official release date.

With physical album sales tanking and the uncertain economics of the all-you-can-stream music services, some artists feel compelled to experiment with new distribution models. Last year, Wu-Tang famously announced that its final album,Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, would only be available in one copy, which would be auctioned off for millions of dollars. With the old channels obliterated, why not experiment? Why not release an album embedded directly into a speaker? "I think that's a great way to release music nowadays," says RZA.

The team at Boombotix agreed. After their Wu-Tang speaker started flying off the shelves of skate shops, T-shirt stores, and other retailers not traditionally associated with selling music, the one-off partnership with RZA started to morph into something more formal.

"We had this synergy," RZA says. "After a few meetings and hangings and a few drinkings, it was like, yo, let's get involved. Let me join your team so that I could join my ideas with it. We agreed and found that balance."

With that, the Boombotix team worked out a deal with RZA, giving him a title and equity in the company. After months of negotiations, the deal was officially signed in early 2015 and sent to the company's board for eventual approval. By then, the late-night brainstorming phone calls from RZA were already underway.

"I'm glad we got that communication," says RZA. "It's like, shyt, I gotta get this to you right now. He always takes my call."

Celebrity partnerships with consumer audio electronics companies have been all the rage since Beats teamed up with Dr. Dre almost 10 years ago. And since Beats cashed out with Apple for $3 billion in 2014, the phone calls from artist reps to companies like Boombotix have only increased. But most of these offers come in the form of deals that slap an artist's name onto a product, perhaps going as far as to hire them them as "brand ambassadors" whose chief responsibility is simply using the product publicly.

As chief abbott of Boombotix, RZA's role is a bit more hands-on than partnerships like Bang & Olufsen's headphones cobranding deal with DJ Khaled or Ludacris's now-defunct branding partnership with Soul Electronics (Ludacris's reps reportedly reached out to Boombotix about striking a similar deal).

As the creative mastermind and producer behind one of the most successful groups in hip-hop history, RZA is no stranger to gadgets, which he says have a way of piling up in his house. "When it comes down to it, he's a pretty big tech geek," says Shaikh.

Mustafa Shaikh
"Being a guy that's into electronics, I felt like I found a group of people that I could feel free to express my ideas," says RZA. "Electronic innovations. Making one thing do other things. Adding functionality. I'm happy to be with a company that lets me spitball ideas. Sometimes they go, 'Well that's kinda crazy, but we could try it.'"

increasingly how music-focused companies are competing with one another, especially in the streaming space. After Taylor Swift threw down the gauntlet by removing her catalog from Spotify, we've seen Jay Z try to lure listeners to his new streaming service, Tidal, using exclusive tracks from popular artists as bait. Apple is reportedly angling for a similar strategy as it prepares to relaunch Beats Music under the venerable iTunes brand.

While Boombotix doesn't see its model as being as transformative as streaming, the company does want to offer artists supplementary ways to release, market, and profit from their music. These partnerships, which Shaikh tells me are negotiated on a per-artist basis, are just one additional revenue source an artist can tack onto its balance sheet in the era of streaming and its tricky economics.

Build-a-Bot site, users can custom-design their own speakers with unique color schemes, and even print their own imagery on the front grille.

More than slapping a celebrity's name on a product, the Boombotix partnership with RZA is a long-term, hands-on deal. For RZA, it's an additional creative outlet, and one that lets him tap into the entrepreneurial instinct he's had his whole life. As a kid, RZA tells me, he sold newspapers on the Verrazano Bridge and bought socks in bulk to sell them at a profit in Harlem. At the age of 13, RZA teamed up with Ol' Dirty b*stard to operate a fruit stand in downtown Brooklyn.

"I'm from New York, and in tough times, you gotta go out there and work," RZA says. "We was in downtown Brooklyn at Jay Street. We would get up at six in the morning and set up the fruit stand. I think I made profit of about $80 a week. That allowed me to get a pair of sneakers that my mom couldn't afford, or get a pair of Lee jeans."

Since forming the 10-piece Wu Tang Clan in 1992, RZA and his associates have turned one of the most successful hip-hop groups in history into a small business empire, syndicating its music and members' likenesses into video games and making millions from the sale of its Wu Wear line of clothing.

"I'm not afraid to try a business," RZA says. "You want Wu Donuts? How much? All right, let's try it. But let's change the glaze on that shyt

 

[mson]

Wu-Tang Clan member RZA has joined portable speaker company Boombotix as Head Abbot.

While the job title is a reference to his nickname in the group, the rapper and producer (pictured) - real name Robert Diggs - will work to guide Boombotix's content strategy as the company seeks to create new mediums for artists to release content. He will also work first-hand on new products in development.

Diggs first collaborated with Boombotix to release selections of Wu-Tang Clan’s album, A Better Tomorrow, on a Boombot REX. In the wake of the speaker’s success, the company moved to create the Chambers Collection, which will feature a series of portable Bluetooth speakers with artist collaborations embedded on flash storage for listening. Part of Diggs' new role is to facilitate more relationships in the music industry for future collaborations.

Said Diggs: “We’re forming this partnership to connect musicians and fans in new ways,” said RZA. “Through the technology that we create, we’ll be able to reach fans in a more intimate way. This speaker can go anywhere, and I love that. We’re putting music back in your hands.”

Mustafa Shaikh, head of marketing for Boombotix, added: “We’re excited to welcome RZA onboard in a role where he’ll have a meaningful impact on the future of our brand. Under his guidance, we’ll be working with a wide range of artists to create new and exciting product releases.”

 

[mson]

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247916