How The Music Industry Celebrates Juneteenth
Two years after becoming a national holiday, the music industry is still uncovering new ways to celebrate Juneteenth.
In 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday in the United States. To celebrate, Sony, Spotify, Apple Music, Billboard & other large corporations within the music industry have been finding new ways to observe the holiday. For context, Juneteenth, also known as “Freedom Day” is the day Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas emancipating the last remaining slaves in the US.
Typically corporations have celebrated Juneteenth with targeted social media campaigns, committing to diversity efforts within their companies among other initiatives. Large players in the music industry tend to take creative & interesting approaches to celebrate the holiday. Let’s take a deeper look at how these companies are celebrating!
Before we begin, I want to note that in 2020, Billboard reported that Sony Music, Warner Music, ASCAP & Spotify will be a paid holiday for their staff “to learn, reflect, and connect as we continue to battle systemic racism.” While this is a great sentiment, I’m more interested in the way these companies are highlighting black artistry in their Juneteenth initiatives.
Apple Music
Apple Music, like in years past, is featuring a playlist of exclusive covers celebrating Juneteenth and hip-hop. A variety of up & coming black artists are selected to record covers of their choice for the playlist with some of my favorites being redveil’s cover of Didn’t Cha Know by the great Erykah Badu, and 6LACK’s cover of UMI Says by Mos Def.
The playlist contains covers of music from 50 Cent, Soulja Boy, 2Pac, & Chance The Rapper.
Spotify
This year, Spotify is using its playlist catalog “This is Frequency” to celebrate Juneteenth. All of their genres of frequency include music from black artists. In years past, the company had done all-black New Music Friday and exclusive Spotify singles to celebrate Juneteenth.
Genius
Genius, the website you go to when you need more context for that one Taylor Swift lyric (looking at you “sexy baby”), has some pretty unique Juneteenth celebrations. In order to celebrate Juneteenth, Genius is recognizing 50 years of hip-hop. I love this campaign. From telling the story of hip-hop through 50 years of memorable lyrics to taking a look at the biggest players in Hip-Hop from the company’s launch.
Billboard
interesting. glad they are observing the holiday!
Who got left out?
Although all of these companies either observed a paid holiday as previously mentioned or have had the initiative to celebrate Juneteenth in the past; I failed to see much action this year from The Grammys, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, or ASCAP.