Polar Culture Collective: created by Marshmello, an impressive roster of artists and a sleek branding message attracts attention from the offset.

The collective appears to be more than just a record label when digging in. At first glance, information is limited. You see a sold out merch line and links to all of its artists’ social media pages. Combine this with conclusions from Marshmello’s passion for pseudonymity and dabblings in crypto, you can think there’s another play here.

The site’s discreetness and structure portrays that all members are equal vs Marshmello being the leader of group. The music its members have produced in the past show a willingness to connect with their fanbases, and the ability to relate to struggles that many people are going through, but don’t have the confidence or an audience to share with.

A voice for the voiceless.

Modern hip-hop is blending between a variety of its past sub-genres. More and more, mental health is common theme that is found in many records. It is something that people are more comfortable sharing as the world moves forward.

A few examples of this are popular artists’ associations (directly or indirectly) with Soundcloud’s emo-rap scene, Travis Barker’s resurgence, Chicago’s drill artists’ evolution into the mainstream, and a specific example, DaBaby’s recent record with Lil Wayne.

Whether it’s taking a Xanax to calm down, remembering ones lost, or articulating the personal struggles artists have gone through, the message resonates with many who are still finding their way.

What makes Polar Culture more interesting than the standard record label is its potential to associate with its fanbase in a powerful online community.

One of the definitions for polar is being directly opposite. Past methods of gathering online attention were based on passive consumer consumption, and creators developing massive amounts of content in hopes of being discovered on streaming platforms. This method of discovery is highly dependent on the platforms’ sharing algorithms, which are developed with the platform in mind, not the creator.

While there were successful examples of artists building communities through these channels, Oliver Francis being a great one, this isn’t optimized for the future.

Future methods of attention gathering are moving towards active consumer consumption, engagement and participation. This method enables the consumer to engage and discover new content more organically, and feel more in control of what they’re consuming on a regular basis.

It also gives the creators (especially those up and coming) more control, as they don’t feel the need to put out content to stay relevant on the various sharing platforms’ algorithms.

Soundcloud was a massive platform for artists to connect, collaborate and eventually produce some of the groundwork the industry is building upon today. New community driven platforms provide artists a way to create meaningful communities online according to their own rules.

Such platforms, like Discord, can bridge the gap between artist-to-fan and fan-to-fan interaction. This interaction aggressively earns a consumer’s attention and produces more engagement within the collective.

With the future of online attention moving from passive to aggressive, groups like Polar Culture can leverage this to create even more relevancy than they would solely using traditional methods.

For example, let’s say Lil Dusty G was releasing a song on December 31st. Members of the community could be invited to a listening party the night of December 30th. While there are risks associated with this, there are potential monetization methods the collective could employ to make this worthwhile.

As mentioned, in communities like Discord, you create your own rules. Let’s say there are 100,000 members of the community; a listening party for everyone involved wouldn’t be much different from announcing the song’s release on instagram.

But, let’s say the listening party was for members who have a participation level of X, and also have previously verified that they purchased Polar Culture merch. The reward for active engagement is access to the listening party.

As other members see this type of engagement being rewarded, they’re incentivized to give more attention to the group and participate more often. Let’s say participation can be defined as engaging in community message boards, sharing songs on social media, or pre-ordering merch. This results in merch drops being consistently profitable, organic artist promotion, and a stronger digital brand for the collective.

News then spreads about the strength of the community and then drives more community membership, participation and eventual revenue streams for the collective. Again, this is all done organically and independent of streaming platforms, and keeps the collective, its creators and its community first.

I don’t know if Polar Culture intends to go in this direction, and I believe they’ll be a success independent of any decision regarding this.

But, given the assumptions made earlier, it certainly could be a possibility. NFT’s, online communities and people’s desire to be a part of something in the digital world is creating an opportunity for groups to effectively earn their audience’s attention. This attention is much more valuable than it has been in the past.

My inclination to believe that Polar Culture has the ability and desire to provide this level of engagement stems from content in its members’ previous releases.

Examples being Lil Dusty G’s latest release, Preached, Munk’s Crown The Empire’s first hit Voices, and Marshmello’s collaboration with the late Lil Peep. People resonate with this type of music, especially in their darkest moments.

And those are the moments we need community the most.