Neon Money Club pulled up fresh from attending the 65th Annual Grammy Awards to put us on game by merging investment education with music. — In 2020, Roddy Ricch had the most played song on Apple Music with 455 million streams. Apple Music only pays $0.01 per stream, which means Ricch made an estimated $4.5 million from Apple Music that year. But what if the streaming service paid him in Apple stocks instead of cash? Let’s find out.   “You don’t have to be an investment professional to spot value.”   Apple’s stock price was $79 per share in 2020. Therefore, Roddy Ricch would’ve gotten 57,500 shares. That same stock is worth $152, as of this writing, which means his $4.5 million would’ve nearly doubled to $8.6 million. If Roddy had made a similar move with Spotify, he would’ve lost money instead. But unlike Spotify, streaming isn’t Apple’s only business (iPhone, AppleTV+, Macbook, etc.), and this is where common sense analysis (a.k.a. Good Taste) is useful. You don’t have to be an...

It’s no secret that Black people run the culture, and the latest report on music streams is proof. Over 30% of all on-demand audio and video streams in the U.S. last year were tracks recorded by R&B and hip-hop artists, Music Business Worldwide reports. The new stats were from industry monitor MRC Data — compiled with Billboard. “In the case of on-demand video streams, the ‘R&B/hip-hop’ category actually claimed over a third of all plays, at 33.9%,” according to Music Business Worldwide. This breakdown finds that the “R&B/hip-hop” category increased its market share of total “album-equivalent sales” here in the U.S. during 2020. One of the most popular tracks for both on-demand audio and video streaming platforms in the U.S. last year was Roddy Ricch’s “The Box.” The song garnered 920.4 million on-demand audio plays and 399.2 million on-demand video plays during 2020. In second place was The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” at 691.5 million followed by DaBaby’s “Rockstar” featuring Roddy...