Revolt: Against What Exactly?

By Brian Parker

Sean “Diddy” Combs’s new music television network Revolt launched last week, as the hip-hop icon embarked to create the central platform for music discovery.  Combs has frequently remarked on the state of the music industry, claiming that there is  ”no one outlet that represents music,” comparing Revolt to CNN, ESPN, MTV, and the trump card of all media institutions, Fox News. Combs’s fascination with social media, to which he credits his introduction to the wildly successful TV shows Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, extends to his intention to reach the millennial generation by using Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr as the network’s primary marketing channels.

Revolt’s success will be largely dependent on the brand’s ability to promote itself to the targeted market of adolescents and young adults. The shift towards subscription-based television and movie services and on-demand programming will give a young, 24-hour music television network a run for its money, not to mention YouTube offering a customized music video experience with playlists and recommendations…for free.  Revolt’s scope seems to be a bit vague, looking to establish itself as a large media institution while maintaining some sort of curatorial integrity.  Even a brand like Pitchfork, which claims to champion the causes of alternative and independent music, must resort to advertisements and undoubtedly lobbied reviews to maintain both its success and influence.

Revolt seems to have taken cues from Pharrell Williams’s creative and cultural venture i am OTHER , which makes use of the hashtag #iamOTHER to unite young underrepresented artists through social media channels. Revolt utilizes the rather unoriginal #IAMREVOLT hashtag to mark submitted content by artists, journalists, and entrepreneurs, which the network questionably uses as a means of promoting the contributor.

The Revolt network’s figurehead is notorious for outrageous publicity tactics and an unfortunately unwavering ego, and with a good deal of capital backing it, Revolt will likely stay afloat in the least. However, the thought that art of any discipline needs a single channel through which a homogenous stream of “content” is forced is exactly the kind of thinking that music industry has suffered for the last two decades.