When Travis Scott decides to do something, he usually goes big.
And with his latest album, he decided to go colossal, with a 60,000-person concert unveiling his latest release, Utopia, at Rome’s iconic Circus Maximus, the ancient stadium that used to serve as a chariot racing venue during the Roman Empire. The event came together in less than a week and served as a capstone to the rollout for what became the biggest debut week for a hip-hop album this year, and the third-biggest week of any album at all in 2023, moving 496,000 equivalent album units.
Even more remarkable for an album in a genre that heavily over-indexes in streaming, half of the units moved for Utopia came from sales, as Scott continues to be one of the most innovative artists in music with his sales strategies. Helping him pull all this off has been his manager, Cactus Jack GM David Stromberg, who earns the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Stromberg talks about the huge first week for Utopia, the challenges in pulling off that show at the Circus Maximus and why artists should be celebrated for their approach to merchandising and sales. “A24 releases merch for their big movies, Disney and Marvel create massive product lines around their blockbusters, fans line up for jerseys and official merch at every sporting event,” he says. “But strangely in music, it’s now considered a negative towards overall consumption and metrics behind a project. I feel record-breaking artists who are able to move merchandise at an elite level should be celebrated at a time when branding, creativity and marketing [are] generally nonexistent in the music industry.”
This week, Travis Scott’s Utopia debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 496,000 units, the third-biggest debut week of any album this year and by far the biggest for any hip-hop album. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
Our small core team has been together since the start of Travis’ career. Cactus Jack is essentially an independent label and polymath-driven creative agency — we oversee everything from marketing strategy to design and execution. I also handle everything on the business end. For this project, Travis really wanted to lean into building a strong visual language. Producing his film CIRCUS MAXIMUS on an insanely tight timeline, shooting in exotic locations around the world and premiering the album within a film in theaters nationwide was a massive undertaking but definitely set up the project in a unique way. We are all super proud of the final product and it was amazing to see the world’s reaction.
This is his first album since 2018’s Astroworld, which also posted around 500,000 units in its first week. After five years, how did you work to set up this release to the point that it nearly equaled his last?
While the numbers are powerful and have important historical context, our focus is always primarily on the music and world-building. ASTROWORLD was such a seminal moment in culture, we wanted to level up that energy and recapture the feeling of event albums, which are clearly lacking in music lately. UTOPIA‘s first-week global streaming numbers actually almost doubled ASTROWORLD, Billboard just quantifies merch bundles differently now than in 2018 [in terms of sales]. On a global consumption level, it’s safe to say it actually far surpassed ASTROWORLD.
Of those units, about half came from streaming and half came from sales. What was the strategy around each side of that, particularly the sales side?
One thing that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough when judging music consumption data is the inherent disadvantages hip-hop faces in manufacturing physical music product. Due to the fluid nature of rap collaboration, leak culture and last-minute changes, vinyl lead time always far exceeds album delivery dates for rap. Pop artists are usually able to turn in their albums five to six months early and manufacture a significant amount of vinyl with a robust retail plan in place. Vinyl often ends up accounting for well over 50% of these pop artists’ first-week totals, whereas hip-hop is judged entirely on streaming. In an even playing field, rap stars are going to far out-stream even the biggest names in pop music, but for whatever reason they aren’t graded on the same sales curve. Going into this rollout we wanted to crack the code — we successfully manufactured our own vinyl and CDs in record time and built an e-com plan to leverage day-and-date physical music for the first time in modern mainstream rap. It was a really ambitious plan but thankfully everything came together smoothly. Huge thank you to recent Billboard cover hero Larry Jackson for his invaluable guidance and strategy throughout this whole process.
How important are direct-to-consumer sales and merch to an artist like Travis?
Man… I’d love to eventually have a deeper conversation around this topic at large. For some reason, direct-to-consumer and merch is used as a negative connotation against artists like Travis, oftentimes by artists or labels doing the exact same thing in their online stores to diminishing returns. Why stigmatize artists with extremely active fan bases who want to engage and support the album, even at a much higher price point than just a la carte music? Since the inception of rock and roll, merch has always been an important part of supporting your favorite artists. A24 releases merch for their big movies, Disney and Marvel create massive product lines around their blockbusters, fans line up for jerseys and official merch at every sporting event. But strangely in music, it’s now considered a negative towards overall consumption and metrics behind a project. I feel record-breaking artists who are able to move merchandise at an elite level should be celebrated at a time when branding, creativity and marketing [are] generally nonexistent in the music industry.
How did you choose the Circus Maximus for that performance, and what were the challenges in pulling it off?
Ancient worldwide settings were an early reference point for this album. Travis was particularly interested in civilizations that transcended technological and cultural limitations to reach new heights. Part of the film is essentially a live performance from the ancient Pompeii amphitheater ruins. We have a couple other Wonders of the World locations held for possible performances, currently studying timing and logistics. With the Circus Maximus show we basically put it on sale, designed the stage, produced the livestream ourselves and sold 60,000 tickets in less than a week. It was a crazy challenge but one of the most rewarding and epic shows of his live career. The energy and hearing the album live for the first time in that setting was an unforgettable experience and iconic way to conclude the first week of UTOPIA rollout.
How are you working to keep the momentum for this release going in the weeks and months to come?
I don’t want to say too much, but there is a lot in the works. Definitely continuing to build the UTOPIA world in unexpected ways. We just released the CIRCUS MAXIMUS film on Apple Music after a week of exclusivity in theaters. We’ve been thinking a lot about touring in different, innovative ways and utilizing new technologies in live performance. And Travis is always working on new music.
